For more than half a century, humanity has been consuming vitamins in shock doses, yet has not achieved immortality. About the scientific groundlessness of Linus Pauling's ideas on ascorbic acid and the medical consequences of vitamin mania.
The Great Vitamin Hoax
Author – masterok
For more than half a century now, humankind has been consuming vitamins in shock doses. But it has not yet become immortal. Neither has the number of handkerchiefs we go through each year during colds and flus decreased.
It is time to figure out: why?
Once upon a time, people knew nothing at all about vitamins, but were already fully engaged in fighting their deficiency. This was mainly the business of sailors, since it was that brave tribe that had to confront a very strange disease. There you are, sailing on a ship for several months, doing nothing particularly wrong, eating hardtack and salt-cured meat, and then bang – all your teeth fall out. From what, you ask? Why?
Scurvy was for a long time perceived as something entirely mystical. For example, it was noticed that among sailors on ships sailing in the Northern Hemisphere, it occurred more often than among those whose vessels plowed the southern seas. Nobody could explain this strange paradox.
By trial, error, and guesswork, scurvy was nevertheless conquered, and much earlier than its cause was discovered. It turned out that if a crew is regularly fed with lemons, they need not fear bleeding ulcers and other scurvy delights. By the time of Cook's expeditions in the 18th century, barrels of lemons were an indispensable part of ship's provisions, and learned physicians published highly scientific articles in medical bulletins arguing that, since the sea is the element of saltiness and bitterness, while sugar – of which there was always plenty in a sailor's menu – is the provider of sweetness, it was precisely the lack of the fourth taste, sourness, that led to such sorry consequences.
Doctors disagree
«A person gets enough vitamin D from food and exposure to sunlight. Taking it additionally may lead to disruption of metabolism» Nikolai Adrianov, PhD in Medicine, Associate Professor at the Department of Biochemistry of the Medical-Biological Faculty of RSMU
For all the charlatanry of these texts, they did in general contain correct information, though they did send a number of unfortunates from the crews to their graves, those whom people tried to «restore the sourness balance» using vinegar, since it was cheaper than lemons. All because vitamin C, the lack of which causes scurvy, especially under conditions of short daylight and cold climate, is not found in vinegar. But who knew…
A century later, people learned to treat another consequence of avitaminosis – rickets – although again they had no idea of the mechanism of its appearance. Accumulated experience simply showed that a child who was often in the fresh air, drank a lot of milk, and received a spoonful of fish oil several times a week was much better protected from this disease than others. And what does it matter how it works, if it works?
The Vitamin Discoverers
In 1880 Nikolai Lunin, a biologist at the University of Tartu, was the first in world history to suspect that food might contain something very important for us, completely unknown. He took two groups of mice. He fed one of them cow's milk (they love milk very much) – and the mice were vigorous and happy. The second group Lunin fed with a mixture he composed himself, which included all the elements contained in milk: sugar, other carbohydrates, proteins, fats, and various salts.
The mice expired with deplorable suddenness (we now know that they were killed by a deficiency of vitamin B, essential to their lives). In his dissertation, Lunin described this experiment and expressed the conviction that not only milk, but other foods as well, might contain unknown but extremely important substances for life, not yet discovered simply because they are present in tiny quantities. Now we know that Lunin was absolutely right. But he was unlucky.
Other scientists who undertook to repeat his experiment found no deviations in the health of mice fed with Lunin's formula. The whole problem was in the sugar: Lunin had used cane sugar, but did not specify this in his work.
The confirmation experiments were carried out with poorly refined milk sugar, which itself contained vitamin B. Thus, Lunin unjustly did not become the discoverer of vitamins, and the Nobel Prize for this was received by several other scientists who jointly created the theory of vitamins at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. After which, as is customary, numerous breakthroughs and inventions began: scientists learned to synthesize vitamins, discovered many of them, identified the cause of several more diseases related to vitamin deficiency (for example, pellagra and beriberi), calculated recommended intake norms of vitamins, that is, were actively engaged in business.
For some time, the rest of humanity treated all these achievements quite calmly. It was busy with world wars, revolutions, great depressions, the collapse of empires – in short, the overwhelming majority of the planet's population had enough troubles without having to track what breakthroughs were occurring in the theory of nutrition. Where to obtain this very nutrition under ration-card norms was a far more important question.
At the same time, the population was being quite successfully vitaminized, since children's and school food, therapeutic diets, and soldiers' rations were already being designed taking into account the importance of various vitamins, and pharmacies sold vitamin-mineral complexes. In general, everything was boring, predictable, and without hype. Until He appeared. The one for whom, by all rights, a full-length monument should have been put up in every pharmacy, because the income he brought to pharmaceutical companies and dietary supplement manufacturers… But let's not get ahead of ourselves. First, let us get acquainted with him.
The Great Vitaminizer
By the end of the 1960s, the name of Linus Pauling resonated louder than the names of Jobs and Gates do today. He was a globally recognized genius, an archangel of science, a prophet of the natural sciences. One of the founders of molecular biology, who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954, he also surrounded himself with the glory of a great humanist, fighting against the spread of nuclear weapons and becoming one of the main initiators of the treaty banning nuclear tests between the USA, the USSR, and Great Britain.
For this he was also awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1962. A fantastic generalist – chemist, physician, biologist, philosopher, and politician – Pauling also possessed considerable literary as well as oratorical talents. In short, a superman from the laboratory, equally revered both by laypeople and by the scientific community. Unfortunately for his reputation, he lived a very long life – 94 years. And in 1966 he was only 65 – at his peak, you could say. And it was precisely in that year that Pauling caught a cold. His physician, Irwin Stone, recommended that the scientist take three grams of ascorbic acid a day, believing that additional vitamin C would not hurt an organism weakened by illness. So the great scientist got hooked on ascorbic acid. Immediately after the first dose, he felt better, and within a few days he was already well.
Doctors disagree
«Our food, fortunately, contains various vitamins in various amounts. If our diet is properly organized, we will receive enough of them. Those who design and release vitamin advertising are concerned with increasing sales» Salavat Suleimanov, Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor, Head of Department at the Institute for Advanced Training of Healthcare Specialists
And that's when something snapped in Pauling. He became a believer. He believed in the great healing power of vitamin C. It must be said that it is generally not good to believe a scientist; a scientist must be a terrible skeptic. The scientific method itself is built on the idea that any «two times two equals four» requires proof. There is no, and there can be no, anything self-evident in the world; any obviousness requires confirmation. That is, based on the principles of scientific thinking, Pauling should have said: «I took ascorbic acid, I feel better. And this can mean only one thing: in this particular case, this particular tablet did not prevent this particular me from feeling well. Any other hypotheses on this matter can be attempted to be proven».
But the personal experience of a genius, accustomed to the constancy of his rightness, allowed him to do an unforgivable thing – to write and publish a work that did not withstand scientific criticism. The book was called «Vitamin C and the Common Cold». In it, Pauling fervently convinced everyone to take one or two grams of ascorbic acid every day so as not to catch a cold and to feel generally well, and at the same time not to neglect other vitamins either. In the text, Pauling admitted that he «did not understand the detailed mechanism of the effect of ascorbic acid on resistance to colds», but that didn't matter, since he was deeply convinced of the correctness of his recommendation. To say that the scientific community was floored when it became acquainted with the genius's work would be a mild expression. From a scientific point of view, it was a text that differed little from the works of adepts of the «harmonization of the element of sourness». But all other members of society went into ecstasy. The book, written in simple, clear, and even entertaining language, remained a bestseller for a long time; stocks of ascorbic acid were swept off pharmacy shelves; and pharmacists, market gardeners, and juice producers tirelessly kissed the footprints of Linus Pauling in their thoughts.
They began to vitaminize everything. Even popcorn and chips. Humanity rushed to gobble down vitamins. Politicians, businessmen, and public figures did not doubt that we were dealing with yet another brilliant insight of the supermind. In 1973 the Linus Pauling Scientific Medical Institute was created in Palo Alto, where Pauling became president. In 1979, in co-authorship with a colleague, Pauling released a second book – «Cancer and Vitamin C», in which it was convincingly but, alas, just as inconclusively asserted that vitamin C is a wonderful remedy for the fight against cancer, both as prophylaxis and during illness. This book was also bought in millions of copies. Most sadly, it began to cause harm. Some patients, for example, now refused chemotherapy and surgery, preferring the comfortable consumption of five grams (Pauling's recommended dose) of ascorbic acid a day to these unpleasant and dangerous procedures. And it's one thing if generally healthy people drink vitamins in horse-sized doses: unlike the fat-soluble vitamin A or, say, D, vitamin C dissolves in water and is easily eliminated from the body, so its overdose is not too dangerous.
But what if it's patients?
Doctors disagree
«Under the conditions of the study conducted, in which 980 patients with colds participated, we obtained no evidence that vitamin C has any significant impact on the duration or severity of upper respiratory tract diseases» Donald Cowan, Harold Diehl, Abe Baker – University of Minnesota
Cancer patients' refusals of treatment caused a great deal of dissatisfaction, especially since observation of cancer patients undergoing «ascorbic therapy» showed no improvement in their condition whatsoever. And then, apparently, the word «charlatan» was first uttered. But Pauling had no intention of stopping. He created and developed the theory of orthomolecular medicine, which he defined as «the right molecules in the right amounts». Vitamins, amino acids, minerals, and bioactive supplements, according to this theory, can cure everything from mental disorders to HIV. The main thing is to choose the right dose for the specific patient. And yes, theoretically – they could even grant immortality. Although Pauling himself did not go that far in his promises; his supporters and followers, consisting mostly of journalists and simply concerned citizens, did that for him.
Cleaning Up after the Genius
The complexity of the scientific community's position was that refuting an unproven version is often even more difficult than proving it. And the argument «Where on earth did you get that, idiot?» did not work in Pauling's case: the guy's initial reputation was just too strong. Well, a brilliant insight happened, and now you sort it out. The sorting out continues to this day, but at the moment we can confidently say: «Pauling, you are wrong». Numerous long-term observations have not found a relationship between dietary supplement intake and the patients' state of health. Doctors disagree «There is no scientific evidence of the usefulness of additional vitamin use. The idea that vitamin use does not harm people is clearly worth reconsidering» Dr. B. Caballero, Director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. In 2009, in the journal Arch Intern Med, a giant summary report on the observation of 161 thousand people was finally published, showing that «the use of multivitamin preparations has virtually no effect on the risk of developing cancer or cardiovascular diseases and no effect on mortality in postmenopausal women». Common cold is handled by another group of researchers. HIV – by a third. Childhood psychoses – by a fourth. And so on. Hundreds and thousands of controlled studies on dozens of substances and hundreds of diseases. Forrest Bennett, one of the participants in the «big cleanup», a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said: «Sometimes it seems to me that they (the supporters of the orthomolecular medicine theory and Linus Pauling personally. – Editor's note) simply pulled their numerous conclusions out of thin air».
Pauling died in 1994, having managed at the end to fully enjoy his status as an abnormal madman in scientific circles and the atmosphere of adoration among less demanding citizens. And it is unknown how many more decades will be needed to convince the population to stop consuming dietary supplements in such monstrous quantities. For example, according to the data of the U.S. Center for Research on Complementary and Alternative Medicine, in 2004, 3% of U.S. residents took vitamins in super-high doses. And this is completely not beneficial, since even with water-soluble vitamins you can bring yourself to hypervitaminosis, which in turn leads to such unpleasant things as disturbance of coronary circulation, hypertension, thrombophlebitis, hepatic toxicosis, spontaneous miscarriages and fetal development anomalies in women, gout, jaundice, and so on.
So what should you do now?
Doctors disagree
«The concept of multivitamin preparations was sold to Americans by nutraceutical corporations. There is no scientific evidence of a positive effect from their use» Steven Nissen, Head of the Department of Cardiology at the Cleveland Clinic
One should understand that yes, vitamins are an important part of nutrition; our body actually cannot produce them on its own, except for a couple of the most basic ones. But the thing is, we need very, very little of them. Given a sufficiently varied diet, one can forget about vitamin-mineral complexes, and one certainly should not take them by the handful, even if your local doctor has urgently recommended it. No, no, we are not accusing your local doctor of a criminal conspiracy with dietary supplement manufacturers. It is simply highly likely that he grew up and studied in the days when Pauling's name was pronounced with reverence, and the giant doses of vitamins and minerals he recommended had not yet been officially recognized as first-rate nonsense.
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