- Excerpt
In the living organism, there are thousands of "cogwheels" that synchronize and align all the processes that help the organism to maintain its vitality and integrity. Vitamin C ‒ ascorbic acid ‒ is an essential cogwheel, because it plays a role in the production of energy and because it is a major antioxidant. Throughout his entire life, the discoverer of vitamin C, the Nobel Prize winning Hungarian scientist Albert Szent-Györgyi (1893 ‒ 1986), never stopped stressing the vital role of vitamin C in maintaining health: “If there is no ascorbic acid present, the whole energy production must stop and a terrible disease is produced, which is alled scurvy.” Szent-Györgyi even stated that a lack or low level of oxygen combined with a lack or low level of vitamin C will produce cancer. In this particular context, OPCs play a crucial role because they constantly regenerate vitamin C. ([i])
Table of contents
Life is e-life
The enormously complex interplay of all the processes taking place in living organisms rests purely on the continuous "handling" and "managing" of an infinitely small sub-atomic particle: the electron. In fact, an electron might be best described as a "negatively charged location in space". As negative charges, electrons not only flow as electricity through the wires of your house, they also flow along the numerous electrical pathways that “electrify” and energize organic life. Besides this, all chemical elements are structures consisting of electrons that orbit around a nucleus consisting of a cluster of positively charged protons and neutral neutrons. Chemical elements, the molecules composed of these elements and the complex compounds composed of these molecules interact through the sharing or exchange of electrons. This vast interplay of negative and positively charged particles makes life a genuinely electric affair. Life is “e-life.” In e-life compounds such as vitamin C are capable of alternately absorbing and donating electrons. These compounds exist in various states of charge, caused by the fluctuations in their number of electrons. Compare it to a bank account at which you can receive and from which you can pay Dollars or Euros. Vitamin C works as a "bank account" for electrons.
Redox capacity
The whirling dance of electrons for which we just coined the term "e-life", knows two basic steps called “oxidation” and “reduction.” The words oxidation and reduction are commonly used, but in the context of e-life, they deserve our somewhat closer attention. When electrons — negative charge — exit a molecule, that molecule experiences a relative increase in its positive charge. It becomes “more +” and “less –”. This process is called oxidation. Electrons joining a molecule produce a relative increase in negative charge (“more –” and “less +”). Although the number of electrons increases, we call this step reduction because more electrons add up as “more negative charge.” When a compound is a giver and taker of electrons, it has a reduction-oxidation, or “redox,” capacity. A redox compound can only function when it finds a compound to give an electron to (“reducing” the charge of that compound) and another compound to take an electron from (“oxidizing” that compound and increasing its positive charge). An “oxidator” or oxidant is thus a taker of electrons, and a reductor is a giver of electrons. Since a redox compound cannot recharge itself after it has donated an electron, it requires another donator to regenerate its antioxidant capacity. This is how a redox compound, such as vitamin C, is a Janus-faced antioxidant and oxidant.
Free radicals steal electrons
Compounds known as "free radicals" are to be feared because they heavily and indiscriminately interfere with the normal flow or position of electrons. They are strong oxidants that crave electrons so much that they steal them from the nearest compound they can get in touch with. When a free radical steals an electron from a compound that lacks the ability to replace it, permanent “free radical damage” will be the result. In terms of money, free radicals are thieves that steal from everyone who happens to find him-/herself in its vicinity. They only take, never give and unless you neutralize them, they make you go broke. In biology, antioxidants are e-life’s solution. They sacrifice themselves to satisfy free radicals’ hunger for electrons and so neutralize their thievery in order to keep them from stealing electrons from and thereby irreparably harming vital elements and structures of your body.
The royal electron-givers: OPCs
Neutralizing free radicals by donating electrons to them is a skill that has been mastered by free-radical-scavenging endogenous enzymes normally present in living organisms. Some of them [catalase, glutathion peroxidase (GPx) and superoxide dysmutase (SOD)] are active in the human body. Nature has endowed the same skill to exogenous antioxidants such as OPCs and the vitamins C and E. The exogenous antioxidants complement and assist the endogenous ones. It is obvious that the performance of antioxidative skills depends completely on the availability of electrons that must be donated. What makes OPCs so special in this respect is that they contain many electrons that can be donated. Once the electron has been donated, OPCs can't recharge themselves. A perfect example of a giver and taker of electrons is vitamin C. It can switch from a reduced state (charged with an electron) to an oxidized state (released of that electron) back to a reduced state and so on and so on. By filling up with electrons every time electrons are given, vitamin C is able to fulfill all its tasks many times over, including the task of giving electrons to free radicals to neutralize them. Vitamin C is a true reduction-and-oxidation (redox) compound.
Masquelier's guinea pigs
Because vitamin C is a “busy” compound with a huge workload, it is quickly depleted unless it is readily recharged. Vitamin C recharges itself by taking an electron away from a substance it oxidizes in the action. That substance acts as an antioxidant. In other words, vitamin C needs an antioxidant to perform as ... an antioxidant! Preferably, the antioxidant that regenerates vitamin C should be one that is ready to sacrifice itself. OPCs, being rich in electrons that may be donated, are vitamin C’s perfect antioxidant. In the absence of donors like OPCs, vitamin C will deplete itself and that is how, eventually, scurvy comes about. In other words, scurvy isn’t just a problem of a vitamin C deficiency. It is also a problem of vitamin C not being able to recharge itself. The regenerating activity of OPCs was demonstrated by professor Masquelier when he kept guinea pigs alive and well by recharging a suboptimal dosage of vitamin C through OPCs. This is how OPCs’ “richesse” in electrons places them at the natural origin of many processes that they sustain by recharging cogwheels like vitamin C. Which reminds me of Masquelier's story that Portuguese sailors "of old" escaped scurvy by recharging their suboptimal level of vitamin C with no more than a daily ration of red wine.
Suboptimal amounts of vitamin C
Some of you may think that scurvy doesn't concern us any more because our Western diets provide a sufficient amount of vitamin C. That may be true as far as the dreaded scurvy is concerned, but we should not forget that scurvy is the final and most rapidly developing acute stage of the processes of degeneration that manifest themselves more slowly and surreptitiously when caused by the "unseen" suboptimal amounts of dietary vitamin C. In this sense, the slowly developing conditions are perhaps more dangerous than scurvy because, while they may be experienced as a mere nuisance at their onset, they may eventually turn out to be just as deadly. As observed by Szent-Györgyi, cancer is the end-phase of years of suboptimal intake of vitamin C. This is also the case with cardiovascular diseases. The problem is that, while the signs of scurvy due to a complete and sudden lack of vitamin C become apparent in just a couple of weeks, it takes years and years for cancer and cardiovascular diseases to develop to a stage where they can be felt and diagnosed. The underlying suboptimal intake of vitamin C has remained "unseen" during the years of apparent health, wherefore it is difficult to establish a cause-and-effect relationship between the deficiency and the disease once the latter has reached its clinical stage.
Linus Pauling's mega-dosages of vitamin C
Following the advice of Linus Pauling, many nutritionists and doctors advise patients and healthy consumers to take (much) more vitamin C than the recommended daily dosis of 60 to 80 milligrams that officialdom proposes as sufficient. Millions of people take 1,000 mg, 2,000 mg, or even higher doses of vitamin C every day, mostly in the form of a dietary supplement. Very few people, however, do what Linus Pauling did. The great promoter of vitamin C mixed 18 grams of vitamin C powder with a couple of drinks every day. Surprisingly, Pauling never discussed the possibility of recharging vitamin C by way of OPCs. He went for replacing the body’s waning stock of vitamin C with mega dosages. For Pauling and his followers, ascorbic acid isn't a micro- but a macro-nutrient of which we need much more than just a few milligrams per day.
OPCs and orthomolecular dosages of vitamin C
Yet, replenishing vitamin C combined with recharging the vitamin C by way of taking OPCs seems to be the more “elegant” approach. Pauling was a great fan of “orthomolecular” nutrition, of taking and prescribing the right nutrients in the right amounts. In most cases, this approach to maintaining or restoring health implies relatively high daily dosages of vitamins and minerals in the form of dietary supplements. In the orthomolecular tradition, high dosages of vitamin C are standard. However, in the taking and prescribing of orthomolecular amounts of vitamin C, one shouldn't overlook the sustaining, recharging role and possible benefits of OPCs. In the perspective of the orthomolecular approach, OPCs have a balancing and boosting influence that may reduce the need for Pauling’s mega-intake of vitamin C. As such, Masquelier's OPCs may very well serve as "food for thought" for orthomolecular consumers, doctors and nutritionists who were unfamiliar with this aspect of OPCs.
