7 ms·

What the article says nothing about is the usefulness of taking Vitamin C in high doses - it only mentions shortly regular doses probably something like 100-20

What the article says nothing about is the usefulness of taking Vitamin C in high doses - it only mentions shortly regular doses probably something like 100-200mg a day. This is enough to prevent Skorbut an ensures basic need. But there are studies that high doses can help a lot with colds. EDIT: examples: http://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/9/4/339 http://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/9/4/339 https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-03/uoh-ldo033017.php https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-03/uoh-ldo03301... https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/high-doses-of-vitamin-c-shown-to-reduce-duration-of-colds-033117.html https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/high-doses-of-vitamin-c... After reading about it i tried this, and confirm that high doses help to cure colds much faster. In 2 of three cases i managed to get over a cold which otherwise lasts 7-10 days for me in just 3-4 days with much lower symptoms. The dose at which this begins to work is 3g (yes 3000mg!) per day - i take 6x1g the first day, then 3g/day a few days more. Pure Vitamin C powder with no other additives(many products nowadays are combinations, in spain where i am right now, the pure powder is hard to get, in Germany it’s in every drugstore). It works even better with herpes i sometimes get on the lips. Here, the success rate of making the illness last 2-3 days instead of 10 is 100% since i started do treat it that way a few years ago, with much less symptoms, just a little itching, no big wounds for many days like many suffer from (and i did) when getting a herpes push. I can clearly understand why this is not researched and communicated much - a pot of 100g Vitamin C powder, good for about 5 such treatments costs just 3€ ... not much money to be made. EDIT: This is my personal experience - for which I don't claim general applicability for everyone. But I find it very interesting that some people see the urgent need to downvote a post where someone reports personal experience, without saying it must be generally applicable.

rwmj 9y ago
This has been debunked extensively, eg: http://www.yalescientific.org/2015/03/mythbusters-does-vitamin-c-really-help/ http://www.yalescientific.org/2015/03/mythbusters-does-vitam... https://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/pauling.html https://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/pauling.h...
- hennsen 9y ago
  Oh really - It has been proven that it does not work for me personally exactly as i wrote? I didn’t see the researcher team coming through my door... I didn’t say it works for everyone, but only report how it turns out for me. Interesting that some find a personal report enough reason to downvote... How do we know the research you point at is not sponsored by those with an interest in selling more expensive stuff?
  - skosch 9y ago
    You are getting downvoted because pseudomedicine, including the idea that Vitamin C cures diseases, causes real harm. Low-information patients reject proven therapies in favour of quackery and make their ailments worse, ultimately leading to higher costs for all of society. "It may not work for everyone but it works for me" is a fallacy – if you run a 50/50 blind study on yourself for the next 30 colds you catch, controlling for factors like season, air quality, stress levels, sleep, and nutrition, and you still find that Vitamin C consistently cuts your colds in half, then we'll believe you. Otherwise, stop pushing misinformation.
    - hennsen 9y ago
      Strong argumentation... with just a few logical errors... Unless you can prove what I wrote didn’t happen to me, i can as well insult you of pushing misinformation about what happened to me and what not. I talk about personal experience and clearly mark it as such. And then, i didnt know this is a forum of „low-information patients“ - but i start to believe it... Furthermore it has been said in the article that there is no verified cure for colds. Insofar even if someone would refuse to take other non-verified, more expensive medications because of my report, it wouldn’t do harm. It’s just changing one unverified cure against another. do i talk about cancer? No. It’s about colds. Believing only in studies will not help you at all - many studies have been proven to be false for many different reasons and later detected errors. Just happened for cancer studies of multiple decades! So with your randomly selected criteria there‘s still many things that can be wrong, and the same goes for all studies that prove Vitamin C helps and those that prove it doesn’t. You forgot age, for example... 30 colds is at least 3, at my current rate rather 10-15 years... a lot changes in a body. I can be weaker due age, or fitter due more sports etc... So i believe only in what works for me, and i report about it personally with clear marking that it’s just that, personal experience. And i didn‘t recommend anything to anyone else. Also, i said that success rate is just 2/3. THAT would have been a good point to attack my idea that Vitamin C helps - because it is actually a low rate. While we discuss this, a lot of money is spend for other cures of cold that equally has no proof of working. But this is accepted... you might be better off trying to stop big pharma for advertising anything as a cure for cold instead of insulting me for telling personal experiences.
amelius 9y ago
Even better is vitamin C + zinc.
- hennsen 9y ago
  Might be for some / in some situations. My „experiments“ worked without zinc so far. But maybe i should try it next time and see if it helps to get a success rate closer to 100 instead of just ~70% The thing is as with Vitamin C, most supermarket products just have low doses. So to get an effect i recommend getting pure and high dosed preparates of both, each by itself.
  - amelius 9y ago
    I don't think you should use a very large dose of zinc. There's actually research on this, you could look it up. E.g., [1,2]. Some OTC products already contain vitC and zinc in proper amounts, e.g. Sambucol (not affiliated). [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinc_and_the_common_cold https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinc_and_the_common_cold [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23775705 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23775705
    - hennsen 9y ago
      Might be better to talk about concrete numbers instead of "low/high/very large" doses :) I would not take zinc in the same numbers as Vitamin C - but exactly therefor eI said I would take them apart, because, at least in the German and Spanish Market, you have combination preparates with 80mg Vitramin C and 5mg of Zinc - to achieve the effects I observed in myself you'd need 3x10 of these for the Vitamin C amount, whioch would be a lot of zinc which I would not recommend and have no experience with and no knowledge about the risks. The articles seem to not agree in doses and helpfulness - one says it must be >= 75mg to actually do something, another that even 90+ mg doesn't do anything. And I believe to remember that already from 25mg/day you can get strange effects in the belly as side effects...
dubhrosa 9y ago
For herpes simplex on the lips try a large dose of L-Lysine (6mg or more on day 1, followed by 2mg a day for a week), in all cases over the past 5 years for me this completely prevents the blisters and sore developing.
- astura 9y ago
  Yeah, and I've found L-Lysine does jack shit for my cold sores.

rwmj 9y ago

This has been debunked extensively, eg: http://www.yalescientific.org/2015/03/mythbusters-does-vitamin-c-really-help/ http://www.yalescientific.org/2015/03/mythbusters-does-vitam... https://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/pauling.html https://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/pauling.h...

hennsen 9y ago
Oh really - It has been proven that it does not work for me personally exactly as i wrote? I didn’t see the researcher team coming through my door... I didn’t say it works for everyone, but only report how it turns out for me. Interesting that some find a personal report enough reason to downvote... How do we know the research you point at is not sponsored by those with an interest in selling more expensive stuff?
- skosch 9y ago
  You are getting downvoted because pseudomedicine, including the idea that Vitamin C cures diseases, causes real harm. Low-information patients reject proven therapies in favour of quackery and make their ailments worse, ultimately leading to higher costs for all of society. "It may not work for everyone but it works for me" is a fallacy – if you run a 50/50 blind study on yourself for the next 30 colds you catch, controlling for factors like season, air quality, stress levels, sleep, and nutrition, and you still find that Vitamin C consistently cuts your colds in half, then we'll believe you. Otherwise, stop pushing misinformation.
  - hennsen 9y ago
    Strong argumentation... with just a few logical errors... Unless you can prove what I wrote didn’t happen to me, i can as well insult you of pushing misinformation about what happened to me and what not. I talk about personal experience and clearly mark it as such. And then, i didnt know this is a forum of „low-information patients“ - but i start to believe it... Furthermore it has been said in the article that there is no verified cure for colds. Insofar even if someone would refuse to take other non-verified, more expensive medications because of my report, it wouldn’t do harm. It’s just changing one unverified cure against another. do i talk about cancer? No. It’s about colds. Believing only in studies will not help you at all - many studies have been proven to be false for many different reasons and later detected errors. Just happened for cancer studies of multiple decades! So with your randomly selected criteria there‘s still many things that can be wrong, and the same goes for all studies that prove Vitamin C helps and those that prove it doesn’t. You forgot age, for example... 30 colds is at least 3, at my current rate rather 10-15 years... a lot changes in a body. I can be weaker due age, or fitter due more sports etc... So i believe only in what works for me, and i report about it personally with clear marking that it’s just that, personal experience. And i didn‘t recommend anything to anyone else. Also, i said that success rate is just 2/3. THAT would have been a good point to attack my idea that Vitamin C helps - because it is actually a low rate. While we discuss this, a lot of money is spend for other cures of cold that equally has no proof of working. But this is accepted... you might be better off trying to stop big pharma for advertising anything as a cure for cold instead of insulting me for telling personal experiences.

amelius 9y ago

Even better is vitamin C + zinc.

hennsen 9y ago
Might be for some / in some situations. My „experiments“ worked without zinc so far. But maybe i should try it next time and see if it helps to get a success rate closer to 100 instead of just ~70% The thing is as with Vitamin C, most supermarket products just have low doses. So to get an effect i recommend getting pure and high dosed preparates of both, each by itself.
- amelius 9y ago
  I don't think you should use a very large dose of zinc. There's actually research on this, you could look it up. E.g., [1,2]. Some OTC products already contain vitC and zinc in proper amounts, e.g. Sambucol (not affiliated). [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinc_and_the_common_cold https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinc_and_the_common_cold [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23775705 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23775705
  - hennsen 9y ago
    Might be better to talk about concrete numbers instead of "low/high/very large" doses :) I would not take zinc in the same numbers as Vitamin C - but exactly therefor eI said I would take them apart, because, at least in the German and Spanish Market, you have combination preparates with 80mg Vitramin C and 5mg of Zinc - to achieve the effects I observed in myself you'd need 3x10 of these for the Vitamin C amount, whioch would be a lot of zinc which I would not recommend and have no experience with and no knowledge about the risks. The articles seem to not agree in doses and helpfulness - one says it must be >= 75mg to actually do something, another that even 90+ mg doesn't do anything. And I believe to remember that already from 25mg/day you can get strange effects in the belly as side effects...

dubhrosa 9y ago

For herpes simplex on the lips try a large dose of L-Lysine (6mg or more on day 1, followed by 2mg a day for a week), in all cases over the past 5 years for me this completely prevents the blisters and sore developing.

astura 9y ago
Yeah, and I've found L-Lysine does jack shit for my cold sores.