Disease-Fighting Vitamin C Is Making a Comeback

After a long-time decline in use, Vitamin C is making a big comeback. (iStock photo)

Vitamin C was one of the earliest supplement fads, championed by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Linus Pauling in the early 1970s as a cure for ailments ranging from cancer to the common cold.

However, by the 1990s, the nutrient fell out of favor, and Pauling was accused of quackery by some mainstream doctors. By the time Pauling died in 1994 at age 93, vitamin C use was in decline. Recent science is showing that the great scientist may have been right all along. Here are new findings about the venerable vitamin:

• Fights superbugs. Scientists recently discovered that vitamin C kills antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis germs
• Cuts the risk of colds in half. A review of five randomized trials on people undergoing heavy short-term physical stress (such as long-distance runners and soldiers in training) found that taking vitamin C cut the number of expected common colds in half.
• Reduces shortness of breath. The vitamin was found to help people who become short of breath or coughed during exercise. Findings in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) prompted the lead scientist in the study to recommend vitamin C as an inexpensive and readily available supplement for people with lung issues or who have problems exercising because of breathing problems.
• Lowers cholesterol. A series of studies, including one that analyzed 13 randomized, placebo-control studies (the so-called “gold standard” of medical research), found that taking vitamin C regularly lowers LDL-cholesterol (the so-called “bad” cholesterol) as well as triglycerides, which are now considered in some cases even more deadly than LDL-cholesterol.

According to David Brownstein, M.D., one of the nation’s top holistic doctors and longtime advocate of vitamin C therapy, the supplement’s comeback is long overdue.

“Doctors lost interest in vitamin C because they wanted to prescribe antibiotics to everyone,” he told Newsmax Health. “Now that the dangers of antibiotic overuse are becoming known, there should be more research on vitamin C to fight infection.

“Before antibiotics became popular, vitamin C was used to cure diseases like polio and pertussis (whooping cough), so there is no reason why it wouldn’t treat those diseases today, as well as the newer diseases.”

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SOURCE: Newsmax Health
Charlotte Libov