INFERTILITY

Vitamin C plays a role in all aspects of fertility, pregnancy and childbirth

“…failure to use this agent [vitamin c] in sufficient amounts in pregnancy borders on malpractice.”

his is a quote from the “benefits in pregnancy” section of Dr. Klenner’s landmark paper describing his clinical use of vitamin C. Among the observations he discusses concerning 300 consecutive obstetrical cases that received between four and fifteen grams of vitamin C per day includes:

• Leg cramps were less than three percent and always was associated with “getting out” of Vitamin C tablets.
• Labor was shorter and less painful.
• No postpartum hemorrhages.
• No patient required catheterization.
• No toxic manifestations were demonstrated in this series.
• There was no cardiac stress even though 22 patients of the series had rheumatic hearts.

And the babies:

Infants born under massive ascorbic acid therapy were all robust. Not a single case required resuscitation. We experienced no feeding problems. They are frequently referred to as the vitamin C kids, in fact all of the babies from this series were called “Vitamin C Babies” by the nursing personnel–they were distinctly different.

Female Fertility

The Vitamin C Connection reports about the work of Masao Igarashi (Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, School of Medicine, Gunma University, Maebishi, Japan). He treated forty-two women with differing ovarian problems. Clomiphene citrate, a popular fertility drug of the time, had failed to help these women who produced no fertile eggs (anovulation) or had no menstrual period (amenorrheic). Of these forty-two women, 40% began to ovulate and 21% later became pregnant. Dr. Igarashi observes that “the possible site of action of ascorbic acid seems to be at the ovarian level.”

Male Fertility

The paper Effect of Ascorbic Acid on Male Fertility by Earl B. Dawson, William A. Harris, William E. Rankin, Leonard A. Charpentier, and William J. McGanity was published in the Third Conference on Vitamin C, July, 1987.

For over a decade, obstetricians at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston had been prescribing vitamin C to men where fertility problems and testing pointed to high sperm agglutination (clumping of sperm that restricts movement [motility]). A study was set up to determine the effect of vitamin C on sperm qualities and that is the subject of the published paper. Twenty men who had the agglutination problem and ten controls where tested. These thirty men were randomly divided into three groups of ten, one month’s supply of a daily supplement of 1000mg of C, 200mg of C, or a placebo given to each member. The overall results, as displayed in the chart below showed a substantial improvement in all qualities of sperm for the supplemented groups.

A new Danish study reported at Johns Hopkins InteliHealth on February 26, 1999 showed that men with low fertility had twice the likelyhood of testicular cancer and this is not the first study to show this linkage. Since vitamin C deficiency is also linked to both cancer and infertility, how would the picture change if everyone got the vitamin C their body needs for optimum health?

Please click on the Count, Agglutination, Motility, and Viablility qualities in the chart above to see more detailed study results for that particular sperm quality.

The paper Diet and Oxidative Damage to DNA: The Importance of Ascorbate as an Antioxidant by Woodall and Ames published in Vitamin C in Health and Disease, concludes:

“Hence, it is likely that depletion of ascorbate in the seminal plasma (and probably in the testicular cells and prostrate) leads to decreased protection of sperm against oxidative stress. This will result in increased oxidation to lipids, producing toxic aldehydes, lower male fertility, and an increase in the risk of mutation of DNA that can manifest as birth defects.”