Vitamin C Does Work for Colds but Public Not Informed

A new review of vitamin C evidence concludes that doses of vitamin C above 1 gram decreases cold severity and doses of at least 6, ideally 8 grams during a cold reduce duration considerably, halving recovery time if you take 8 grams.

Higher doses, such as1 gram an hour, was first recommended by Dr Linus Pauling – to achieve the same blood level of vitamin C of animals who make during the viral infection, since we have lost that ability.

Once again, I’ve cruised through winter without a cold, taking 2 grams a day. My vitamin C also contains zinc and black elderberry, both of which have clear evidence of effect.  I load up, on first sign of infection, with 4 grams of vitamin C then take 2 grams every two hours.

Professor of Public health, Dr Harri Hemila from the University if Helsinki, who authored this review has also reanalysed the seminal Sheffield Study, back in the 1940’s.

In the study 10 participants were “deprived” and not given vitamin C supplements, 7 participants were administered 10 mg/day vitamin C as a supplement, and 3 participants were administered 70 mg/day.

Colds lasted on average 6 days during vitamin C deprivation, compared with 3 days on the 10-70 mg/day dosage. Thus, deprivation nearly doubled the duration of colds. Jowett concluded that “such evidence as there is, however, definitely confirms the hypothesis that the absence of vitamin C tended to cause colds to last longer”.

The reanalysed results show that vitamin C deprivation increased the duration of colds on average by 77% and extended the duration of 1 day colds by 2.2 days.

“The finding that vitamin C deprivation extended the duration of colds was not reported in the summaries of the trial published in the Lancet (1948) and in the Proceedings of the Nutrition Society (1953). In addition, this finding is also not mentioned in the current UK recommendations for vitamin C.

As a consequence, readers have not been fully informed about the common cold results of the Sheffield trial for several decades.” Says Professor Hemila .The Lancet was the UK’s leading medical journal at that time.

References

Link: https://www.mp.pl/paim/issue/article/16926/

Vitamin C review: https://zenodo.org/records/14717361

Reanalysis of Sheffield study