Hi..just speaking with a friend..who tells me that someone highly allergic to bees got stung in the mouth while tramping..and as they were being rushed to hospital they ate an orange....and the doctor said that the orange saved them. Anyone heard that before? Could there be a scientific rationale?

The Vitamin C in the orange is probably what did the trick. Twenty or so years ago we read in the Beekeeper or other publication of the beneficial effect of Vit C on beestings,for an elderly couple. They took 2000 mg (2x Redoxin tabs) after a bee sting and found that that the swelling was not as bad and it reduced quicker than without the tabs.

"As for us, we have found it to be very effective for our family. My wife was highly reactive (to bee stings!) and carried antihistamines when we were working bees. We tried vit.C - we used "Citravite" 500 mg and found that if shee and our four children took 1000 mg each before going out to work bees and then following with another dose of 1000 to 2000 mg if they got a sting, the treatment worked very well. Better than a dose only after a sting."

"My wife has found that over a period of time she no longer reacts to a sting and we haven't used any vit.C now for probably 15 or so years. A sting on the throat brings on no more reaction for her now than "OW--YOU BRUTE!!!" So it seems to me that if you are putting yourself in a situation where you could be vulnerable to a sting or two-- bush walk (bees, wasps etc) where-ever, it is better to have any sort of vit C in your system (Raro drink etc. -or your orange) in advance. To my knowledge you can't overdose on vit.C -any surplus gets flushed out. Second point: Be aware that there are NO gaurantees that this will work for you so err on the side of caution. Lastly, if you can find a good wine that's fortified with plenty of vit.C then I'd throw all caution to the wind and go -for-it!!!"

Three decades ago a brilliant intellectual meteor flashed into sight: the leading American biochemist Linus Pauling's 1968 article 'Orthomolecular Psychiatry' in Science put forth a convincing argument that extra vitamins (more than you can get in food) would be expected to improve health, especially mental health.

One reaction in New Zealand was that a leading scientist (Prof R E F Matthews, later FRS) promptly urged the Medical Research Council to solicit research proposals based on this impressive new theory. They didn't, and on the whole megavitamin therapy has yet to gain respectability amongst reactionary medicos.

But actually VitC is by now one of the best-tested medicines. The first famous application of Pauling's megavitamin theory was in prevention of colds and influenza (see Pauling's book 'Vitamin C and the Common Cold'). Dozens of careful studies on thousands of people have proven that about a gram daily of vitC fends off colds & flu markedly; and when one does succumb, the symptoms are milder & briefer.

Vitamin E is not so extremely well tested, but also looks safer than many artificial drugs. Both are reasonably suspected to inhibit cancer - to prevent to some extent, and to allay some effects when a tumour does get out of control.

Pauling died (at 94) saying the only two vitamin supplements which can be generally recommended are vitC (at dosages in the range 1 - 10 gram/day) and vitE (0.1 - 0.3 g/d i.e. 100 - 300 mg/d), which I have been taking for many years. Such dosages cannot be achieved from even the most vitamin-rich foods. The preferable form of vitC is not ascorbic acid but calcium ascorbate (mail-order around $60/kg). The proportion of calcium in this salt is just under 10%; therefore 10 g/d calcium ascorbate gives a calcium dosage of less than 1 g/d. If a further gram of calcium daily comes from food, the total is not (so far as I am aware) suspected of supplying excessive calcium, and is indeed what would seem prudent in minimising osteoporosis.

I have not heard of any side-effects from 10 g/d calcium ascorbate, whereas those who try ascorbic acid at a gram per day usually get mild diarrhoea. The few allegations of side-effects (one by a disgruntled ex-employee of Pauling's institute), have not proved credible.

I mix calcium ascorbate powder (one rounded tsp = 4g) in a bowl with a week's stewed fruit (after cooling) so as to give 1 - 2 g of the added vitamin in each day's worth of the fruit. I don't notice any flavour change, and the upset gut usually provoked by any more than 1 g/d ascorbic acid does not occur. Fruit seems to me the accompanying food from which megadoses of ascorbate will be best absorbed. When in the grip of a cold or flu I also take several batches a day of 1 - 2 g simply stirred in orange juice.

Prevention is surely the watchword, for osteoporosis even more than most illnesses. It is two decades since I taught what little nutrition was in the Auckland medical course, but I have kept in touch with some aspects of the science and in particular with the eminently reasonable leader of the Nutrition Foundation Dr John Birkbeck (ret. aspro of nutrition, Otago). He quietly desisted some years ago from the mantra (carried on by his successor my namesake - no relation - and by the Consumers Inst.) "no vitamin or mineral supplements are helpful for your well-fed Kiwi".

Prevention is most surely the watchword for delayed toxicity, which has concerned me generally more than prompt poisoning. The industrial world is failing to cope with many buildups of toxic chemicals and harmful radiations; we know some of these cause cancer, and cancer is now killing around one in three in the overdeveloped world. For all the four categories of delayed harm - cancer, mutations, malformations in utero, and mental damage - there is no evidence of thresholds (safe doses). I suspect that mental damage is the first to occur as toxic cocktails accumulate in our bodies.

Some agents cause delayed illness by producing in our tissues highly reactive transient substances called free radicals. Vitamin C scavenges these nasties. It also does many other kinds of good. A gram a day may not keep the doctor utterly away, but will help. Perhaps the only proven drawback is that those habituated to high dosages of vitC can fail to heal operation wounds when suddenly on hospital food (ca. 80 mg/d). The other vitamin which can be generally recommended is VitE at 0.1 - 0.3 g/d. This scavenges free radicals in the fatty realms of the body as vitC does in the aqueous parts, and is likely to be especially helpful when synthesising new membranes (e.g. in recovery from stroke).

These are not my original ideas but those of the late great Pauling. They are all secondary to the good old wisdom of eating a balanced diet, not eating too much, and exercising. Megadoses of other vitamins may do harm in some minority of persons and can therefore not be blindly recommended. A range of impressive benefits can indeed be had for some from megadoses of, for instance, nicotinamide (vitamin PP), but it cannot be recommended without expert appraisal.