“C” can help to avoid a cold

Take a vitamin C supplement during cold season before you catch a cold.  The research says taking 500 milligrams (mg) daily may lower your risk of catching a cold by 66%.

Stop a cold in 3 hours?
Dr. Elliott Dick was a professor of preventive medicine at the U of Wisconsin and one of the country’s most respected cold researchers.  He came up with a solution that’s hard to believe.

Dr. Dick’s cold remedy

Take 2,000 milligrams of vitamin C an hour for 3 hours at the first sign of cold symptoms.  If the cold is not gone after three hours, take 1,000 milligrams an hour until the symptoms are gone.

Caution: High doses of vitamin C may have negative consequences for some people.  For example, daily doses of vitamin C larger than 1,200 mg can cause diarrhea in some of us.

Other research claims that vitamin C doesn’t work for colds

Since vitamin C was isolated in the 1930s it has been proposed for respiratory infections, and became particularly popular in the 1970s for the common cold when (Nobel Prize winner) Linus Pauling drew conclusions from earlier placebo-controlled trials of large dose vitamin C on the incidence of colds. New trials were undertaken.

Thirty trials involving 11,350 participants suggest that regular ingestion of vitamin C has no effect on common cold incidence in the ordinary population. It reduced the duration and severity of common cold symptoms slightly, although the magnitude of the effect was so small its clinical usefulness is doubtful.

Nevertheless, in six trials with participants exposed to short periods of extreme physical or cold stress or both (including marathon runners and skiers) vitamin C reduced the common cold risk by half.

Trials of high doses of vitamin C administered therapeutically (starting after the onset of symptoms), showed no consistent effect on either duration or severity of symptoms. However, there were only a few therapeutic trials and their quality was variable. One large trial reported equivocal benefit from an 8 g therapeutic dose at the onset of symptoms, and two trials using five-day supplementation reported benefit. More therapeutic trials are necessary to settle the question, especially in children who have not entered these trials.

Sound confusing?

We think so. Unfortunately one piece of research doesn’t always agree with other research and that leaves us wondering.

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