Vitamin C fails to prevent colds

[The Straight Story]

Vitamin C fails to prevent colds


Tuesday, June 28, 2005

LONDON, Jun 28, 2005 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- Vitamin C does nothing to prevent the common cold but may shorten its duration, Australian and Finnish researchers say in their analysis of 55 studies.

The 1970s book, "Vitamin C and the Common Cold," by Nobel Prize-winning chemist Linus Pauling sparked interest in the supplement that has grown to a more than $600 million annual business in Britain, the Times of London reported.

However, researchers Robert Douglas of Australian National University and Harri Hemila of the University of Helsinki said people who took up to 2 grams of Vitamin C daily caught colds at the same rate as people who took a placebo.

The result "throws doubt on the utility of this wide practice," the authors said in the journal Public Library of Science Medicine.

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_25487.html

[TlalocW]

1. Linus Pauling, while a genius

Wasn't really working in his area when he wrote that. I've found that vitamin C can temporarily alleviate cold symptoms, but that's it.

TlalocW

[SomewhereOutThere424]

2. If I remember correctly

Vitamin C wasn't really a cure (just said that way by people not wanting colds), but a vitamin which helped the immune system to become stronger. Same with zinc, too. However, you can't just account for a temporal boost in the immune system to help with the cold, and now it's much harder due to the lifestyles of people.

While it was a small boost to begin with, people are feeding themselves with such artificial things and lacking a proper exercise lifestyle to help boost their immune system, it's like raising .01 by .05, instead of raising 15.0 to 20.0.

I think it's pretty amazing they're only now saying to people 'you shouldn't rely solely on orange juice, you need to build your immune system up and become healthy to fight colds'.

[firefox]

3. Well

First, in the age of studies with predetermined outcomes, it is hard to know who to believe. "Up to 2 grams a day" makes you wonder about what the lesser dosages were.

There are people that swear by Vitamin C and what the real enthusiast talk about is megadosing. First you find your bowel intolerance. You just keep taking Vitamin C until your body calls for expulsion through a bowel movement. If that comes at 20 grams a day for you, then you back down a few grams to what your body can tolerate.

So 2 grams a day of Vitamin C is a joke if you want to cast doubts on the true believers of Vitamin C. Dr. Hulda Clark, who might be the widest read physician on curing and preventing diseases writes that people should put it in a shaker and put it on there food in an effort to keep consumption up. There is such a thing as pharmaceutical grade vitamin C that some at CureZone.com take.

There needs to be a megadose study on Vitamin C.

Owen is the one to read in this CureZone.com forum on Vitamin C- http://curezone.com/forums/f.asp?f=400&t=39347