the rdi for vitamin c for me would be 90 mg. again - i don't know why the health authorities would suggest differing rdis for men and women for vitamin c, except basing it on sexist (and very bad.) assumptions about body weight and height. but, i want to pick the higher number to err on the side of caution. (menstruating) women have higher iron requirements, and that at least makes sense, and i've chosen the higher numbers, as well. and, then i've lowballed everything...

so, why take 100 mg per meal, then?

because vitamin c is cleared by your body within hours - it's the reason these megadoses don't work. pauling didn't understand that because the science wasn't there yet. his argument was not bad, but he assumed that we'd store vitamin c for a while if we took huge amounts of it and we just don't - we process it as we come into contact with it and eliminate it as soon as we're done with it.

so, all that taking a 2000 mg pill of vitamin c is going to actually do is put unnecessary strain on your kidneys. unfortunately.

if we could hack ourselves to actually store and release - or potentially even synthesize - vitamin c, the kinds of things that people like pauling talked about could reassert themselves. we all know that we need vitamin c because we can't produce it, but we might not realize that most animals can make their own c and don't need to consume much at all. your dog can make it's own vitamin c, but your cat can't make it's own taurine. we're similar, but these are differences - and they're genetic.

we could flip the switch:

https://academic.oup.com/emph/article/2019/1/221/5556105

and, then these megadoses would transport c to the liver, where it would be released.

as it is, we just get rid of it very fast - so replenishment is necessary at regular intervals. so, if you're going to do this, you should take 100 mg 2-3 times daily, rather than a large dose all at once.