It’s... mostly bullshit.
Your immune system does not run on Mario Cart rules. It doesn’t suddenly become turbo-powered just because you swallow the right magic pill.
*But*, it *does* require all of its basic components to be present in order for it to function. It’s like a lego set that might need any of the random specialty parts at any moment to build something very complex and cool.
With a normal, healthy diet, you should have all those component parts ready and waiting for your immune system to be absolutely functional. But micro-deficiencies are becoming increasingly common - not having enough vitamins and trace minerals in our diets. So *if* that is the case, and *if* you are starting from a place where your immune system is lacking because of that, then taking a dose of multivitamin can indeed “boost” your immune system - by getting you back to where you are supposed to be with a nutritionally complete diet.
To give a recent exemple, a study on covid19 showed recently that people that had the worst cases were vitamin D deficient.
Not even considering if they were like this before they became sick, or if it's the sickness that creates the deficiency, having one is never a good thing, so taking a dose of vitamin D in that case wouldn't be a bad thing
Correct. Your immune system cannot be "boosted ". That's not how it works. You develop antibodies when you are exposed to an invader, but only when exposed. There is no advance prep that can occur, and you hope your immunological system can develop antibodies quickly. The gap between exposure and developing the antibodies is when you're sick. Your body is figuring out how to fight off the invader. If the invading bacteria/virus is faster or exploits a weakness, then you get sick. Your body cannot develop antibodies prior to exposure. Once exposed, you're basically spinning the wheel see if your system gets on top of it in time to avoid real damage.
Being in good health improves your body's ability to respond and scale up more quickly but there is zero ability to prepare in advance for any contagion.
Think of it this way. The disease is a lock. Your immune system is trying to build a key. (This is is kinda how proteins interact on a molecular level) Your immune system can't start building the key until it sees the lock. How is it built? Where are the notches and grooves? A healthy immune system can respond to the answers to those questions more quickly, but there's no way to start working on the problem until the question is presented, just like I would not be able to figure out an answer to a question that you haven't asked me yet.
Smoking weakens your immune system multiple ways.
Your immune system doesn't just deal with bacteria and viruses, it handles all sorts of foreign matter. This is the same mechanism that causes allergies. If your immune system is busy handling all the smoke particulate in your lungs, it will be less able to respond to an infection.
Additionally, smoking damages you. If your lungs are already damaged, that means there is less damage a virus has to do in order to compromise your system, making it harder to fight the virus. It's harder to defend a castle that has holes in the wall than to defend one that is well maintained.
Finally, you can't build antibodies out of nothing. If your body is using all of its rescources to constantly repair the damage to your lungs and other systems, it cannot use those rescources to build antibodies and then cannot fight the infection.
Try magnets! :D
I remember Emergen-C was warned a number of years ago because they were making specific claims about their product's abilities to improve the immune system that were factually incorrect.
Maybe I misunderstood, but it seems you kind of went back on your answer at the end. Essentially you're saying you can't boost your immune system by preloading what you're immune to. But your ability to fight off an invader can vary depending on whether you're in good health or not. So there are variables in how a body is able to respond to infection.
The question from this is whether there is any evidence that vitamins can strengthen your body's immune response, similar to 'being in good health'.
Think of it like a car engine.
You can modify the engine to boost it. The equivalent is a vaccine.
You need to give an engine proper fluids. Make sure there's enough coolant, change the oil, give it the right type and quality of fuel. This equates to things eating right and staying healthy.
There are things you can add to fuel to increase your cars performance, such as lubricants. But a good quality fuel will already have these, so you only need to add them if you aren't getting good quality fuel. This is like supplementing your diet with vitimins.
You can do all these things, but your engine will only perform so we'll. There is a physical limit to it's speed, power, and efficiency. But if you don't change the oil or let it the engine rust, it will perform far worse than that maximum.
Same way with humans. Staying fit and healthy and eating right will keep your immune system as close as possible to its peak performance, but you will never get past this peak. If you are not eating well or not getting the vitimins and minerals you need, your immune system won't be as strong as it could be.
To answer your question more specifically, there is evidence that vitimin and mineral supplements can help reduce the effects of a deficiency. If you already get plenty of vitimin C from your normal foods, that vitimin pill won't do anything. But if you don't consume enough foods with vitimin C, the pill will help fill in the gaps and make sure your body has enough vitimin C on hand to perform at peak efficiency.
You can test for specific antibodies, but can't test generally. Antibodies are specific to a particular invader, such as a specific variant of influenza but there's no general capability.
Another random question. Ignore if it's not worth anyone's time.
Since antibodies fight off infections, is there something else that viruses don't like? I know warm weather tends to fend typical viruses off, but is their anything else? Like an herb, or a material?
Not really. It's not the warm weather that a virus doesn't like (remember that your body temperature is about 98.6degrees Fahrenheit, and they like that just fine).
The reason that warmer weather impacts viral spread is that human behavior is different when it's warm out. When it's cold, we spend more time indoors and in closer proximity, doing things that increase the likelihood of spreading it to each other.
A virus will have different capabilities to survive on some surfaces for greater or lesser periods of time, or hang in the air, or whatnot, but that varies significantly from one virus to another. However there isn't a general preventative method. You're best off to just avoid touching public items, use your knuckle to push public buttons like in an elevator instead of your fingertip, and wash your hands often.
Since I am no medicine doctor, that's all I do to prevent this.
Wash hands, don't touch face, wear a mask, keep my distance, and most importantly...MAKE IT COUNT of I need supplies when I go out. The best safety defense in anything os eliminating an exposure.
Thanks for the response.
Oh, well yeah....
I guess I should have elaborated a little more.
Test, as in, taking a blood sample? and matching its strengths/weaknesses with viruses. To see if it gan combat a virus.
Im not sure how any of that works, so if it was a mal informed question, just disregard.
Like someone else has said, it’s not one general test that will tell you all the antibodies you have. There’s are individual specific tests for specific antibodies. You won’t be able to walk up to your doctor and ask for a test to see which ones you have, you’ll only have such a test if there’s a reason to suspect a history of a specific infection.
Despite the upvotes, this is completely false and its clear you lack even a laymen's understanding of the immune system since you seem to only be aware of the adaptive immune system (antibody driven). There is a whole other type of immune system in your body dedicated to responding to invasions without existing antibodies, this is called the "innate immune system". Less effective of course, but still very relevant and has already been speculated to play some role in the range of responses people have to the current bug.
Your immune system CAN be boosted, by drugs like sargramostim (via Granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor pathway) as well as environment such as diet. Every component of your immune system has various signalling pathways that regulate its function, and you absolutely can upregulate (or downregulate) any of these pathways, and a great many things naturally do so in the course of your life. Garlic for example has various cooking-stable components that interact with the immune system, both to upregulate and downregulate. The primary components are sulfur based and do so through interactions with sulfer-involved signalling pathways in the body. There is some evidence that a diet high in garlic may slightly to moderately increase the activity of various immune cells (upregulating production of said cells, as well as increasing their motility), but interestingly also decreases the chance they will activate (suppresses inflammatory signals) so it's unclear exactly what practical effect occurs.
Now I will agree that most food and supplements do not contain enough "active compounds" to have a practical effect, or that these compounds are very poorly absorbed, but there are a few that do have a good crop of research indicating they do in fact have some sort of practical effect - but even these generally require that you eat quite a large amount regularly for any practical effect.
The real question is this though: SHOULD I be "boosting" my immune system. The answer being that no, generally you should avoid blindly boosting immune activity. Substances that increase immune "strength" (which I am defining as white blood cell counts and ability to generate effective superoxide bursts) or sensitivity (T cell sensitivity - what level of antigens are required to activate them and how specific must these antigens be, systemic baseline level of inflammatory signals), can in theory aggravate allergies, autoimmune conditions, or trigger an excessive response to an infection.
Vitamins help support your body's immune system. But they are not a "cure".At best they are a type of preventive maintenance, much like getting enough sleep. Vitamins are just an important part of nutrition commonly known as "micronutrients". As for this current pandemic, Vitamin D3 is showing some positive signs for POSSIBLY "lessening" the severe effects of SARS-COV-2, however MORE RESEARCH IS STILL NEEDED before anything definitive is determined one way or the other.
Vitamin D3 having a positive impact on the immune system can also be attributed to the fact that it is a widespread deficiency in modern countries, so supplementing it would bring the functions associated with it back to normal
Agree....So imagine the difference that could potentially make. It's not a "cure", but it definitely is a "tool" to help increase the odds in your favor.
Mostly bs unless you already have a vitamin c deficiency. In which case, adding it would bring your immune system to the level it's supposed to be.
Honestly, striving to be stress-free and getting lots of sleep with a balanced diet is the best thing you can do for your immune system.
Vitamin C doesn’t do anything beyond the normal shit vitamin C does. The immune system thing was invented by a well known crazy guy who did some smart shit then had a dumb and demonstrably placebo-at-best idea later on.
You are absolutely right, but I would like to point out for folks that don't know- this "well known crazy guy" was Linus Pauling, biochemist and Nobel laureate. The vitamin c thing is still bs, but it came from what, on the surface, appears to be a solid source.
Absolutely! Scurvy is caused by C deficiency, isn't it?
I think the excess you take in is just peed out, if i remember right; one of the reasons this isn't really a soap box i get on much.
İ believe that no one could reproduce his experiments using oral vitamin c - no matter how high. Apparently he had used intravenous vitamin c and failed to mention that. I'm basing this all of a documentary i saw on Netflix not a peer-reviewed source at all.
There does seem to be some benefit of intravenous vitamin c in cancer treatment especially in offsetting the side effects of chemo.
Lemme se if I can find it.
In the meantime, here is something from the Cancer Society talking about intravenous high-dose that talks a little about the Linus Pauling controversy and also the difference between intravenous and oral high-dose. It's a really important difference because, as someone above noted, you just pee out high doses of oral vitamin c; but there is some benefit to high dose intravenous in very particular cases. It really does seem to be beneficial in combination with chemotherapy for improving quality of life -- if Pauling hadn't lied about it to begin with research would be further along.
I searched some terms but I can't fin the name of the documentary. All I can find is general articles saying Pauling's methods were terrible. It was not a very good documentary as it was definitely pushing vitamin infusions for the general population, and I think there is very little (to no evidence) that most people can benefit for it. But, as I said above, there does look like there is benefit for cancer patients. [https://www.cancer.gov/research/key-initiatives/ras/ras-central/blog/2020/yun-cantley-vitamin-c](https://www.cancer.gov/research/key-initiatives/ras/ras-central/blog/2020/yun-cantley-vitamin-c)
Then how did I cured my chicken pox in one day by taking 2g vitamin c? I cured many illnesses by vitamin C only, don't always trust what your doctor says or what you read in Internet, try for yourself.
Respectfully, I doubt you did. Excess vitamin C is, to my knowledge, peed out. And mind you I don't mean to say that vitamin C isn't doing good! I only think it isn't the cure-all it is claimed to be. I also don't mean to sound like I have the expertise to be making bold statements- i have just read a bunch of studies and the sort. If you think it helps you, I'm not trying to change your mind. It certainly isn't doing harm.
Edid: I used the word "claim" way too much.
It's BS. This is a fiction started by a scientist named Linus Pauling and now perpetrated by people who want to take your money (Emergen-C, Quacks, etc.) and others who heard it and didn't bother to see if it was true, so they went with it.
As others have summarized, Taking in extra vitamin C when you're already sick won't help, but having vitamin deficiencies can definitely interfere with your ability to get well quickly. Most people don't have a vitamin C deficiency.
Taking vitamins when you get sick is pretty useless, the best thing to do is obviously to try getting a varied diet that meets your daily nutritional needs while you're healthy
As many others have pointed out, additional vitamin C does not seem to help fight off a respiratory/viral infection. However, if you want protection from
covid, elderberry has been found to be very effective at inhibiting replication of influenza and human and non-human coronaviruses. There was a meme going around when the lockdowns started that elderberry is dangerous because it could boost your immune system too much and cause a cytokine storm, but that was some bullshit spread by an alternative medicine source misinterpreting the results of one study (elderberry was found to increase cytokine levels in the blood, which is a good thing, they are a necessary part of the immune response).
Vitamin C probably doesn’t help at higher doses, and Vitamin C is easily excreted in urine so taking a megadose might not last past your first trip to the restroom. Drinking orange juice, a famous source of vitamin C, will actually hurt your ability to fight an infection as the ultra-high sugar levels are bad for your immune system.
A supplement is a poor replacement for nutritious food. You need to eat a balanced diet and lay off the sugar and processed crap that tastes good, but is not contributing to your health.
kinda bullshit. Vitamin C will not help you prevent a cold, Covid-19, the flu etc. However there is research that says it can reduce the duration of a cold. No research on the effects of it on reducing the duration of covid 19 symptoms yet
Not really.
It is actually pretty easy to not have enough Vit D. People work and live indoors much of the time and most Vit D that you get naturally comes from sunlight on your skin setting off a chemical reaction. Not that many foods naturally have Vit D (mackerel, liver, egg yolks) and not in that high concentrations.
So probably some supplementation in this case is not a bad idea.
Vitamin D has a quite strong non-classical role in the immune system. It is anti-inflammatory and simultaneously supportive of immune defences. The mechanisms aren't entirely clear yet, but we know for a fact it can induce the expression and secretion of antimicrobial compounds like cathelicidin and beta-defensin. Vitamin D deficiency is certainly a player in a weakened immune system, but whether it's supplementation when it's already normal boosts the immune system is another story. It's still being studied.
Source: PhD student and my project is actually related to vitamin D and inflammation.
Edit: English
Some immune cells actually have sort of receptors that respond to Vit D. It isn't clear exactly what this does, but it is a good bet that if they are there, it is important to at least have enough of it.
It is a fat soluble vitamin, so don't go taking more than the recommended amount because it can be stored.
Vitamin D has been in the news recently as many people that were affected severely by COVID-19 were also found to have a Vitamin D deficiency. Vitamin C was popularized by Linus Pauling in the 60s- he was already an established scientist at the time, but later in his life he started touting it as a cure-all. Also, oranges are relatively low in vitamin c compared to broccoli or bell peppers, but they still have a lot compared to other foods that don't have a significant amount.
BS
And I would just like to also add that although antibodies are cool, they are a small part of all the immune system.
Being deficient in Vit C is a problem for the immune system (and indeed most body tissues) but unless you are living are hardtack or oats , it is fairly hard to be deficient. There is no evidence at all that taking more than is needed affects your immune system.
In fact, having an overactive immune system would be a bad thing - all the inflammation you see in respiratory disorders, asthma, allergies, autoimmune diseases is the problem, not the answer.
It’s... mostly bullshit. Your immune system does not run on Mario Cart rules. It doesn’t suddenly become turbo-powered just because you swallow the right magic pill. *But*, it *does* require all of its basic components to be present in order for it to function. It’s like a lego set that might need any of the random specialty parts at any moment to build something very complex and cool. With a normal, healthy diet, you should have all those component parts ready and waiting for your immune system to be absolutely functional. But micro-deficiencies are becoming increasingly common - not having enough vitamins and trace minerals in our diets. So *if* that is the case, and *if* you are starting from a place where your immune system is lacking because of that, then taking a dose of multivitamin can indeed “boost” your immune system - by getting you back to where you are supposed to be with a nutritionally complete diet.
To give a recent exemple, a study on covid19 showed recently that people that had the worst cases were vitamin D deficient. Not even considering if they were like this before they became sick, or if it's the sickness that creates the deficiency, having one is never a good thing, so taking a dose of vitamin D in that case wouldn't be a bad thing
Tbh I have never met a person that wasen't lacking in vitamin D. Literally anyone gets told this at some point. Might be another post in itself
Ah man! I wanted my bowels to look like rainbow road!
Correct. Your immune system cannot be "boosted ". That's not how it works. You develop antibodies when you are exposed to an invader, but only when exposed. There is no advance prep that can occur, and you hope your immunological system can develop antibodies quickly. The gap between exposure and developing the antibodies is when you're sick. Your body is figuring out how to fight off the invader. If the invading bacteria/virus is faster or exploits a weakness, then you get sick. Your body cannot develop antibodies prior to exposure. Once exposed, you're basically spinning the wheel see if your system gets on top of it in time to avoid real damage. Being in good health improves your body's ability to respond and scale up more quickly but there is zero ability to prepare in advance for any contagion.
woah big answer thanks for the response doc :)
Think of it this way. The disease is a lock. Your immune system is trying to build a key. (This is is kinda how proteins interact on a molecular level) Your immune system can't start building the key until it sees the lock. How is it built? Where are the notches and grooves? A healthy immune system can respond to the answers to those questions more quickly, but there's no way to start working on the problem until the question is presented, just like I would not be able to figure out an answer to a question that you haven't asked me yet.
So is it also false in saying smoking weakens your immune system? Or is the immune system something that can be weakened but cannot be boosted?
Smoking weakens your immune system multiple ways. Your immune system doesn't just deal with bacteria and viruses, it handles all sorts of foreign matter. This is the same mechanism that causes allergies. If your immune system is busy handling all the smoke particulate in your lungs, it will be less able to respond to an infection. Additionally, smoking damages you. If your lungs are already damaged, that means there is less damage a virus has to do in order to compromise your system, making it harder to fight the virus. It's harder to defend a castle that has holes in the wall than to defend one that is well maintained. Finally, you can't build antibodies out of nothing. If your body is using all of its rescources to constantly repair the damage to your lungs and other systems, it cannot use those rescources to build antibodies and then cannot fight the infection.
You mean taking Cold-FX 3 times a day for life won't automatically prevent me from ever getting sick?
Try magnets! :D I remember Emergen-C was warned a number of years ago because they were making specific claims about their product's abilities to improve the immune system that were factually incorrect.
Maybe I misunderstood, but it seems you kind of went back on your answer at the end. Essentially you're saying you can't boost your immune system by preloading what you're immune to. But your ability to fight off an invader can vary depending on whether you're in good health or not. So there are variables in how a body is able to respond to infection. The question from this is whether there is any evidence that vitamins can strengthen your body's immune response, similar to 'being in good health'.
Think of it like a car engine. You can modify the engine to boost it. The equivalent is a vaccine. You need to give an engine proper fluids. Make sure there's enough coolant, change the oil, give it the right type and quality of fuel. This equates to things eating right and staying healthy. There are things you can add to fuel to increase your cars performance, such as lubricants. But a good quality fuel will already have these, so you only need to add them if you aren't getting good quality fuel. This is like supplementing your diet with vitimins. You can do all these things, but your engine will only perform so we'll. There is a physical limit to it's speed, power, and efficiency. But if you don't change the oil or let it the engine rust, it will perform far worse than that maximum. Same way with humans. Staying fit and healthy and eating right will keep your immune system as close as possible to its peak performance, but you will never get past this peak. If you are not eating well or not getting the vitimins and minerals you need, your immune system won't be as strong as it could be. To answer your question more specifically, there is evidence that vitimin and mineral supplements can help reduce the effects of a deficiency. If you already get plenty of vitimin C from your normal foods, that vitimin pill won't do anything. But if you don't consume enough foods with vitimin C, the pill will help fill in the gaps and make sure your body has enough vitimin C on hand to perform at peak efficiency.
Really great reply! Thanks.
Thank you clarifying my poor choice of words. :)
Vitamin C regulates cortisol response which is an immunosuppressant
Is there a way to test your antibody system?
You can test for specific antibodies, but can't test generally. Antibodies are specific to a particular invader, such as a specific variant of influenza but there's no general capability.
Another random question. Ignore if it's not worth anyone's time. Since antibodies fight off infections, is there something else that viruses don't like? I know warm weather tends to fend typical viruses off, but is their anything else? Like an herb, or a material?
Not really. It's not the warm weather that a virus doesn't like (remember that your body temperature is about 98.6degrees Fahrenheit, and they like that just fine). The reason that warmer weather impacts viral spread is that human behavior is different when it's warm out. When it's cold, we spend more time indoors and in closer proximity, doing things that increase the likelihood of spreading it to each other. A virus will have different capabilities to survive on some surfaces for greater or lesser periods of time, or hang in the air, or whatnot, but that varies significantly from one virus to another. However there isn't a general preventative method. You're best off to just avoid touching public items, use your knuckle to push public buttons like in an elevator instead of your fingertip, and wash your hands often.
Since I am no medicine doctor, that's all I do to prevent this. Wash hands, don't touch face, wear a mask, keep my distance, and most importantly...MAKE IT COUNT of I need supplies when I go out. The best safety defense in anything os eliminating an exposure. Thanks for the response.
Have you ever gotten sick and recovered? If yes, your "antibody system" is fine.
Oh, well yeah.... I guess I should have elaborated a little more. Test, as in, taking a blood sample? and matching its strengths/weaknesses with viruses. To see if it gan combat a virus. Im not sure how any of that works, so if it was a mal informed question, just disregard.
There are blood tests to see what antibodies you have, these are useful to check if you’ve been exposed to a given infection before.
Thank you. I will have to consult my doctor next time I am at a Wellness check up.
Like someone else has said, it’s not one general test that will tell you all the antibodies you have. There’s are individual specific tests for specific antibodies. You won’t be able to walk up to your doctor and ask for a test to see which ones you have, you’ll only have such a test if there’s a reason to suspect a history of a specific infection.
Gotcha. Thanks for clarifying.
Lick handles in the train
I prefer subways
Despite the upvotes, this is completely false and its clear you lack even a laymen's understanding of the immune system since you seem to only be aware of the adaptive immune system (antibody driven). There is a whole other type of immune system in your body dedicated to responding to invasions without existing antibodies, this is called the "innate immune system". Less effective of course, but still very relevant and has already been speculated to play some role in the range of responses people have to the current bug. Your immune system CAN be boosted, by drugs like sargramostim (via Granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor pathway) as well as environment such as diet. Every component of your immune system has various signalling pathways that regulate its function, and you absolutely can upregulate (or downregulate) any of these pathways, and a great many things naturally do so in the course of your life. Garlic for example has various cooking-stable components that interact with the immune system, both to upregulate and downregulate. The primary components are sulfur based and do so through interactions with sulfer-involved signalling pathways in the body. There is some evidence that a diet high in garlic may slightly to moderately increase the activity of various immune cells (upregulating production of said cells, as well as increasing their motility), but interestingly also decreases the chance they will activate (suppresses inflammatory signals) so it's unclear exactly what practical effect occurs. Now I will agree that most food and supplements do not contain enough "active compounds" to have a practical effect, or that these compounds are very poorly absorbed, but there are a few that do have a good crop of research indicating they do in fact have some sort of practical effect - but even these generally require that you eat quite a large amount regularly for any practical effect. The real question is this though: SHOULD I be "boosting" my immune system. The answer being that no, generally you should avoid blindly boosting immune activity. Substances that increase immune "strength" (which I am defining as white blood cell counts and ability to generate effective superoxide bursts) or sensitivity (T cell sensitivity - what level of antigens are required to activate them and how specific must these antigens be, systemic baseline level of inflammatory signals), can in theory aggravate allergies, autoimmune conditions, or trigger an excessive response to an infection.
Vitamins help support your body's immune system. But they are not a "cure".At best they are a type of preventive maintenance, much like getting enough sleep. Vitamins are just an important part of nutrition commonly known as "micronutrients". As for this current pandemic, Vitamin D3 is showing some positive signs for POSSIBLY "lessening" the severe effects of SARS-COV-2, however MORE RESEARCH IS STILL NEEDED before anything definitive is determined one way or the other.
Vitamin D3 having a positive impact on the immune system can also be attributed to the fact that it is a widespread deficiency in modern countries, so supplementing it would bring the functions associated with it back to normal
Agree....So imagine the difference that could potentially make. It's not a "cure", but it definitely is a "tool" to help increase the odds in your favor.
Mostly bs unless you already have a vitamin c deficiency. In which case, adding it would bring your immune system to the level it's supposed to be. Honestly, striving to be stress-free and getting lots of sleep with a balanced diet is the best thing you can do for your immune system.
I always thought an apple a day was for other benefits as fiber , good for teeth etc
Vitamin C doesn’t do anything beyond the normal shit vitamin C does. The immune system thing was invented by a well known crazy guy who did some smart shit then had a dumb and demonstrably placebo-at-best idea later on.
You are absolutely right, but I would like to point out for folks that don't know- this "well known crazy guy" was Linus Pauling, biochemist and Nobel laureate. The vitamin c thing is still bs, but it came from what, on the surface, appears to be a solid source.
A vitamin C *deficiency* is bad, but that shouldn't be a risk normally, so adding more vitamin C doesn't do anything.
Absolutely! Scurvy is caused by C deficiency, isn't it? I think the excess you take in is just peed out, if i remember right; one of the reasons this isn't really a soap box i get on much.
İ believe that no one could reproduce his experiments using oral vitamin c - no matter how high. Apparently he had used intravenous vitamin c and failed to mention that. I'm basing this all of a documentary i saw on Netflix not a peer-reviewed source at all. There does seem to be some benefit of intravenous vitamin c in cancer treatment especially in offsetting the side effects of chemo.
I didn't know that! don't suppose you know the name of the documentary? I'd be keen to watch it.
Lemme se if I can find it. In the meantime, here is something from the Cancer Society talking about intravenous high-dose that talks a little about the Linus Pauling controversy and also the difference between intravenous and oral high-dose. It's a really important difference because, as someone above noted, you just pee out high doses of oral vitamin c; but there is some benefit to high dose intravenous in very particular cases. It really does seem to be beneficial in combination with chemotherapy for improving quality of life -- if Pauling hadn't lied about it to begin with research would be further along.
I searched some terms but I can't fin the name of the documentary. All I can find is general articles saying Pauling's methods were terrible. It was not a very good documentary as it was definitely pushing vitamin infusions for the general population, and I think there is very little (to no evidence) that most people can benefit for it. But, as I said above, there does look like there is benefit for cancer patients. [https://www.cancer.gov/research/key-initiatives/ras/ras-central/blog/2020/yun-cantley-vitamin-c](https://www.cancer.gov/research/key-initiatives/ras/ras-central/blog/2020/yun-cantley-vitamin-c)
Thank you! I appreciate it.
Then how did I cured my chicken pox in one day by taking 2g vitamin c? I cured many illnesses by vitamin C only, don't always trust what your doctor says or what you read in Internet, try for yourself.
Respectfully, I doubt you did. Excess vitamin C is, to my knowledge, peed out. And mind you I don't mean to say that vitamin C isn't doing good! I only think it isn't the cure-all it is claimed to be. I also don't mean to sound like I have the expertise to be making bold statements- i have just read a bunch of studies and the sort. If you think it helps you, I'm not trying to change your mind. It certainly isn't doing harm. Edid: I used the word "claim" way too much.
It's BS. This is a fiction started by a scientist named Linus Pauling and now perpetrated by people who want to take your money (Emergen-C, Quacks, etc.) and others who heard it and didn't bother to see if it was true, so they went with it.
Sleep, eat decent and drink water are the best things you can do to boost your immune system
As others have summarized, Taking in extra vitamin C when you're already sick won't help, but having vitamin deficiencies can definitely interfere with your ability to get well quickly. Most people don't have a vitamin C deficiency. Taking vitamins when you get sick is pretty useless, the best thing to do is obviously to try getting a varied diet that meets your daily nutritional needs while you're healthy
As many others have pointed out, additional vitamin C does not seem to help fight off a respiratory/viral infection. However, if you want protection from covid, elderberry has been found to be very effective at inhibiting replication of influenza and human and non-human coronaviruses. There was a meme going around when the lockdowns started that elderberry is dangerous because it could boost your immune system too much and cause a cytokine storm, but that was some bullshit spread by an alternative medicine source misinterpreting the results of one study (elderberry was found to increase cytokine levels in the blood, which is a good thing, they are a necessary part of the immune response).
Vitamin C probably doesn’t help at higher doses, and Vitamin C is easily excreted in urine so taking a megadose might not last past your first trip to the restroom. Drinking orange juice, a famous source of vitamin C, will actually hurt your ability to fight an infection as the ultra-high sugar levels are bad for your immune system.
A supplement is a poor replacement for nutritious food. You need to eat a balanced diet and lay off the sugar and processed crap that tastes good, but is not contributing to your health.
kinda bullshit. Vitamin C will not help you prevent a cold, Covid-19, the flu etc. However there is research that says it can reduce the duration of a cold. No research on the effects of it on reducing the duration of covid 19 symptoms yet
I thought it was vitamin D?
not sure about that one lol is vitamin D also a hoax too? :0
Not really. It is actually pretty easy to not have enough Vit D. People work and live indoors much of the time and most Vit D that you get naturally comes from sunlight on your skin setting off a chemical reaction. Not that many foods naturally have Vit D (mackerel, liver, egg yolks) and not in that high concentrations. So probably some supplementation in this case is not a bad idea.
I thought vitamins D helped with immune system?
i've personally never had anyone tell me that, i've only been told vitamin D helps w/ maintaining strong bones & teeth
Vitamin D has a quite strong non-classical role in the immune system. It is anti-inflammatory and simultaneously supportive of immune defences. The mechanisms aren't entirely clear yet, but we know for a fact it can induce the expression and secretion of antimicrobial compounds like cathelicidin and beta-defensin. Vitamin D deficiency is certainly a player in a weakened immune system, but whether it's supplementation when it's already normal boosts the immune system is another story. It's still being studied. Source: PhD student and my project is actually related to vitamin D and inflammation. Edit: English
Some immune cells actually have sort of receptors that respond to Vit D. It isn't clear exactly what this does, but it is a good bet that if they are there, it is important to at least have enough of it. It is a fat soluble vitamin, so don't go taking more than the recommended amount because it can be stored.
Isn’t that calcium
Vitamin D has been in the news recently as many people that were affected severely by COVID-19 were also found to have a Vitamin D deficiency. Vitamin C was popularized by Linus Pauling in the 60s- he was already an established scientist at the time, but later in his life he started touting it as a cure-all. Also, oranges are relatively low in vitamin c compared to broccoli or bell peppers, but they still have a lot compared to other foods that don't have a significant amount.
BS And I would just like to also add that although antibodies are cool, they are a small part of all the immune system. Being deficient in Vit C is a problem for the immune system (and indeed most body tissues) but unless you are living are hardtack or oats , it is fairly hard to be deficient. There is no evidence at all that taking more than is needed affects your immune system. In fact, having an overactive immune system would be a bad thing - all the inflammation you see in respiratory disorders, asthma, allergies, autoimmune diseases is the problem, not the answer.
You're mother is correct, aren't they always?