"Vitamin C Does Not Prevent Colds?" ... 
Tony Isaacs
17 y
2,336
† Cross †
from John Barron's blog
http://www.jonbarron.org/blog_published/2007/07/vitamin_c_does_not_prevent_col.html#more
Vitamin C Does Not Prevent Colds?
A few years ago, studies debunking alternative health treatments came along maybe every six months. Lately, though, it seems like I could do a blog a day rebutting some new piece of nonsense. I’m beginning to think that it’s actually a requirement that researchers must get a partial lobotomy before they can receive grant money to perform a study.So what’s today’s nonsense?
The Cochrane Library has just published the results of a review of scientific literature that says that taking regular supplements of Vitamin C to prevent colds is not justified unless you are exercising hard or living in an extremely cold place, in which case taking about 200 mg a day may cut your risk by 50 per cent.
And my problem with that is?
The whole premise of the study was to reassess Linus Pauling’s observations that vitamin C supplementation could prevent colds. Pauling’s protocol specifically called for doses of 1,000 mg or more per day. The Cochrane Library analysis started at 200 mg a day, one fifth of Pauling’s recommended dosage.
Let me make this brain-dead simple. If you’re trying to evaluate a health protocol, you actually have to use the protocol in question if you wish to assess it. You can’t arbitrarily cut doses by 80% and conclude the protocol doesn’t work.
This study is akin to deciding to determine whether you can lose weight on a low calorie diet of 1,000 calories a day by feeding people 5,000 calories a day!
More
- Totally totally agree DQ. Good post. chrisb1
17 y
1,816
MoreThis is a reply to # 926,225My wife and have been taking 4000mg of ascorbate daily (magnesium ascorbate) for the last 2 years. She was prone to many colds and flu' prior in the winter time prior to that. Not now.
- Re: Vit C? - yes - 25 years without ... Karlin
17 y
1,940
MoreThis is a reply to # 926,555Advertisement
Organic Detoxification Program
Cleanse your body of toxins and wastes. Feel vibrant and youthful again!
"researchers must get a partial lobotomy before they can receive grant money to perform a study"
I would not refute that!!!
Thanks for the post - I was also enraged by this "study", especiallty the 80% reduction in doseage that they used.
I sent angry e-mails to some of the news stations that ran the story, and told them that 200mg was not enough. No replies, lol.
Personally, I take from 2 grams a day, and up to 10 or 15 grams [15,000mgs] a day, not every day tho, just as I feel I need it.
I have not had a cold or flu for at least 20 years, maybe 25 now [I am 50yrs].
When I started Vit C in about 1980, it was because I was having so many colds and flu ordeals, and they were getting really nasty too. None since starting Vit c!!
I heard Woody Allen say "when gettting a cold, take one gram of Vit C an hour until you feel better" - which was not a joke, I found out, when I looked into what Linus Pauling was recommending. So I tried it, and that was the first helpfull thing I had found for a flu or cold.
YA YA YA- Re: Vit C? - yes - 25 years without ... Jowanna
17 y
1,858
This is a reply to # 926,679Thats fabulous to read!
I have been cold and flu free for 15 years now since discovering vitamin C. I started at 21.
- Re: Vit C? - yes - 25 years without ... Jowanna
17 y
1,858
- Re: Vit C? - yes - 25 years without ... Karlin
17 y
1,940
- What a stupid study n/t Trysten3000
17 y
1,681
- Yes, but . . . Tony Isaacs
17 y
1,861
This is a reply to # 926,686I'll grant you that the study was stupid. Utter nonsense. However, if you look behind the study you will find the dumb like a fox predators with chicken feathers still hanging out of their mouths - and we are the chickens!
As long as they can pay researchers to produce studies that can be skewed, misinterpreted or at least worthy of a misleading headline that the mainstream propaganda machine can feed to their media pals to post word for word, they have accomplished what they intended.
More and more, we are a visual society of sound bites, headlines and talking heads. More than once I have had people I know, even those I am related to, quote studies to me when all they had seen was misleading headlines or else they had heard talking heads repeat the studies' flawed premises for maybe 30 seconds of soundbite - which they took as gospel and which is exactly the reason such studies are pouring forth these days.
DQ
- Re: Yes, but . . . Trysten3000
17 y
1,715
This is a reply to # 926,726You are so right. Many people wont even read the study just see the headline and quote it.
- Re: Yes, but . . . Trysten3000
17 y
1,715
- Yes, but . . . Tony Isaacs
17 y
1,861
- Totally totally agree DQ. Good post. chrisb1
17 y
1,816
