Vitamin C for Coronavirus

As many of you may be aware, Orthomolecular Medicine was defined by the great biologist, Linus Pauling, as ‘the practice of preventing and treating disease by providing the body with optimal amounts of substances which are natural to the body’ – in other words, large, often very large, doses of vitamins and minerals.

Orthomolecular.org is the website of the Orthomolecular Society which houses a huge database of articles supporting their theses – and you can sign up for regular free articles if you are so minded.

Since the coronavirus outbreak got underway they have been sending regular mail outs suggesting that the way to tackle the virus is to blast it with mega doses of Vitamin C. And when I say mega, I do mean mega. They suggest that as a preventative measure, you should take at least 3 grams a day spread over the day and that if you have any sort of a sniffle which might just be coronavirus, increase that to 4–5 grams in water every 3 to 4 hours. See this paper for details.

If you actually catch the disease, then they suggest that the vitamin should be administered intravenously with ‘dosage recommendations varying with severity of illness, from 50 to 200 milligrams per kilogram body weight per day to as much as 200 mg/kg/day. ‘

And the Chinese are certainly buying into the theory:

‘Dosages are approximately 4,000 to 16,000 mg for an adult, administered by IV. This specific method of administration is important, says intravenous therapy expert Atsuo Yanagisawa, MD, PhD, because vitamin C’s effect is at least ten times more powerful by IV than if taken orally. Dr. Yanagisawa is president of the Tokyo-based Japanese College of Intravenous Therapy. He says, “Intravenous vitamin C is a safe, effective, and broad-spectrum antiviral.”

Richard Z. Cheng, MD, PhD, a Chinese-American specialist physician, has been working closely with medical and governmental authorities throughout China. He has been instrumental in facilitating at least three Chinese clinical IV vitamin C studies now underway. Dr. Cheng is presently in Shanghai continuing his efforts to encourage still more Chinese hospitals to implement vitamin C therapy incorporating high oral doses as well as C by IV.

Dr. Cheng and Dr. Yanagisawa both recommend oral vitamin C for prevention of COVID-19 infection.

An official statement from Xi’an Jiaotong University Second Hospital (2) reads:

“On the afternoon of February 20, 2020, another 4 patients with severe new coronaviral pneumonia recovered from the C10 West Ward of Tongji Hospital. In the past 8 patients have been discharged from hospital. . . High-dose vitamin C achieved good results in clinical applications. We believe that for patients with severe neonatal pneumonia and critically ill patients, vitamin C treatment should be initiated as soon as possible after admission. . . Early application of large doses of vitamin C can have a strong antioxidant effect, reduce inflammatory responses, and improve endothelial function. . . Numerous studies have shown that the dose of vitamin C has a lot to do with the effect of treatment. . . Hgh-dose vitamin C can not only improve antiviral levels, but more importantly, can prevent and treat acute lung injury (ALI) and acute respiratory distress (ARDS).”

The only known side effect of excess vitamin C is loose bowels. And in theory your bowels only become loose when you are no longer using up all of the Vitamin C you are ingesting to fight the disease that you are fighting. A small price to pay.

Addendum:

One of our subscribers points out that high dose intravenous Vitamin C has also been used very successfully to treat sepsis. A protocol developed by Dr Paul Marik at Sentara General Hospital in East Virginia using intravenous Vitamin C combined with hydrocortisone and vitamin B1 for two days reduced mortality from 40% to 8.5% in one study. For more see this article on sepsis on the Dr Mercola site – towards the end.