Mega-dose vitamin C in treatment of the common cold (2001) | Hacker News Reader

Mega-dose vitamin C in treatment of the common cold (2001)

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

115 pointsjacquesm111 comments

To give some context around the history of vitamin C research, the whole idea of megadose vitamin C as an immune system booster/cure for the common cold/cure for cancer was more or less pushed by a single figure: Linus Pauling.

He was an extremely influential and successful 20th-century chemist, who earned both a Nobel Prize in Chemistry and a Nobel Peace Prize. In his late 60s, he became interested in "orthomolecular medicine" (the theory of making people thrive through some imagined perfect balance of vitamins), and became an advocate for megadose vitamin C therapy.

He used his influence to set up some respectable large-scale trials on the subject, but when they failed to find substantial effects, Pauling basically doubled-down in his beliefs, and spent the rest of his life regarded as a minor quack.

Nobel disease!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_disease

It has been argued that the effect results, in part, from a tendency for Nobel winners to feel empowered by the award to speak on topics outside their specific area of expertise, although it is unknown whether Nobel Prize winners are more prone to this tendency than other individuals.

I moderated a list for parents of gifted kids at one time. Bright kids tend to have bright parents, so most of these people were used to being the smartest person in the room and most of them defaulted to assuming that if you disagreed with them, you were basically "just stupid."

It was really challenging at first to get people to assume the other person was also smart and likely had good reasons for having drawn different conclusions.

>although it is unknown whether Nobel Prize winners are more prone to this tendency than other individuals.

I think we can at least confidently say that other people are more willing to listen to an NP winner. That could completely explain the phenomenon.

That was exactly my thought: The real problem is not the Nobel Prize winner going off on a wild hair. The real problem is people persisting in believing it just might make sense, never mind all evidence to the contrary, because "They won a Nobel Prize, so maybe it's just more brilliant insight beyond my understanding!"

Whenever I see this come up I always wonder if what's really going on is that the famous figure who has been rewarded with a prize that implies single-handed mastery or genius of a subject, was in fact the beneficiary of some unpretentious actual genius(es) who worked under them but didn't have the influence or connections to get the appropriate funding for the work that made their boss/advisor/PI famous.

Later in life the people responsible for their success have moved on to their own careers, and the celebrity genius now has to start over without the chemistry or medicine equivalent of The Wrecking Crew to keep them on track.

I think that's likely part of it, but I think it's also the case of "genius and insanity are 2 sides of the same coin."

Nobel prizes aren't given for being the best scientist, they're given for novel discoveries. And to make a novel discovery often means you're putting forth a theory that's probably a bit "out there" to begin with. Couple that with the fact that once you've won the Nobel prize you can convince yourself that your shit don't stink, so that when you make further wildly outlandish claims you can just convince yourself the masses just don't "get it" like how they didn't necessarily get it before you won your Nobel.

Musk is my current favorite example of this. I think he was undeniably a visionary when it came to electric cars and private space travel, but his success in those areas (in which he was heavily guided by his underlings, similar to what you point out) convinced him he can be an "unrestrained genius" in other areas, when in reality he's just a douche bag.

With all due respect, I feel very uneasy about putting that scam-artist on the same page as many people, but let alone NP-winners. Elon is just all around dumb with exorbitant amounts of money and sheer luck.

s/luck/persistence/

I dislike Elon Musk generally but you have to give credit where it is due.

People get old and they cannae hack it anymore.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a94jraWNG-g

Normally, I would agree that PIs receive too much credit off the backs of their subordinates, but Pauling's writings were really a cut above for the time. He legitimately seemed like a brilliant scientist or made foundational contributions to chemistry.

I am failing to find the accounting of how he reportedly deduced the chemical nature of sickle cell anemia, but it is something else.

That he chased vitamin C does not make me think any less of him. Plenty of science is wrong and goes nowhere after significant effort.

I don’t see a personality failure (which happens here — people overestimate their own knowledge in another areas. It doesn’t need a Nobel prize, just look at this site. It is a very common thing in software developers - myself often included unfortunately, in my experience) contradictory to being truly smart. For Pauling personally, I have read some of his books and they were absolutely brilliantly written. Unless we say that he didn’t in fact write them, I really wouldn’t take away his own genius behind the prize.

The Linus Pauling Institute still exists but not sure how much that are pushing the unsupported supplement theories or something different.

Indeed it does. As far as I know, their recommendations are mostly consistent with mainstream medicine. The site is a great reference!

https://lpi.oregonstate.edu/

The modern megadose immune booster/cold cure bullshit comes from the company that makes Emergen-C.

The sole paper they cite was from a private study....funded by (drumroll please) a company Emergen-C set up for the sole purpose of funding the study to make it not completely obvious that it was paid-for, bunk science.

You would have to peel and eat oranges all day for the amount Pauling suggests initially. (2000-3000mg)

His recommended amount in "How to Live Longer and Feel Better" is fairly reasonable. 65-90mg a day for adults although he still believed getting the first 250mg is the most important for various health conditions.

Have you heard of Vitamin pills?

It was an indirect comparison to describe how tedious it is to get the amount he initially suggested...

>https://www.amazon.ca/Webber-Naturals-Vitamin-Release-Antiox...

Two of those per day, doesn't seem that big of a deal to me.

You're missing the point. You're going to excrete majority of that in one go/day (even timed release).

You're missing your point, lol. Your argument was about how hard it is to get it in, now you talk about how easy it is to get it out (arguably?).

It was a dumb comparison that people took literally. Obviously you wouldn’t eat that many oranges and yes you can get it in supplements or through IV efficiently. I have no arguments to make here, just dumb remarks on how many oranges you would need to get the recommended controversial amount.

If my recollection serves, you're unable to absorb vitamin C efficiently enough to reach serum levels found to be effective, so the treatment protocol was for vitamin C infusions.

If you eat natural foods with it in it, the body does fine absorbing it.

If you take high doses, the absorption efficiency decreases. In other words, you piss it out.

If you did 200-400mg, you'd probably retain 90% of that. If you did 1000mg+, you'd retain 50%.

And that is wrong and easily checkable by bowel tollerance which varies tremendously with different stressors.

Also there are liposomes that are absorbed almost 100%

His recommended amount in that book was 18 grams.

Vitamin C : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_C

Vitamin C Deficiency or Scurvy : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_C_deficiency

Vitamin C Megadosage : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_C_megadosage

Vitamin C and the common Cold : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_C_and_the_common_cold

Chemistry of Ascorbic Acid : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemistry_of_ascorbic_acid

Archo, read my comment again.

FYI, everybody knows how to search wikipedia.

majkinetor, re-read you comments, links were provided for convenient reference

Yes, this is the context, but the study doesn't mention the Pauling protocol.

Pauling advocated doses much larger than 1 g. I'm not defending Pauling's position. I just want to point out that the study didn't examine Pauling's recommendation.

It so happens I have a copy of Vitamin C and the Common Cold (c) 1970. In Chapter 10 (page 86 of my paperback), in the section, "How to Ameliorate a Cold," he says, "At the first sign that a cold is developing, the first feeling of scratchiness of the throat, or presence of mucus in the nose, or muscle pain or general malaise, begin the treatment by swallowing one or two 500-mg tablets. Continue the treatment for several hours by taking an additional tablet or two tablets every hour."

"If the symptoms disappear quickly after the first or second dose of ascorbic acid, you may feel safe returning to your usual regimen. If, however, the symptoms are present on the second day, the regimen should be continued, with the ingestion of 4g to 10 g of ascorbic acid per day."

I often see this phenomenon when mainstream medicine designs studies to test claims by supplement advocates. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that many of these studies are intended to produce a negative result. I can't find the particular citation I have in mind at the moment, but there was a study on vitamin D for some illness, but the amount of vitamin D given was something like 400iu, the RDA (or maybe it was 800iu). The study then concluded that that dosage made no difference, which is probably is true, but idiotic. I mean, it's worth knowing that the low dose made no difference, but it doesn't justify the headline, "Vitamin D not helpful for ...." Also, I think the study used D2 (the plant form), which is not equivalent to D3, the animal form. (D2 provides some benefit if D3 is not available, but it is not the same thing.)

Thank you very much for this comment.

I have never seen the book. Does it give any explanation for how and why this supposedly helps?

(Y'all can downvote away and hate on me as usual. I'm asking because I know of several "home remedy" antiviral protocols and not only is vitamin C not one of them, it runs counter to everything I know -- unless you are deficient in vitamin C in specific.)

It's been too long since I've read it for me to reply with confidence. There seem to be PDFs available online.

https://web.archive.org/pdf/search/vitamin%20c%20and%20the%2...

My own experience with vitamin C is that it is not clearly helpful for various illnesses when I tried it. However, I do take 1 g magnesium ascorbate every day just for fun.

>However, I do take 1 g magnesium ascorbate every day just for fun.

What other party tricks do you have?

I'm finding "spam" PDFs. I'm reluctant to keep looking and possibly download malware.

If anyone knows, I'm still curious.

Please and thank you.

I found it on Anna's archive...

Thanks. That worked.

> Does it give any explanation for how and why this supposedly helps?

Even now there’s very little understanding of how most medicine helps. The foundation of western medicine is mostly “We did this and this (unintended) result happened. Let’s test to see if we can replicate that while uncovering any side effects”

When you start looking at any texts/papers and ask “Yes that’s the result, but why? How?” you’ll find that the majority of the time there simply aren’t any of those answers.

This reminds me of the latest diabetes drugs that are now being targeted toward weight loss and addiction reduction. It's hilarious to me that they could go through drug trials to test safety and NOT find out that the drugs caused weight loss. They figured that out after people taking the drugs started reporting weight loss, and then the drug manufacturers figured out they could make boatloads on the side effect!

At the first sign of a cold i make "tea" from ground ginger and turmeric and put freshly ground black pepper in each cup. Piperin is supposed to boost curcumin uptake by a whoppin 2000 times. My sample size of one shows positive results.

Flu like symptoms call for willow bark. Works for me.

Medicinal

The leaves and bark of the willow have been mentioned in ancient texts from Assyria, Sumer and Egypt[citation needed] and in Ancient Greece the physician Hippocrates wrote about its medicinal properties in the fifth century BC.

Source: Wikipedia

This is the natural precursor of Aspirin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turmeric?wprov=sfla1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willow?wprov=sfla1

The problem is that at the first sign of cold symptoms, if you do nothing, it also often just goes away.

Vitamin D : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_D

Vitamin D Deficiency : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_D_deficiency

Vitamin D Toxicity (aka) Hypervitaminosis D : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervitaminosis_D

>He used his influence to set up some respectable large-scale trials on the subject, but when they failed to find substantial effects,

How do you know they failed? Did you investigate?

No he didn't doubled-downed at all. Pauling claimed to the end of his life that Vitamin C works. Mainstream never replicated his studies. He even said that he would die from cancer probably a lot earlier then in his old age if he didn't megadose with C.

Its a shame that this story goes like it does, both for Pauling and vitamin C. To just label Pauling as a quack is mind blowingly disrespectful - he would probably get a third Nobel prize for DNA discovery unless he was prevented by US gov to attend important events. As for Vitamin C, the sole fact that all creatures on this planet produce it apart from 3 mutants is highly intriguing if nothing else.

I am personally megadosing with Vitamin C in various formats for around 15 years. I think I have only positive benefits from the start, and given that it is as harmless as water anybody can try.

The book "Ascorbate: The Science of Vitamin C" has good historic info if anybody is interested. Also, "Dynamic Flow" model tries to explain its workings in the body.

Without any judgement of the science, "doubling down" is by itself not a negative thing, is it? Not as native speaker myself, just wondering why you took offense on this choice of words.

"Quack" is of course a different thing and the message of OP is clear.

The connotation of “doubling down” has about a 60/40 split where 40% of the time people hear “had faith in their ideas”, and 60% of the time they hear “had lost touch with reality and chased a bad idea”.

I believe it comes from the cultural impression of gamblers where some “know what they’re doing” and walk away winners but the majority will keep betting and betting while they keep losing and losing.

Because of the context of course. Any word on its own can mean anything.

Linus Carl Pauling FRS; (February 28, 1901 – August 19, 1994)

Was an American chemist, biochemist, chemical engineer, peace activist, author, and educator.

He published more than 1,200 papers and books, of which about 850 dealt with scientific topics.

New Scientist called him one of the 20 greatest scientists of all time,

and as of 2000, he was rated the 16th most important scientist in history.

Linus Pauling : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Pauling

"Doses of vitamin C in excess of 1 g daily taken shortly after onset of a cold did not reduce the duration or severity of cold symptoms in healthy adult volunteers when compared with a vitamin C dose less than the minimum recommended daily intake."

Double blind, N = 400, and the placebo came out insignificantly ahead.

Vitamin C is hard to be deficient in, so it’s no surprise that nobody needs it. It’s why multivitamins look bad in research: it’s unethical to craft a study where people are deficient, so you’re just comparing cohorts of non deficient people.

It probably also does not help that the studies are done using a synthetic ascorbic acid that has the wrong pH levels and are missing the synergistic trace elements that are always found in plants that have vitamin C. So we need a large number of deficient people and to feed them a lot of raw guava or raw sweet red peppers.

I know where to find deficient people but doubt we would be allowed to experiment on them even if they volunteered and it meant free food.

That pretty much defeats the whole purpose of this research in the first place. The tested theory is that "If you get a cold, mega doses of vitamin C will help it go away faster." It's not a theory that has anything to do with "Your cold will go away faster if you also have scurvy."

Agreed it's not valid nor have any of the other studies. It would be very difficult to find someone only deficient in C. Usually when people are deficient in they are are missing many other confounding and compounding elements as well.

It's like watching Mythbusters which makes me want to make a show called MythBusterBusters. obscure reference to all the silly dogmatic scientismatic methods that show used albeit entertaining.

Hundreds of people in the uk treated for scurvy in the last year

Darn limeys. :) [Mansplaining note: British sailors were given the nickname "limey" due to the use of limes to ward off scurvy - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limey - note that limes have 1/4 the vitamin c of lemons and the processing and storage of lime juice destroyed much of the remaining vitamin c]

A relative heard of a college student who lived on nothing but Kraft Dinner and Red Bull. This student eventually had to get treated for scurvy.

I was thinking about testing volunteer Uyghurs, Kazakhs and Kyrgyz but we have to liberate them first. They are deficient in just about everything. I'm skipping ahead.

There is no such thing as natural Vitamin C. Animal livers produce it from glucose.

Vit C deficiency is a concern on ketogenic/non-plant based diets

Strict keto and carnivorous diets are inherently unhealthy, wasteful, and terrible for the climate, pollution, pandemic evolution, and antibiotic resistance.

you must be trying to make people sick on purpose!

Not sure what you mean by strict keto. You’re either metabolically in ketosis, or not. And there are a surprising number of health benefits to ketosis. I’m saying this as a vegan, these are just the facts.

It may cause liver damage though.

(Also, it's a little harder but you can do a vegan keto diet: https://www.reddit.com/r/veganketo/)

Yeah, seeds, nuts and likewise nutritionally dense vegetables, like kale, can take you a long way. Alongside soy protein isolate.

Humans and some other animals lost the ability to synthesize vitamin C endogenously (GULO/GULOP). Strepsirrhini (lorises, etc.) primates retained it while Haplorhini (humans and such) lost it. It's speculated that the loss is preferentially adaptive to starvation survival, which isn't really a concern anymore for overfed modern humans.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22294879/

After a long pacific crossing with no fruit onboard, I'd highly advise all pirates to megadose Vitamin C.

Yeah, I don't even know where this "vitamin C for colds" thing even came from. It's never made sense to me.

Linus Pauling, AFAIK: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/07/the-vitam... His theory has been debunked over and over...

From someone that sells Vitamin C?

Kinda like the coat guy who said: if you go outside without a coat when it's cold you'll get sick.

Or, “catch a cold”. It’s amazing to me how many people still think that being cold actually causes a cold.

Huh? Why wouldn't it make sense?

Making sure you have adequate levels of minerals and vitamins while you're sick makes A LOT of sense to me.

I literally only take multivitamins when I get a flu or something.

I recommend that people look for a meta analysis instead of individual trials when searching for medical research. Whilst randomized controlled trials are excellent, the sample size is often quite small. A meta analysis avoids this problem by combining the results of many trials together.

For example, this analysis: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23440782/ finds that whilst the general population probably finds no benefit to Vit C, people who were "exposed to brief periods of severe physical exercise" did. Note that this meta analysis contains 11,000 participants, far more than the 400 in the original article.

Personally I’m more wary of meta-analysis than I am of individual trials. As a reader of a meta paper it’s almost impossible to separate out bad data and it means to be “good science” the analysis compilers must have even more integrity and scrutiny than the original authors (which feels like it’s hard to come by in the current scientific landscape).

My totally anecdotal (and probably largely placebo-based) move is to eat a clove of raw garlic anytime I feel a sickness coming on. For whatever reason it seems to work :)

Same here, although I eat an onion before bed. I highly suspect it has to do with these:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytoncide

Now I want to see an N=400 study on garlic and onions as cold remedies

Probably works by keeping the infected person at bay, esp out of kissing / intimate convo distance, so you have time to fight the start of the virus while it’s small.

Keeps the vampires away too. Always a nice bonus for us garlic-lovers.

MDVC: In an effort to combat the deleterious effects of kidneys with insufficient calcium oxalate kidney stones. ;)

Snake oil, grinding up endangered species as "traditional remedies", garlic, and vit C: the cargo cult of pseudoscience marches on.

In the case of the Vitamin C fad, it's a classic case of an overconfident public figure operating outside of their wheelhouse where they have no expertise combined with a naive "more=better" assumption.

Wasn’t there some contention that Pauling was actually taking the Vitamin C intravenously?

He did both orally and intravenously later on to get higher doses.

It’d be interesting to see if intravenous administration changes the results.

It bypasses the digestive system and goes directly to the bloodstream.

Could be interesting to see natural foods vs. supplements as well given the body is more efficient with the former.

Surely there’s more important things to study than age old folk remedies.

If you are calling Vitamin C an age old folk remedy, consider that only 50 years ago a public controversy had millions of people taking it. And recently, many studies have shown significant benefits to general health. All in the name of finding the right molecules in the right amounts.

> Virtually all studies show improved quality of life for cancer patients by minimizing pain and protecting normal tissues from toxicity caused by chemotherapy. Additionally, vitamin C showed synergistic effects when combined with radiation and standard chemotherapies.

> Now a growing number of preclinical studies are showing how high-dose vitamin C might benefit cancer patients. Importantly, these preclinical studies provide a clear rationale and potential biomarkers that may help personalize the therapeutic approach and identify patient populations that are likely to respond to high-dose vitamin C therapy

https://www.cancer.gov/research/key-initiatives/ras/ras-cent...

Pardon, I was only thinking about its use for common colds which is the context I constantly hear people harping on (and the subject of the post right?). I’m less familiar with the lit on its use for cancer.

Though I will say the summary of various metanalysis on Wikipedia makes it sound far less positive than you did. If there’s other/newer/better metas then someone should add them to wiki.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_C#Cancer

Ah gotcha, such is the case with any controversial thing. The reality is much more mixed. Vitamin D is a good example of what the opposite looks like. Mostly positive entries but is largely debated. Maybe in another 50 years we will have more data.

Ya reading ACX’s articles on vitamin D was a good illustration in how hard it is to have reliable studies that you can be confident in. With health and large populations there’s just so many confounding factors.

This is extremely speculative.

I'd love to see if his arterial sclerotic plaque was affected by intravenous C. My guess is that it would be much reduced, especially near the site of injection.

One of my most vivid recollections of quality-assurance lab work at a chemical production plant was the weekly cleaning of the QC stills. Cool tap water ran 24x7 through glass vessels surrounding small distillation towers. Over time, alkaline deposits from the tap water would adhere to the glass and reduce the cooling efficiency. We cleaned the vessels by injecting HCL into the tap water once a week. As the acid solution passed through the stills' cooling tubes (about 10' x 12' glassware) the occluded glass became pristine in less than a minute - a very striking display of acid effects in solution upon alkaline deposits.

Look! There's a duck!!

This is this from 2001.

It seems like HN has stopped adding the year to articles lately? Is this a change of policy?

Not at all! but the years get added manually, either by submitters or moderators.

What submissions did you see that needed a year but didn't get one?

Gotcha. I just went back and checked some and they all have years now. Hypothesis: this was a perception bias on my part. The decline of social media has increased my HN engagement so that I'm reading more posts earlier, before they've had the year added.

> Hypothesis: this was a perception bias on my part.

I don't know if it was or not but you definitely get a chocolate star for considering the possibility. You wouldn't (well, I can't) believe how uncommon that is!

Added. Thanks!

And yet widely believed, even by recent MD graduates*.

* n=1 MD graduate, 3rd Faculty of Medicine UK

vitamin c is overlooked. its a potent antioxidant. ingesting enough antioxidant is going to have some of of effect biochemically.

Ingesting enough of any chemical will have an effect on your biochemistry.

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