Vitamin C For Colds

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     While looking around the local pharmacy, I noticed eight different kinds of vitamin C preparations for children. Most of them claimed to boost the immune system and many claimed to prevent or cure common colds. For over 70 years, people have believed that vitamin C can prevent or treat disease, but there has been very little evidence to back up those beliefs.

     People have tried different natural products to treat common colds. Echinacea is touted to be helpful for colds, but studies show it is no more effective than sugar-pill placebo. Zinc was tried, but oral zinc causes nausea and vomiting and zinc nasal sprays can cause permanent loss of sense of smell. Vitamin C has a very low risk of side effects, even in children, and it is believed to have an effect on the immune system, although it is not clear what that effect is.

     In January of 2013, the Cochrane Database published a review of 72 different studies done since 1966 on vitamin C’s effects on colds. The results were mixed but interesting. They found that if people who are involved in extreme physical activities (such as marathon runners) took daily vitamin C supplementation, they got fewer colds. However, they found that the same daily supplemental vitamin C did not protect normal children and adults from getting colds. The interesting part of this review was that children and adults who took daily vitamin C supplementation (1 -2 grams a day for children) had a significant reduction in the duration of cold symptoms. In other words, vitamin C didn’t protect people from getting colds - they got colds as frequently as people who didn’t take vitamin C – but, when people took low-dose vitamin C on a daily basis, the colds lasted a shorter time and seemed to be less severe.

    The review then looked at the effects of starting a high dose of vitamin C (up to 8 grams) as a treatment after people had caught a cold. This did not make any difference on the cold symptoms.

     I believe that this study shows that daily, low-dose vitamin C decreases the severity and duration of cold symptoms in children even though it does not keep children from catching colds. It also shows that giving high-dose vitamin C after you catch a cold is worthless. Perhaps parents could give children 1-2 grams of vitamin C daily during cold and flu season and give a break for the children (and for the parent’s budgets) during summer.