Vitamin C: Does it treat the common cold?

Vitamin C: Does it treat the common cold?

For many years people believe that Vitamin C helps to cure a common cold. Some also believe that it helps to prevent the common cold too. Does it have any effect on the common cold? Or it is just a myth?

Vitamin C:

Vitamin C (Ascorbic acid) is an important vitamin and potent antioxidant, a water-soluble vitamin, and our body does not synthesise and store it. So we have to take vitamin C regularly to maintain our body function.

Vitamin C is found naturally in vegetables and fruits, especially oranges, apples, lemon, guava, mango etc. All types of fruit and vegetables contain Vitamin C in different amounts.

It is destroyed by heat. So, well-cooked vegetables do not contain vitamin C.

Today's topics of Dr. Hasan's Blog- Vitamin C: Does it treat the common cold?

Vitamin C helps to synthesise collagen in our body, which is a very important compound used to grow and repair our body structure, such as skin, tendons, ligaments, and blood vessels. It also heals wounds and form scar tissue, and repairs and maintains cartilage, bones, and teeth.

Vitamin C is also an antioxidant. Antioxidants are chemical substances that block some of the damages to our bodies caused by free radicals.

Vitamin C is safe to take in any amount by eating vitamin C containing foods such as fruits and vegetables. Taking vitamin C supplements in the recommended amounts (male 90 mg, female 75 mg) is also safe. Greater than 2000 milligrams per day for adults may cause kidney stones, nausea, and diarrhoea.

 

Common cold:

The common cold (also known as nasopharyngitis, rhinopharyngitis, acute coryza, head cold, or simply a cold) is an infectious disease of the upper respiratory tract, which primarily affects the nose, can be caused by more than 200 viruses.

Symptoms are fever, runny nose, sneezing, coughing and sore throat.

It is a viral infection. So there is no role of antibiotics to cure the disease. For many years people believe that Vitamin C can cure it.

 Today's topics of Dr. Hasan's Blog- Vitamin C: Does it treat the common cold?

Vitamin C: Does it treat the common cold?

Vitamin C has been researched for many decades as a possible treatment for common colds or as a way to prevent common colds. But findings were inconsistent and unsatisfactory. There were found no benefit or minimal benefit of vitamin C to prevent or to treat the common cold.

A brand new result of 60 years of clinical research, by Robert M. Douglas, MD, emeritus professor at Australian National University, Canberra, and colleagues, was published on July 17, 2007.

And their findings were:

• “When taken after a cold starts, vitamin C supplements do not make a cold shorter or less severe.
• When taken as a daily preventive medicine, vitamin C slightly shortens cold duration by 8% in adults and by 13.6% in children.
• When given as a preventive medicine to highly fit people in conditions of extreme cold -- data based mostly on marathon runners -- vitamin C cuts the risk of getting a cold in half.”  (http://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/news/20070717/vitamin-c-cant-cure-common-cold )

So it has a little preventive effect on common cold in heavy workers like athletes, and in general, people, who if have been taking vitamin-C for a long period.

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Dr. Hasan Ebna Amin