A health message from Professor Lee Wang-jae of Seoul National University College of Medicine, a vitamin C expert.
The age of longevity! Vitamin C is the answer!

Vitamin C, the guardian of health and life that protects our bodies
The world's cheapest and most precious tonic
The Amazing Benefits of Vitamin C

“...
In closing, I would like to emphasize that the world's cheapest and most precious health supplement is vitamin C.
Because of the inexhaustible source of vitamin C, its price can never be high, and it is more important than any other substance in protecting life, so there is no better expression than this.


Of course, a few vitamin C pills won't solve all your health problems.
No matter how effective vitamin C may be, existing health tips are still valid and will continue to be valid.
However, if we cannot perfectly follow the existing health rules, we must find relatively easy ways to protect our health.
The obvious alternative is to start taking vitamin C.


People suffering from various diseases are advised to start with taking vitamin C to open the door to disease treatment, and then proceed to full-scale treatment by a specialist.
Now, by thoroughly practicing the recommendations of this book, I hope that those who are healthy will be able to maintain their health and those who are sick will be able to quickly recover. This is the precious blessing.
- From the author's epilogue

Looking back, it's already been over 30 years since I first encountered vitamin C.
30 years is by no means a short period of time.
Especially as a health professional and medical doctor, I have a special feeling about taking vitamin C, which I have practiced for 30 years.
Let me first confess that I am now bold enough to share this truth with everyone.
At first, I started taking it without even knowing what it was, but now, 30 years later, I realize what a great blessing it was.
When I witness, directly and indirectly, that my family, including myself, is healthy and even improving, as well as the health of many of my acquaintances, I feel nothing but gratitude.

At first, I just shared what I knew about vitamin C, which might have sounded like empty talk, but now, more than 30 years later, my laboratory, the foundation of my academic work, is constantly busy with vitamin C research, and I have published nearly 40 papers in prestigious international journals, including the world's top journals in my field.
What's even more encouraging is that many doctors and other scholars are now not only aware of the academic importance of vitamin C, but are also taking it regularly in their daily lives.
It is well known that the medical community has always treated it as a minority due to the lack of experimental evidence (especially in vivo experiments), and that this is due to the difficulty of conducting in vivo experiments on humans.
Fortunately, however, we were able to secure mice that had a genetic defect that was exactly like humans and were unable to synthesize vitamin C, allowing us to conduct biological experiments that had previously been impossible, and the results were published in dozens of papers in the world's most prestigious journals.
In terms of content, it not only presented the closest scientific evidence for the cause of scurvy, the cause of which had been unknown until then, but also revealed that the theory further revealed that vitamin C deficiency could be included among the causes of various sudden deaths.
This paper points out that for modern people, where stress is a daily part of their lives, taking vitamin C is no longer an option but a necessity.
The scientific mechanism of the anticancer function of vitamin C, which had been the subject of much debate, has been almost completely elucidated. In early 2017, in the United States, where vitamin C was extremely cautious, a paper was published in the world's leading cancer journal (Cancer Cell) that demonstrated that the efficacy of anticancer treatment was maximized by administering a large dose (average usage of 85g) of vitamin C intravenously rather than orally.
It is also noteworthy that he conducted a joint study with liver specialists and published three articles in prestigious international journals, showing that vitamin C alone can restore liver function and free liver disease patients who took higher doses of vitamin C than the medical community claims.
It has been announced in an international journal of SCI level that vitamin C plays an extreme role in protecting life from new influenza and variant cold infections that have entered a new phase in the 21st century.
Even in experiments using mice that cannot synthesize vitamin C, it was announced in the world's most authoritative journal that offspring born from mother mice deficient in vitamin C can have defects in nervous system development, especially in cerebellar development.


Now, as I publish this book, I feel indebted to so many people, so I cannot help but say hello.
First, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to God for revealing to me, a writer of limited ability, the amazing secret of vitamin C.
There are many people who have helped me over the past 30 years, and I hope you will forgive me for not being able to name them all.
I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the many people who have provided endless support through material, prayer, concern, and encouragement.
I would also like to express my gratitude to my beloved students who have worked hard to turn my stubborn claims into academic truths through experiments, and to the members of the monthly magazine [Health and Life] who have painstakingly refined my writing and provided a platform for me to write every month.
I also extend my special thanks to my beloved wife and daughter, Hana, who have worked so hard for me.
I also want to express my special gratitude to my mother-in-law, who is now in her mid-80s and who suffered a stroke in her late 50s, but thanks to the vitamin C she took for nearly 30 years, she completely recovered and is still living a healthy life, always bragging about her son-in-law's recovery.


Finally, I bow my head and express my deep gratitude to the many readers who have believed in my claims for the past 30 years, continue to take vitamin C, and continue to support me.


October 2019
Author Lee Wang-jae in Hamchundongsan
--- From the preface

- Vitamin C is the answer to the age of longevity and health!

In closing, I would like to emphasize that the cheapest and most valuable health supplement in the world is vitamin C.
Because of the endless availability of vitamin C, its price can never be high, and it is more important than any other substance in protecting life, so there is no better expression than this.
Moreover, we are now living in an era where we can talk without hesitation about the era of longevity.
As we age, we become aware that our body's ability to regenerate itself is gradually decreasing.
That is, although it is easy to break down, the ability to restore broken order declines with age.
We live in an age where we have no choice but to seek help from vitamin C.

Of course, a few vitamin C pills won't solve all your health problems.
No matter how effective vitamin C may be, existing health tips are still valid and will continue to be valid.
However, if we cannot perfectly follow the existing health rules, we must find relatively easy ways to protect our health.
The obvious alternative is to start taking vitamin C.


If you've carefully considered the important messages this book conveys, you'll clearly understand the difference between vitamin C and traditional vitamins.
In particular, you will have come to know how important this substance is in preventing vascular disease, which is rapidly increasing in modern people who cannot avoid habitual overeating and extreme stress even for a moment, and in protecting life from the risk of sudden death that modern people inevitably face as a result.
In this regard, I would like to emphasize once again that in relation to protecting life, it is essential for modern people who cannot help but live complex and varied lives to take sufficient amounts of vitamin C.


In addition, it is recommended that people suffering from various diseases start by taking vitamin C to open the door to disease treatment, and then proceed to full-scale treatment by a specialist.
As previously explained, vitamin C is used and depleted even under physical stress such as illness, so it is recommended to take sufficient amounts of vitamin C and consult a specialist before receiving specialized treatment for each disease.
Lastly, for those taking a multivitamin, it is important to know that you must take a sufficient amount of vitamin C beforehand to maximize the antioxidant function.
I conclude by wishing that by thoroughly practicing the recommendations of this book, healthy people will be able to maintain their health and that those who are ill will be able to recover quickly.
---From the "Epilogue"

The story of Vitamin C at a glance

People's opinions on the effectiveness of vitamin C vary widely.
Some people say it is good for colds, while others say it is good for beauty.
Furthermore, it is said to have anti-cancer effects and is good for cardiovascular disease.
In this way, the efficacy of vitamin C is talked about by many people, with countless anecdotes, expert opinions, and research results appearing almost daily in various media outlets such as magazines, newspapers, and the internet.


Vitamin C is a type of carbohydrate synthesized from carbohydrates such as glucose or galactose, commonly called glucose, as precursors, and is chemically called ascorbic acid.
An interesting fact is that although this is originally synthesized in both plants and animals, in the case of animals (mammals), primates including humans and experimental animals such as guinea pigs, it is not synthesized in the body.
Strictly speaking, humans were able to synthesize vitamin C, but they lost that ability.


The biochemical process is well known.
That is, because vitamin C is ultimately converted into vitamin C (ascorbic acid) through several stages of transformation from glucose in liver cells, the structure of vitamin C is chemically very similar to its parent substance, glucose.
However, the final step in converting glucose into vitamin C is oxidation, and a mutation was induced in the gene that creates a protein called oxidase that drives the oxidation, which resulted in a defect in the final step, the oxidation process, making it impossible to synthesize the final product, vitamin C (ascorbic acid).
The question is why mutations in the gene that makes that oxidase occurred only in primates and guinea pigs.
The scientific reason for this has not yet been specifically identified.
However, with the recent advancement of genetics and the freedom of genetic manipulation, it has become easier to conduct bio-experiments on vitamin C through genetic manipulation of laboratory mice.
This is because mice that cannot synthesize vitamin C on their own, just like humans, were experimentally created by artificially mutating the gene that enables them to synthesize the oxidizing enzyme involved in the final step of converting glucose into vitamin C.
That is, in the past, it was difficult to conduct in vivo experiments on the efficacy of vitamin C using mice.
Because mice can produce their own vitamin C as needed, there is no evidence of deficiency.
This is because, like humans, animals that are deficient in vitamin C can be given sufficient amounts of vitamin C, allowing for a vivid comparison of the difference in efficacy compared to animals that are deficient and do not take it.


The reason is unknown, but if humans are deficient in vitamin C, they can develop scurvy, which causes overall weakness in the body and petechial or ecchymotic hemorrhages on the skin.
In addition, gum bleeding and subperiosteal hemorrhage may occur, and in children, bone development may become abnormal.
Even if vitamin C deficiency is left untreated, it can lead to death.


An important biochemical property of vitamin C is that it is water-soluble, unlike vitamins A, D, E, and K, which are fat-soluble.
It is important to note that among the antioxidant vitamins known as vitamins A, C, E, and beta-carotene, only vitamin C is water-soluble.
Why? Because vitamin C, by its chemical nature, is meant to act as a "fixer," addressing the side effects of antioxidants.
To function as a problem solver, vitamin C must be water-soluble so that it can travel quickly to each part of the body.
What are the side effects of antioxidants? Biochemically, antioxidants are substances that donate electrons.
Interestingly, after donating electrons, the substance takes the form of a radical, a substance that exhibits toxicity.
Let's take the example of vitamin E, a representative antioxidant vitamin.
The chemical name for vitamin E, which we commonly take for our health, is alpha-tocopherol, and its antioxidant ability is known to be much more powerful than vitamin C.
In particular, it has an excellent ability to prevent the oxidation of lipids (cholesterol), which is an important factor in arteriosclerosis. However, after performing its good function as an antioxidant, this substance is immediately converted into an oxidizing agent called alpha-tocopheroxyl radical, which is toxic to the human body.
Fortunately, this substance is regenerated into its original form of vitamin E very quickly before it becomes toxic to the human body, and vitamin C plays an essential role in this regeneration process.
To put it another way, this means that if you take only vitamin E when you are deficient in vitamin C, taking vitamin E can actually harm the body.
Meanwhile, it is also important to note that vitamin C is not a strong antioxidant, but rather an ideal antioxidant. Unlike other antioxidants, vitamin C is known to be almost non-toxic, although it transforms into radicals after its antioxidant function.
In fact, no significant side effects have been reported from excessive use of vitamin C in clinical practice.
For this reason, people consume vitamin C in a variety of ways.
Vitamin C, a representative antioxidant, exists in three forms in the body.


1.
Reduced vitamin C
2.
Ascorbyl radical (vitamin C radical)
3.
Oxidized vitamin C

The vitamin C we commonly consume is reduced vitamin C (L-ascorbic acid).
It first acts as an antioxidant by donating one electron molecule and then becomes a vitamin C radical, but it is non-toxic.
It donates electrons once more and becomes oxidized vitamin C (dehydroascorbate; DHA).
To put it simply, unlike other antioxidants, vitamin C has a two-stage antioxidant function.
It is known that about 98% of the vitamin C present in human blood is in the reduced form and about 2% is in the oxidized form. Since the radical state exists for a very short time, it does not actually exist in the blood.


To understand the functions of vitamin C, knowledge about its absorption is necessary.
There are two types of receptors involved in the absorption of vitamin C. The sodium-dependent vitamin C transporter (SVCT) is responsible for the absorption of reduced vitamin C, and there are two types: type 1 (SVCT-1) and type 2 (SVCT-2).
Type 1 is most abundant in the small intestine, where large amounts of vitamin C are absorbed, while type 2 shows completely different distribution patterns in each organ (organ-specific).
Glucose transporter (GLUT) is responsible for the absorption of oxidized vitamin C.


Looking at the actual absorption in the digestive tract, it is known that small amounts of vitamin C, such as 100 mg, are immediately absorbed through SVCT-1 in the duodenum or upper part of the ileum.
However, when consumed in large amounts exceeding 1,000 mg, it is known that absorption is limited and the absorption rate is less than half.
Based on my long-term experience and observation, long-term intake of more than 1,000 mg of vitamin C induces the expression of SVCT-1 in the small intestine, gradually increasing the amount absorbed.
However, more research is needed in this area, and the effects of unabsorbed vitamin C on the colon when consumed in large amounts are also noteworthy.
Unabsorbed vitamin C has a unique characteristic of showing limited absorption in the small intestine, unlike other substances, because it changes the properties of E. coli in the large intestine, which has a significant impact on the health of the large intestine.
For example, after taking large amounts of vitamin C, the foul odor in your stool will disappear after a month or two.
According to my experiments on the effect of vitamin C on changes in stool bacteria, the higher the daily intake of vitamin C, the more good bacteria proliferate and the more putrefactive bacteria are suppressed.
It cannot be overlooked that this is closely related to the prevention of colon cancer, which has recently been on the rise.

An interesting aspect of vitamin C absorption is that the distribution of absorbed vitamin C within tissues is not uniform.
It was found to be distributed in large quantities in the brain, adrenal glands, and retina of the eye, followed by significant amounts in the liver, spleen, intestines, bone marrow, pancreas, thymus, pituitary gland, and kidneys, suggesting an unknown function.
In particular, the brain and adrenal glands contain high concentrations of vitamin C, nearly 200 times higher than the blood concentration, which allows for academic estimation of the function of vitamin C. This will be discussed in detail in the special section.

The function of vitamin C is well known from its biochemical properties.
The most notable feature is its antioxidant role.
This refers to the role of oxidizing itself and preventing oxidation of other substances.
Chemically, it can be called a reducing agent.
Vitamin C is very stable in its dry state, but is unstable in solution and oxidizes easily.
It is known to be sensitive to heat and light, easily lost during the cooking process, and even easily oxidized by fluorescent light, losing its function.


In addition to its antioxidant function, vitamin C has been found to act as a coenzyme for eight enzymes in the body.
Most notably, it plays an important role as a coenzyme in the biosynthesis of a protein called collagen.
This protein is known to be present in almost all parts of the human body, but is particularly abundant in connective tissue.
Therefore, I believe that the advice to consume plenty of vitamin C for faster healing when you get a wound will remain valid, both now and in the future.
The pathological mechanism of scurvy has traditionally been reported to be that collagen protein is not synthesized due to vitamin C deficiency, which causes the various bleeding symptoms mentioned above. However, it should be remembered that this is only a very small part of the scientific facts related to vitamin C.


In addition to this traditional fact, vitamin C also acts as a very important coenzyme in the synthesis of the stress hormone called adrenaline in the body.
So, in people who are under stress, vitamin C in the blood becomes depleted to an undetectable level.
Vitamin C also acts as a coenzyme in the metabolism of steroid hormones, another stress hormone.
So, the adrenal glands, the main producers of two types of stress hormones, contain incredibly high concentrations of vitamin C (200 times the concentration in the blood).
Considering that modern people suffer from tremendous stress, vitamin C can be said to be an essential nutrient for modern people.
In particular, vitamin C acts as a coenzyme in L-carnitine metabolism, the deficiency of which is known to be one of the clear causes of chronic fatigue.
L-carnitine is a substance that drives the process of converting fat into energy in the mitochondria.
Meanwhile, vitamin C is known to act as a coenzyme for nitric oxide (NO) synthase, which acts on blood vessels to dilate them and lower blood pressure.
In 1999, a joint study by Boston University School of Medicine and the Linus Pauling Institute revealed through clinical research that vitamin C could play a significant role in lowering blood pressure through this mechanism.
Additionally, vitamin C is known to promote the absorption of iron in the intestines and is also essential for the transport of proteins that transport iron to be stored in the liver.


Pancreatic disease, which has long been known to be caused by excessive alcohol consumption, has been reported to be simply caused by vitamin C deficiency.
Dr. John Bruganza, a female doctor and president of the British Pancreatic Society, reported this after more than 10 years of research at Manchester Royal Hospital in northwest England.
This fact means that although it is not a disease we commonly experience, acute and chronic pancreatitis can be prevented by taking vitamin C.


Several years ago, Dr. Jeon Mu-sik of the Department of Chemistry at the Advanced Institute of Science and Technology reported on the forms of water, stating that all water exists in two forms: pentagonal and hexagonal.
Everyday water, such as tap water, is in the form of pentagonal water, and the water that makes up the human body or living organisms is in the form of hexagonal water, so it is good for your health to drink water in the form of hexagonal water as much as possible.
Next, it was announced that one of the conditions necessary for a pentagonal number to change into a hexagonal number is vitamin C.
In other words, even if you drink pentagonal water, it is partially converted into hexagonal water by vitamin C, which is beneficial to your health.


Ultimately, existing textbook knowledge regarding vitamin C must be completely revised.
Despite the many benefits of vitamin C, it is regrettable that even those specializing in medicine only recognize that its benefits are essential for collagen synthesis.


Meanwhile, vitamin C helps keep arteries strong and has a beneficial effect on cholesterol metabolism, ultimately helping prevent arteriosclerosis.
It also helps to solve various problems in the stomach, such as gastritis and stomach cancer.
Koreans, in particular, need more vitamin C because they suffer from many gastrointestinal diseases.
The reasons for this will be discussed in detail later.

--- From the text

Diabetes and Vitamin C

On December 7, 2000, after I appeared on a KBS television program, a nationwide frenzy of hoarding vitamin C ensued.
This is because the broadcast was about a patient with arteriosclerotic disease, a condition that even modern medicine had helped, being cured by taking vitamin C.
Although it was a limited empirical fact of only three people (my biological father, my father-in-law, and my mother-in-law), it was a phenomenon that was almost academically certain to me, so I wanted to share it with many people, and the response was very great.


My father, who had suffered from diabetes for a long time and was given only a few months to live, lived for over 10 years after taking vitamin C.
Where can we find the reason? It was the same with my father-in-law and mother-in-law.
In the case of my father-in-law, who had been receiving treatment for high blood pressure his entire life, he suffered partial vision loss in one eye due to severe arteriosclerosis of the retinal artery.
However, by diligently taking vitamin C, I almost completely recovered my eyesight, which I had lost 70-80% of.
The fact that both my father and father-in-law suffered from arteriosclerosis and were also diligent in taking vitamin C led me to wonder if vitamin C could prevent arteriosclerosis and even partially treat it.
In early 1990, my mother-in-law suffered a stroke due to a complete occlusion of the right middle cerebral artery, which left her with little use of her left side. She recovered completely after taking large amounts of vitamin C consistently.
All of those records are still well preserved at Seoul National University Hospital.

Diabetes is no longer a disease that only affects the elderly.
In fact, it has been reported that in 1970, 1.4% of people over 30 suffered from diabetes, but in 1990, it rose to about 8%, and in 2000, it was reported that about 20% suffered from diabetes.
Diabetes is a chronic wasting disease that is so prevalent in modern society that a recent news report reported that 4 million people, or 10% of the entire population, are currently suffering from diabetes.
Diabetes, which occurs when glucose in the peripheral blood is not delivered to cells throughout the body, is commonly known as an endocrine disease.
This is because diabetes is believed to be caused by a lack of insulin or its improper function.
However, if we look at the contents, we can see that diabetes is not caused only by insulin deficiency.
That is, there are several types of diabetes.

In fact, less than 10% of all diabetes patients are deficient in insulin itself, which plays a role in transporting blood glucose to cells.
This condition is called insulin-dependent diabetes or juvenile diabetes.
And when insulin itself is not deficient, but insulin does not function properly due to reasons such as obesity, it is called non-insulin dependent diabetes or adult-onset diabetes.
Regardless of the type, the core of diabetes is the side effects that occur when glucose is not delivered to cells, energy production is not smooth, and there is too much glucose in the blood.
Therefore, the diagnosis of diabetes is also made based on the concentration of glucose in the blood.
So why do so many people call diabetes such a frightening disease? It's because of its complications.
According to diabetes experts, if you leave your high blood sugar levels unmanaged for years, you are bound to develop several complications.
Commonly mentioned complications include peripheral neuropathy, retinal complications, and renal complications.


Occasionally, we see patients who have suffered from diabetes for a long time have leg wounds that do not heal well, ultimately leading to amputation of the leg. This is a typical example of peripheral neuropathy.
Retinal complications also occur in some diabetic patients who do not control their blood sugar well, and sometimes lead to blindness.
This is because arteriosclerosis occurs in the retinal blood vessels due to high blood sugar that has been left untreated for a long time, causing visual impairment.
In the same context, we can see that kidney complications are ultimately vascular diseases.
The glomeruli, which perform the main function of the kidney, are bundles of blood vessels.
If arteriosclerosis occurs in this bundle of blood vessels, the kidneys' natural blood filtering function is impaired, and toxic substances accumulate in the blood, which can ultimately lead to death.
Ultimately, considering its lethality, I even wonder if it would be more accurate to call diabetes a vascular disease rather than an endocrine disease.


E. of Duke University Medical Center.
Dr. C. Opara et al. were very interested in the question, 'Why do long-term diabetes patients develop blood vessel problems? As a result, some patients go blind due to retinal disease, others lose kidney function due to blockage of the glomerular blood vessels in the kidney, and sometimes peripheral neuropathy causes minor wounds to not heal, leading to amputation of toes, and after a while, why do people have to amputate their legs and ultimately lose their lives?' They conducted experiments and published useful results.
That is, by reporting that the blood levels of antioxidants (vitamin C or vitamin E) in diabetic patients were unusually lower than those of normal people, they reported good results suggesting that arteriosclerosis may easily occur in the blood vessels of diabetic patients due to the lowered antioxidant levels.


Why does low blood levels of antioxidants like vitamin C contribute to arteriosclerosis? As mentioned several times before, the process of humans gaining energy to survive inevitably produces harmful oxygen radicals (reactive oxygen species).
However, since these harmful oxygen species are generated in cells and then travel throughout the body through blood vessels, it can be said that vascular endothelial cells are always exposed to attacks by harmful oxygen species.
In other words, the harmful oxygen that is inevitably produced creates small, invisible wounds on the vascular endothelium and also changes the cholesterol in our body into oxidized cholesterol that can easily cause arteriosclerosis.
Therefore, we cannot help but think of ways to block the attacks of harmful oxygen species (active oxygen species).
That is the intake of antioxidants such as vitamin C or vitamin E.


Ultimately, as diabetics spend five or ten years with poor blood sugar control due to a persistent lack of antioxidants that can prevent arteriosclerosis, the small arteries begin to become blocked due to arteriosclerosis as described above.
As a result, it can lead to retinal disease, kidney disease, or leg problems, and in some cases, it can lead to severe suffering and even death.
Ultimately, it is gradually being proven that only continuous intake of antioxidants such as vitamin C can prevent fatal complications of diabetes.
Many research results have already reported that reactive oxygen species generated at the cellular level not only damage the cells immediately upon generation, but also enter the bloodstream and travel throughout the body through the bloodstream, causing the most severe damage to vascular endothelial cells.
In addition, since increased blood sugar levels produce more active oxygen, diabetic patients are bound to experience arteriosclerosis faster than normal people if they leave high blood sugar levels untreated for a long time.
The reason the American Diabetes Association attempted to strengthen the blood sugar level standards for diagnosing diabetes in 1997 was because it recognized that thorough blood sugar management plays an important role in preventing arteriosclerosis, a complication of diabetes.


- Advice for diabetics

How can we best manage our blood sugar levels to avoid diabetes, or for those already diagnosed, to do so? As you well know, for those with diabetes, proper blood sugar management is paramount.
To this end, I would like to make three suggestions.


The first is about eating.
Eating any food causes your blood sugar level to rise immediately.
According to experts, when blood sugar levels suddenly spike repeatedly, a person gradually develops resistance to insulin's response to blood sugar, leading to diabetes.
That's why it is said that the glycemic index (GI) of the food you eat is very important.
The reason why people with diabetes are advised to avoid foods like white rice and noodles and eat less processed grains (e.g. brown rice) as much as possible is because the former foods have a very high glycemic index, so if they are consumed chronically, diabetes can easily occur.
In contrast, the theory is that less processed grains take longer to digest in the stomach, so they raise blood sugar levels more slowly, which can help alleviate the problem of diabetes.
A very practical way to understand the glycemic index is to compare sweet potatoes to potatoes. Although sweet potatoes, which are sweeter, may seem to have a higher glycemic index than potatoes, potatoes are actually known to have a much higher glycemic index than sweet potatoes.
This is said to be because blood sugar levels rise slowly due to the large amount of fiber contained in sweet potatoes.
What you should never misunderstand here is that there is a reason why you should never eat sweet potatoes with complete confidence just because they have a low glycemic index.
There is an index that diabetics need to remember, called the Glucose Load Index (GLI). Simply put, this is a concept that describes the problems that arise when consuming too much carbohydrate.
This is a concept that warns that even if blood sugar levels rise slowly, excessive sugar intake ultimately leads to obesity, and if it becomes chronic, it can lead to metabolic diseases such as diabetes.


One thing I want to make sure readers understand is that sugar, which is often portrayed as a huge problem through the media, does not have a high glycemic index as you might think.
Surprisingly, the index is lower than that of white rice or potatoes.
Still, we cannot let our guard down when it comes to consumption.
That is, we want to make it known that we can unknowingly consume a huge amount of sugar if we let our guard down all day long, and that we still need to be careful about indiscriminate sugar consumption because chemical contamination during the sugar refining process is a problem.


Meanwhile, many people in the market say that diabetics can eat honey, and this is not entirely without basis.
What's the basis for this? Honey, scientifically speaking, is a representative disaccharide.
That is, it is a structure in which two monosaccharides are polymerized.
However, both monosaccharides are fructose, and the glycemic index of fructose is only 17.
This is a very low number considering that glucose has a value of 100.
Ultimately, the glycemic index of honey is (17+17)÷2=17.
So what about sugar, which looks similar? Sugar is also a representative disaccharide, a polymer of glucose and fructose.
Therefore, the glycemic index of sugar is (100+17)÷2=58.5, which is much lower than that of rice or noodles, which have a glycemic index of over 90.
Fructose is much sweeter than glucose.
Therefore, if you must eat something sweet, it is better to use honey rather than sugar, but since it always affects the glycemic load, it is emphasized once again that diabetic patients should be careful when eating sweet foods such as honey.


In summary, diabetic patients should first consider blood sugar-raising factors when eating food, but they must also pay attention to the glycemic load, which is an important index of sugar intake.
The second piece of advice I would like to give to people with diabetes or those concerned about developing diabetes is that it is impossible to control blood sugar levels with food alone.
This means that you absolutely must exercise.
Even if the blood sugar rises a bit, insulin resistance does not easily occur because the conditions for the increased blood sugar to be used immediately through exercise are created.
To avoid going into specific exercise methods and to keep things general, I would like to emphasize that you should do strength training as well as aerobic exercise.
The importance of aerobic exercise goes without saying, so I'll just briefly mention strength training here.
The purpose of strength training is not only to increase strength, but also to increase the proportion of muscle in the body composition.
As muscle mass increases, an individual's basal metabolic rate increases significantly.
Even if they weigh the same, people with a higher proportion of muscle than fat have an incomparably higher basal metabolic rate, so even if they overeat the same amount, they have less energy left over and their sugar metabolism is smooth, so they can be free from diabetes complications.
For reference, it should not be forgotten that the basal metabolic rate used by 1 kg of muscle is 30 kcal, while that of fat is 5 kcal.

The last piece of advice I would like to give is that you should regularly take sufficient amounts of vitamin C, a representative antioxidant.
This is because vitamin C is the first to address the problem of active oxygen, which can cause arteriosclerotic vascular disease, the ultimate complication of diabetes.
Even if you exercise after overeating, your blood sugar is still high and you are under attack from more active oxygen than usual, so you can protect your blood vessel endothelium by taking sufficient amounts of vitamin C.
Specifically, let's take 2g of vitamin C with each meal, for a total of 6g per day.
Vitamin C taken to prevent diabetic complications will not only prevent arteriosclerosis but also take care of other health issues.
Why hesitate to do such a blessed thing!
--- From the text

Dementia and Vitamin C

According to one health expert, dementia is the disease with the greatest social cost.
Due to the nature of dementia, patients exhibit unexpected and unexpected behaviors due to impairments in cognitive abilities such as learning, language, and memory, so not only is caregivers absolutely necessary, but it is also difficult for family members and caregivers to handle the situation because observation and protection cannot be delayed for even a moment for 24 hours.
It is very common for people with dementia to not be able to find their way home after going out.
I also vividly remember when I was young, my grandmother, who suffered from severe dementia, ran away from home and never returned. I had to call the police to find her, and I also vividly remember her smearing her excrement all over the walls of the house after she used the toilet, which made the whole house smell like a toilet.


Unfortunately, the number of dementia patients has been rapidly increasing since the 2000s.
This is probably because more and more people are living to be close to 100 years old, rather than because new factors causing dementia have emerged.
This is because dementia is a typical geriatric disease whose likelihood of onset increases with age.
However, it is difficult to deny that there is a real and noticeable increase, as dementia patients in their 50s are now being discovered more frequently than in the past.

Dementia is a complex disease that causes significant decline in cognitive abilities, such as memory, due to brain damage from any cause, making normal life difficult.
Depending on the brain lesion that causes this complex disease, dementia is broadly divided into three types.
It is divided into Alzheimer's dementia, vascular dementia, and Lewy body dementia. Alzheimer's dementia accounts for about half, and vascular dementia is known to account for slightly more than 10%.
Lewy body dementia is a type of dementia that is not familiar to the general public, and is also called atypical Parkinson's syndrome.
What makes it different from Parkinson's disease is that there is no dopamine deficiency and that while Parkinson's disease is caused by an abnormality in the central nervous system, Parkinson's syndrome is caused by an abnormality in the autonomic nervous system.
This syndrome is different from Parkinson's disease, which is a motor disorder that mainly affects the elderly, in that it can occur in people of all ages and has a worse prognosis.
However, within that group of symptoms, it is a disease in which the characteristic symptoms are memory loss, especially loss of spatial sense, which is a symptom of dementia.
As explained above, brain damage for whatever reason is said to be the cause of dementia, and there is no disagreement among experts that the most common cause of brain damage is oxidative damage.


Let's look at the possibility of oxidative damage to the brain.
The brain accounts for about 2% of total body weight.
However, the proportion of energy use is about 10 times that.
That is, the brain exclusively uses about 20% of the oxygen the human body uses and about 25% of the glucose it consumes.
As a result, the single organ that produces the largest amount of reactive oxygen species is the brain.
According to experts, if we are unable to properly remove the active oxygen that is explosively generated in the brain, humans will have difficulty living beyond 20 years on average.
But don't humans actually live to be nearly 100 years old? This suggests that something is counteracting the toxicity of the explosive generation of reactive oxygen species in the brain.


According to a paper published a few years ago, the closest candidate for that solution is vitamin C.
It was only after the development of technology to measure the concentration of vitamin C in nerve cells that the basis for this was made available.
That is, the result of measuring the concentration of vitamin C in nerve cells was about 200 times the concentration in the blood (the average concentration of vitamin C in the blood is 50uM, but in brain cells it is 10mM), and the concentration of vitamin C in cells that protect or help nerve cells in the brain is 2mM, which is exactly proportional to the amount of oxygen used.
To put it simply, in nerve cells that use a lot of oxygen, a lot of reactive oxygen species are generated, so a lot of vitamin C is present, and in nerve system protective cells that use about 1/5 of the oxygen of nerve cells, 2 mM, which is 1/5 of that, is present.
What is even more noteworthy is that the concentration of vitamin C in the brains of dementia patients is significantly lower than that in the brains of normal elderly people of similar age, and even the blood concentration is lower in dementia patients.
This fact alone sufficiently explains the importance of taking sufficient amounts of vitamin C on a regular basis to prevent dementia.


My mother, who passed away a few years ago, was 94 years old. She had worked in the farm all her life, so she had no chronic illnesses other than the fact that she had difficulty moving due to her back pain. She did not allow anyone to leave her, and passed away in her sleep like an angel at dawn.
While he was alive, he never said a single nonsensical word to his family that could lead to suspicion of dementia, and his memory was completely intact, so he could talk about everything from recent news he learned from watching TV to stories from the refugee days of decades ago. He lived a very normal life before he went to heaven.
Needless to say, he has been taking sufficient amounts of vitamin C without missing a single meal for nearly 30 years.


When it comes to dementia, we cannot leave out the story of my mother-in-law.
Almost 30 years ago, he suffered a cerebral infarction (according to the Seoul National University Hospital medical records, it was 'complete occlusion of the right middle cerebral artery') and was discharged after much suffering. However, he was unable to use one side of his body and was inconvenient. However, he miraculously recovered and is now healthy enough that there is no difference in sensation or motor ability between the left and right sides.
Although he is now in his mid-80s, he has no cognitive impairment that could suggest dementia, and his health has completely recovered to the point where he can live on his own.
Of course, it goes without saying that he has been taking 9g of vitamin C per day (3g per meal) without missing a single meal for nearly 30 years.
What I want to point out is the story of my mother-in-law's mother (my wife's maternal grandmother).
When I got married, he was in his early 70s, but his dementia was very severe and he passed away before he reached his mid-70s.
The mother-in-law is the eldest daughter of the mother.
Experts point out that it is difficult to ignore the importance of the heritability of dementia.
Readers should remember that one person has never taken vitamin C for a single day in his life, while the other has taken vitamin C without missing a single meal for nearly 30 years.

--- From the text