Now here is a well traveled highway:
sniffle > cold > flu > pneumonia
Vitamin C can help stop this series before it starts.
The further you've gone down the path of sickness, the more "C" it will take to heal. The faster a locomotive is going, the more braking power it takes to stop it. Dr. Linus Pauling says to start taking more C at the very first sniffle. Good idea.
It is common for people to raise their eyebrows when many therapeutic claims are made for a single vitamin. "Vitamin C for colds, maybe. But pneumonia? C'mon!"
My central thesis may help explain it: The reason one vitamin can CURE so many conditions is that a deficiency of one vitamin can CAUSE many conditions. Disease is often the aggravated result of vitamin deficiency. If this seems to be too much emphasis on nutrition and not enough on microbes, we must remember that we live with viruses and bacteria all about us, all the time. Yet everyone is not sick all of the time. Differing nutritional status is at least as important a consideration as any other. A deficiency of any one vitamin can eventually cause death. Still, the aggressive use of vitamins to cure disease is seldom advocated.
Take vitamin C, for example. Because it is so good for so many illnesses, to the medical profession it is seen as TOO good for TOO MANY conditions. What a nice problem to have. This substance is too useful. Mmm. Can't have that, now, can we!
Of course, doctors use the same antibiotic for dozens of different infectious diseases. Their argument is that there is cause (pathogenic bacteria) that must be stopped. Antibiotics kill bacteria like an A-bomb. Vitamin C stops bacteria in a different way: it works through the body's immune system, like the French Resistance. You can probably win the war either way, but I'd rather avoid the negative effects of both the Bomb and the antibiotics.
A discussion of bacteria here is not entirely off-topic. Doctors (including a board-certified internist friend of mine who treated me, long ago) will give antibiotics for viral illnesses, such as pneumonia, to treat or prevent a secondary infection.
Robert F. Cathcart III, M.D., writes:
“Massive doses of ascorbate assist the immune system to kill bacteria within the body but also have the ability to kill bacteria by some mechanism, which does not seem to involve the immune system. These bacteria and L-forms of bacteria hide out in cells, especially when antibiotics are used, and explain some of the resistance acquired by bacteria against antibiotics. I have yet to see bacteria that can become resistant to massive doses of ascorbate in combination with first and second-generation antibiotics. Admittedly in a private practice, I do not see the most resistant bacteria, but this combination has been impressive and deserves to be tried against the most resistant bacteria. It may solve the impending problem of increasingly resistant bacteria.”
COLDS AND FLU
Dr. Robert Cathcart says vitamin C works exceptionally well as an antiviral (and antibiotic) if you take enough. "Enough" is called "saturation," and is indicated by loose bowels and/or intestinal gas. Try taking vitamin C until saturation is reached.
Additional suggestions:
0,000 IU of Vitamin A daily and a few grams of bioflavonoid supplements will also help. When sick, I drink lots of carrot juice and don't need to take extra vitamin A. During illness, if you eat almost entirely fruits and vegetables, you won't need the bioflavonoid supplement either.
The biggest difference you will find in treating influenza is that your saturation level of vitamin C will be higher (perhaps MUCH higher) than with the common cold. Dr. Linus Pauling has been saying this for decades, starting with his classic book, Vitamin C, The Common Cold and The Flu (Freeman, 1970). His more recent book, How To Live Longer and Feel Better (1986, revised 2006 and reviewed at
http://www.doctoryourself.com/livelonger.html ), is even better. It is practical, clear, and contains hundreds of supporting scientific references.
BRONCHITIS AND PNEUMONIA
Preventing is obviously easier than treating severe illness. Immediate use of hourly gram doses of vitamin C up to saturation will usually stop bronchitis or pneumonia from ever starting. But if they have, treat serious illness seriously: in the very young or the very old, pneumonia can kill. Do not hesitate to seek medical attention.
Here is a second opinion. Dr. Cathcart advocates treating pneumonia with up to 200,000 milligrams of vitamin C daily, often intravenously. You and I can simulate a 24 hour IV of Vitamin C by taking it by mouth very, very often. When I had pneumonia, it took 2,000 mg of vitamin C every six minutes to get me to saturation. My oral daily dose was over 100,000 mg. Fever, cough and other symptoms were reduced in hours; complete recovery took just a few days. Bronchitis clears up even faster. That is performance at least as good as any antibiotic will give, and the vitamin is both safer and cheaper.
May I suggest consulting the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine for additional support for mega-vitamin therapies? The research is done, the write-ups are out there, and you can read hundreds of papers free of charge right now at
http://orthomolecular.org/library/jom/ .
Treating respiratory infections with massive amounts of vitamin C is not a new idea at all. Frederick R. Klenner, M.D. and William J. McCormick, M.D. used this approach successfully for decades beginning back in the 1940's. You will want to consult their works, listed in the Bibliography under "Vitamin C," or do a website search for their names. Doctors who think that vitamin C generally has merit, but that massive doses are ineffective or somehow harmful will do well to read the original papers for themselves. Clinical evidence confirms the powerful antibiotic effect of vitamin C when used in sufficient quantity.
Speaking as a parent, I can confirm that vitamin C works as well as antibiotics since our children have never needed antibiotics, not even once. That is not because we did nothing; we used vitamin C instead.
Vitamin C can be used alone or right along with medicines if one so chooses. Prescription drugs are not doing the job. 75,000 Americans die from pneumonia each year (Vital Statistics of the U.S., Department of Health and Human Services, Vol. 2, 1989). There is no question that aggressive use of vitamin C would lower that figure a great deal. There is no excuse for excluding it.
An interesting if not downright revealing article at medicinenet.com (1) says, in part:
"According to a study appearing in the Sept. 22 online issue of The Lancet, vaccines against influenza are only "modestly effective" in people in long-term care facilities and even less effective for elderly people still living in the community. . . "The vaccine doesn't work very well at all," said study author Dr. Tom Jefferson, an epidemiologist with the Cochrane Vaccines Field in Rome. "Vaccines are being used as an ideological weapon. What you see every year as the flu is caused by 200 or 300 different agents with a vaccine against two of them. That is simply nonsense." Dr. Marc Siegel, author of "False Alarm: The Truth About the Epidemic of Fear," agreed. "We have set up a situation where a fear is created, and then we try to create the treatment for this fear. The public gets the idea that the flu is going to kill them and the vaccine will save them. Neither is true," he said."
For the record, both these critics are medical doctors.
With our century's worth of accumulated scientific hindsight, we must today ask this: Was a lack of vaccinations really the cause of those flu deaths, or was it really wartime stress, and especially war-induced malnutrition, that set the stage in 1918? And now, once again, we have an alarming and rather similar scenario: between nutrient-poor processed convenience foods, McNothing meals and TV news scare stories, we have the basic ingredients for an epidemic.
But we now also have a simple, safe and effective answer. First, the nutrition solution: eat a good, healthy, whole foods natural diet, and take lots and lots of vitamin C. And second: relax! De-stress your life, take it easy, and cheer up. It has been very well said that you are of much more value than any number of birds. You are factory-equipped with a kick-ass mammalian immune system that is a true marvel of nature. To maximize your resistance to any viral disease, including any strain of flu, I think you would do well to stop eating processed junk food, and load up on ascorbate.
You too can be chipper and chirping away, ignoring swine flu hype, SARS scares, bird flu panics, or any other viral bogeymen being used to scare you into a coerced relationship with a flu shot.
Reference:
1. Gardner A. Flu vaccine only mildly effective in elderly. HealthDay Reporter, Sept 21, 2005.
MEDICAL DOCTOR CONFIRMS: VITAMIN C CURES BIRD FLU
The best presentation I have ever seen on just how vitamin C megadoses prevent and cure avian influenza is posted for free reading at the website of Robert F. Cathcart, M.D.:
http://orthomed.com/bird.htm LinkWhy flu shots don't workVaccinations and Children