I recently came across an article stating that people can take as much as 10,000 mg or even more of sodium ascorbate to get rid of cold or flu symptoms. So I just looked into this issue to check what the fact is and got some interesting information for our readers.
When looking into this issue, I found a very interesting great scientist who actively promoted Vitamin C as an effective treatment for cold, Linus Pauling. Dr. Pauling is famous for his contribution to development quantum chemistry and molecular biology, and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954. He started to promote vitamin C since around 1966 and his idea was widely accepted by common people immediately. Dr. Pauling himself sticked to taking 3 grams of Vitamin C every day to prevent colds since then. He also published various papers demonstrating that Vitamin C is effective in preventing cold and cancer therapy. However, his researches are widely questioned by other researchers since 1980s.
There have been a lot of studies on efficiency of Vitamin C on treatment of cold or flu over the years. There is no evidence that Vitamin C could significantly shorten symptom of cold or flu. A research published in 2000 indicated that Vitamin C pose 8%-9% reduction in symptom days and long term daily supplementation with vitamin C in large doses daily does not appear to prevent colds.
However, there has been encouraging research that it may help your immune response so that you don’t suffer the secondary consequences of a cold, such as pneumonia. Another research indicates that vitamin C in combination with reduces the incidence and improves the outcome of pneumonia, malaria, and diarrhea infections, especially in children in developing countries. This research probably indicates that lack of Vitamin may lead to serious problem.
So, generally speaking Vitamin C does help a little bit if you catch cold, but do not expect too much as it only ease the symptom a little bit. So please consult a physician if you caught cold. Don’t just take some vitamin C or orange juice and wait for good results to happen.
