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Originally Posted by VideCorSpoon  I thought vitamin C was water soluble??? The worst you could get from 2000 mg of vitamin c is expensive pee. |
It is indeed water soluble, you're correct, but that property doesn't make something non-toxic. Water solubility affects many things, including ability to enter cells through diffusion (vs active transport mechanisms), absorption from the gut, distribution through the body, half life, etc. But there are many other factors that determine toxicity, of course.
Vitamin C has 2 negative charges (if I recall correctly), which makes it a very good chelating agent for divalent cations (like Mg2+ and Ca2+). Chronically high doses can leach calcium out of teeth and bones, leading to demineralization of teeth, osteopenia / osteoporosis, and precipitation of the calcium/vitamin C salts in the kidneys causing nephrolithiasis (stones). Excessive doses can also interfere with coagulation factors and lead to bleeding (I'm not sure of the mechanism here).