Next Time You Have a Sniffly Nose, Think Twice Before Reaching for that Vitamin C

Is vitamin C really the cure for your common cold? According to an article posted in Web MD: “Vitamin C was first touted for the common cold in the 1970s;” and yet despite this “…experts have found little to no benefit for vitamin C preventing or treating the common cold." Please don't interpret these findings as “vitamin C = bad.” Perhaps a more logical conclusion would be: vitamin C, in pill form, is simply ineffective. Vitamin C performs numerous functions in the body and it’s one of the only vitamins which is also an antioxidant. So how can you get these benefits? I just told you that the vitamin C pill is generally ineffective, but vitamin C itself is good. Luckily, the answer is quite simple: vitamin C is effective if eaten through your food; and no, I'm not talking about your breakfast cereal or any other processed food or beverage.

In a peer reviewed journal, The Lancet, it was published that vitamin C “…significantly reduces the severity and total intensity of colds in girls, but does not benefit cold symptoms in boys at a daily dose of 500 mg.” The article abstract gave no indication of sample size. You’ll also notice that this study was published in 1973, when research in vitamin C for the common cold was just beginning to emerge as a mainstream idea. More recently, in 2001, another peer reviewed journal, Pediatrics for Parents, published an Australian study which “concluded that megadoses of vitamin C have no effect on the severity or duration of the symptoms of the common cold.” This study was conducted on 400 college students. Confusing, right? This is why my ongoing mantra is: research on isolated and fractionated vitamins is mixed at best.

So what can we know for sure? Wouldn’t you like to take the guesswork out of the confusing world of supplementation? With any supplement, you should subject it to the following 2 part test which I first heard when listening to Dr. Sears, a prominent Pediatrician:

1. Does it get into the bloodstream?

2. Once it gets into the bloodstream, does it do good things for the body?

If it passes this two part test, then take it. Unfortunately, what we have found is that “the average adult who suffers with a cold for 12 days a year would still suffer for 11 days a year if that person took a high dose of vitamin C every day during that year” (WebMD). Those results don’t sound very significant to me. Furthermore, by the time your symptoms were to become visible, it would be too late for the Vitamin C pill to have any affect whatsoever.

Fortunately, there is a solution, and it’s to get the vast majority of your nutrients, including vitamin C, through whole raw food. In this way, not only will you be getting vitamin C, but you will also get the benefit of tens of thousands of phytonutrients, all of which are important to the proper functioning of the human physiology.

Bibliography:

Vitamin C for the Common Cold. Web MD. Retrieved from http://www.m.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/cold-guide/vitamin-c-for-common-cold?page=2.

Vitamin C and the common cold. (2001). Pediatrics for Parents, 19(10), 3. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/200508760?accountid=12085

C.W.M Wilson, H.S Loh, COMMON COLD AND VITAMIN C, The Lancet, Volume 301, Issue 7804, 24 March 1973, Pages 638-641, ISSN 0140-6736, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(73)92202-2. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673673922022