Vitamin C In The Treatment Of Pneumonia
Two studies have reported on the therapeutic effect of vitamin C for pneumonia patients .
Hunt carried out a randomized, double-blind placebo controlled trial with elderly people in the UK , who were hospitalized because of acute bronchitis or pneumonia . The mean plasma vitamin C level at baseline was 23 µmol/L and one third of the patients had a vitamin C level of just 11 µmol/L. There was a significant difference in the effect of 0.2 g/day of vitamin C between patients who were more ill and those who were less ill when admitted to the hospital. Vitamin C reduced the respiratory symptom score in the more ill patients but not in their less ill counterparts. There were also six deaths during the study, all among the more ill participants: five in the placebo group, but only one in the vitamin C group.
Although both of these therapeutic studies give support to the old case reports stating that vitamin C is beneficial for pneumonia patients, the findings cannot be directly generalized to typical pneumonia patients of Western countries.
Implications Of The Common Cold Studies
Given the great variations in the vitamin C dosage levels in the vitamin C and control groups, and the apparent problem of non-compliance in some studies, it is obvious that the comparison of different vitamin C trials can be complicated. The generalization of the findings of any particular trial is limited irrespective of its methodological quality and statistical power. However, the large variations in vitamin C levels in the vitamin C and control groups, and the non-compliance in some studies, both predispose against a false positive differences between the study groups. In contrast, they make it more difficult to detect true differences, and therefore the findings on common cold duration and severity shown in Table 4 may be biased downwards and might camouflage even stronger true effects.
How Are Candida Infections Diagnosed
In order to diagnose candidiasis, your doctor will first take your medical history and ask you about your symptoms. They may also ask if you have any conditions or medications that could lead to a weakened immune system, or if youve taken a course of antibiotics recently.
Many common cases of candidiasis can often be diagnosed through a physical examination.
If your doctor is uncertain if your symptoms are due to a Candida infection, they may take a sample from the affected area. This sample can then be used to culture the organism and to identify what species it is. For example, if candidemia is suspected, your doctor will collect a blood sample for testing.
Identifying the species of Candida thats causing your infection is also helpful because your doctor will be able to prescribe an antifungal medication that will be effective in treating that particular species.
If Candida albicans enter your bloodstream, they can cause serious infections not only in your blood but in other organs as well.
Read Also: Ear Drops For Inner Ear Infection
Recommended Reading: Burning While Peeing Yeast Infection
Vitamin C And The Common Cold
Interest in the effects of vitamin C on the common cold originated soon after purified vitamin C became available. The first controlled trials on vitamin C were carried out as early as the 1940s. For example, in the 1950s, a British study examined the clinical effects of vitamin C deprivation, and reported that the geometric mean duration of colds was 6.4 days in vitamin C-deprived subjects and 3.3 days in non-deprived subjects, and the authors concluded that the absence of vitamin C tended to cause colds to last longer .
Figure 1 shows the number of participants in placebo-controlled studies in which 1 g/day of vitamin C was administered. It also illustrates the main time points of the history of vitamin C and the common cold.
The numbers of participants in the placebo-controlled trials for which 1 g/day of vitamin C was administered. The numbers of participants in studies published over two consecutive years are combined and plotted for the first of the two years. This figure is based on data collected by Hemilä and Chalker . See Supplementary file 1 of this review for the list of the studies. RCT, randomized controlled trial.
Vitamin C And Complications Of The Common Cold
Given the strong evidence that regularly administered vitamin C shortens and alleviates common cold symptoms, it seems plausible that vitamin C might also alleviate complications of the common cold. One frequent complication is the exacerbation of asthma .
A systematic review identified three studies that provided information on the potential pulmonary effects of vitamin C in sufferers of common coldinduced asthma . A trial conducted in Nigeria studied asthmatic patients whose asthma exacerbations resulted from respiratory infections. A vitamin C dose of 1 g/day decreased the occurrence of severe and moderate asthma attacks by 89% . Another study on patients who had infection-related asthma reported that 5 g/day vitamin C decreased the prevalence of bronchial hypersensitivity to histamine by 52 percentage points . A third study found that the administration of a single dose of 1 g vitamin C to non-asthmatic common cold patients decreased bronchial sensitivity in a histamine challenge test .
It has also been proposed that vitamin C might prevent sinusitis and otitis media , but to our knowledge there are no data from controlled studies.
A further complication of viral respiratory infections is pneumonia this is discussed in the section on pneumonia.
Also Check: Antibiotics For Spider Bite Infection
Vitamin C Helps Prevent And Fight Infections
Vitamin C not only speeds recovery from infections, but more important, may also help to prevent the onset of infections. Study after study has shown that vitamin C can dramatically reduce infection time as well as boost ones resistance to infections. For example, studies of vitamin C supplementation in military personnel and other subjects living in close quarters have shown that pneumonia occurred a remarkable 80-100% less often in subjects taking vitamin C than in those who did not supplement with the vitamin.9
Similar protection against the onset of infection has been observed in children in developing countries, who are highly vulnerable to developing life-threatening infections. In this at-risk population, daily supplementation with up to 1000 mg of vitamin C, along with the mineral zinc, greatly reduced the likelihood of developing potentially deadly pneumonia, malaria, and infection-related diarrhea.8 In addition, supplementation with vitamin C improved outcomes even when infections had already occurred. The study authors suggested that vitamin C helps strengthen childrens resistance to infectious organisms. Based on these findings, it is vital that young children receive appropriate supplementation with vitamin C.
Vitamin C Respiratory Infections And The Immune System
Almost a century ago, several authors suggested that vitamin C might affect respiratory infections. However, not much attention was paid to this topic until 1970, when Nobel laureate Linus Pauling wrote the bestseller Vitamin C and the Common Cold. His claim that gram-dose vitamin C supplementation would prevent and alleviate colds was not based on any studies of his own but on previously published trials. One result of his activity was that a series of placebo-controlled trials was carried out to determine whether large doses of vitamin C would affect colds 1, 2, 3. The new trials found that 1 g day1 vitamin C supplementation had no consistent effect on common cold incidence . Consequently, these trials did not support the suggestion that regular vitamin C ingestion would increase the resistance of the general Western population to colds. However, some evidence indicated that vitamin C could have moderate preventive effects in restricted groups, such as subjects with particularly low dietary intake or those suffering from acute physical stress 1, 3.
Recommended Reading: How To Kill A Tooth Infection At Home
Biology Relevant To The Effects Of Vitamin C On Infections
Evidence-based medicine emphasizes that in the evaluation of treatments researchers should focus primarily on clinically relevant outcomes, and little weight should be put on biological explanations. Therefore, this review focuses on infections and not on the immune system. Immune system effects are surrogates for clinical effects and there are numerous cases when surrogates had poor correlations with clinically relevant outcomes . Nevertheless, biology provides a useful background when we consider the plausibility of vitamin C to influence infections.
Q: How Can I Prevent Bacterial Vaginosis From Returning
A: Because we dont know exactly what causes BV, it can be difficult to say exactly what will prevent it. However, there are a number of measures that may help:
- Condom use: People who use condoms have a lower risk of BV. Although no one has studied whether starting to use condoms decreases recurrence, using condoms may help.
- Hormonal birth control: People who use hormonal birth control have a lower risk of recurrent BV. Again, no one has studied whether starting these would help reduce recurrences, but we sometimes try this if hormones are a safe option for you.
- Avoid douching: Douching can disrupt your healthy vaginal bacterial community and may increase the likelihood of BV coming back.
- Longer-term antibiotics: If youve had three or more documented episodes of BV a year, using vaginal metronidazole twice a week for four months can decrease the chances of your BV returning.
Recommended Reading: Can Minocycline Treat Yeast Infection
Vitamin C: A Game Changer
There are several ways that vitamin C fights infectious agents. It enhances the production and proliferation of both B and T lymphocytes, immune cells involved in response to infection. It improves the mobility of phagocytes-the cells that ‘eat’ pathogens and infected tissue. Additionally, vitamin C is involved in antibody production against pathogens, so that we have immunity to them the next time they come around. Further, as an antioxidant, this vitamin also regenerates other antioxidants like glutathione and vitamin E-resulting in even greater protection against the oxidative stress caused by the inflammatory response to infection. Finally, in high doses, ascorbic acid has also been shown to be toxic to certain pathogens and abnormal cells. Put all these talents together, and you can see how valuable vitamin C is to our immune systems.
In a clinical trial of 715 students aged 18 to 32 years of age, 252 students took 1000 milligrams of vitamin C for the first 6 hours once cold and flu symptoms set in, then 3 times daily after that. Compared to the control group-who took pain relievers and decongestants instead-the Vitamin C -treated students experienced an 85 percent reduction in symptoms.
Why Pure Lab Vitamin C is NOT buffered
References
Marginally Low Vitamin C Status Might Lead To Benefits Of Supplementation
It seems evident that any effects of vitamin C supplementation may be more prominent when the baseline vitamin C level is particularly low. As noted above, a profound vitamin C deficiency was associated with pneumonia in the early literature. It seems plausible that less severe vitamin C deficiency, which may be called marginal vitamin C deficiency, can also be associated with increased risk and severity of infections, although the effects may be less pronounced than those caused by scurvy.
Low vitamin C levels are not just of historical relevance. Cases of scurvy in hospitals have been described in several recent case reports . One survey estimated that about 10% of hospitalized elderly patients had scurvy . Surveys have also shown that plasma vitamin C levels below 11 µmol/L were found for 14% of males and 10% of females in the USA, 19% of males and 13% of females in India, 40% of elderly people living in institutions in the UK, 23% of children and 39% of women in Mexico, and 79%93% of men in Western Russia. Moreover, 45% of a cohort of pregnant women in rural India had plasma vitamin C levels below 4 µmol/L and the mean plasma vitamin C level fell to 10 µmol/L in a cohort of pregnant or lactating women in Gambian villages in the rainy season .
Don’t Miss: Does Uti Antibiotics Cause Yeast Infections
The Effects Of Antioxidants Against Infections May Be Heterogeneous
It is quite a common assumption that the effects of vitamins are uniform. Thus, if there is benefit, it is often assumed that the same benefit applies to all people. However, it seems much more likely that the effects of vitamins, including vitamin C, vary between people depending on biology and their lifestyle. Thus, it is possible that there are benefits restricted to special conditions or to particular people. In the case of vitamin E, there is very strong evidence for the heterogeneity in its effects on pneumonia and on the common cold . Although the factors modifying the effects of vitamin E cannot be extrapolated to vitamin C, it seems probable that there is comparable heterogeneity in the effects of vitamin C.
Vitamin C Doses In Vitamin C And Control Groups
One great problem in the interpretation of vitamin C trials arises from the fundamental difference between vitamin C and ordinary drugs such as antibiotics. In a trial of an ordinary drug, the control group is not given the drug, which simplifies the interpretation of the findings. In contrast, it is impossible to select control subjects who have zero vitamin C intake and no vitamin C in their system. Thus, all vitamin C trials de facto compare two different vitamin C levels. The lower dose is obtained from the diet, and it has varied considerably among the controlled studies. In addition, the vitamin C supplement doses given to the vitamin C groups have also varied extensively. Finally, the placebo group in some trials was also given extra vitamin C, which further confuses the comparisons. Therefore, the comparison of different vitamin C studies and the generalization of their findings is complicated. As an illustration of these problems, Table 6 shows examples of the variations in vitamin C doses that were used in the common cold trials.
Don’t Miss: Uti Like Symptoms But No Infection
Vitamin C Has Effects On The Immune System
Vitamin C levels in white blood cells are tens of times higher than in plasma, which may indicate functional roles of the vitamin in these immune system cells. Vitamin C has been shown to affect the functions of phagocytes, production of interferon, replication of viruses, and maturation of T-lymphocytes, etc. in laboratory studies . Some of the effects of vitamin C on the immune system may be non-specific and in some cases other antioxidants had similar effects.
Vitamin C For Uti: Does It Work
Is taking vitamin C for UTI beneficial, harmful or neither? Vitamin C is a familiar dietary supplement for known reasons, however, the question of whether it can also treat UTI comes up often and should be addressed.
This article will mainly focus on the science behind vitamin C for UTI in terms of its potential to resolve symptoms. But well also briefly cover why its important for sufferers of recurrent UTI to choose the right type of vitamin C supplement .
Jump To Section:
- What do we know about vitamin C for UTI
- The science for and against vitamin C for UTI
- Why you should think twice before taking vitamin C
- Is there any research to support vitamin C for UTI
- How much vitamin C should you take for UTI
Vitamin C made it into our list of the ten most searched UTI home remedies because it is recommended enthusiastically online.
But its important to remember that this enthusiasm and its popularity doesnt necessarily mean its effective. Its possible vitamin C may only be effective in some cases, by controlling symptoms and limiting infection, whilst not eliminating the pathogen causing recurrent urinary tract infections.
Often, the same people who recommend vitamin C online appear to still have symptoms that return time after time. Thats something to think about.
You May Like: Can You Get Rid Of An Infection Without Antibiotics
Q: How Is Bacterial Vaginosis Diagnosed
A: The classic diagnosis for BV is based on four clinical findings:
- A thin white or yellow discharge, often with an unpleasant or fishy smell
- A fishy odor when potassium hydroxide is added to vaginal secretions
- Vaginal secretions with a high pH level
- The presence of clue cells
Some providers use lab-based tests that look for enzymes made by the bacteria that cause BV. These enzyme tests work well. Some providers use a lab-based test that looks for Gardnerella vaginalis, a type of bacteria associated with BV. This type of test doesnt work as well and is less efficient because 70-80% of healthy women have some Gardnerella in their vaginas. If this test is positive, you may or may not actually have BV.
Vitamin C Dosage For Bacterial Infections Like Strep Throat
I am 61 yrs. old and have had strep throat and have been really sick for about a week. I have been taking 1,000 mg Vitamin C during this period of time to boost my immune system and get to feeling better.
ANSWER
Don’t Miss: Apple Cider Vinegar For Kidney Infection
Vitamin C Fruits For Uti
Vitamin C fruits for uti: What to eat = Vitamin C foods that help prevent UTI and which fruits are one of the best sources of adenine? To relieve UTI naturally we have to consume lots of vitamin C fruits. Zinc and vitamin C works together for UTI in natural ways. Both zinc and vitamin C have antioxidant benefits. Antioxidants prevent oxidative stress on the body that leads to chronic diseases.
Can A Yeast Infection Go Away On Its Own
Mild versions of yeast infections have the chance of going away on their own, explains Dr. Sonpal. However, it is not recommended to ignore a yeast infection because it is most likely to return if not medically treated.
While some individuals may choose to try home remedies for yeast infection or over-the-counter treatments, there are certain people who should visit the doctor when they have symptoms of a yeast infection. These patients include:
- Those who have recurring yeast infections
- Those who were possibly exposed to a sexually transmitted disease
- Women who are unsure if their symptoms are from a yeast infection
- Individuals who do not have success with home remedies or over-the-counter medicines
- Patients with uncontrolled diabetes or a weakened immune system due to certain medications or conditions such as HIV
Also Check: How To Drain Fluid From Ear Infection
Read Also: Hiv Infected Healthcare Workers In New York State