Flu Remedy Blog

Last week my little brother had a cold and as usual my mother brought the vitamin C bottle and began to staff my little brother with vitamin C. A lot of people do that as they believe Vitamin C could treat flu but is that a scientific fact or just an old tradition?

Vitamin C was isolated 1950 and along the past 60 years, Vitamin C was thought to have a great role in preventing and treating Common cold. Vitamin C proved to help with the respiratory infection and therefore it was prescribed frequently for common cold. But does vitamin C  have a role in preventing or treating Common cold? Actually recent studies have another opinion.

Over the last 30 years many studies tried to detect the role of vitamin c in preventing common cold or reducing its duration, the overall result is vitamin C doesn’t prevent common cold and slightly reduce the illness duration only by 8% in adults and 14% in children. So, vitamin C doesn’t have a proven role neither in preventing nor treating common cold and it shouldn’t be over prescribed to treat flu.

But when it comes to people with high metabolic requirements such as soldiers and athletes supplement of vitamin C helped them in recovering faster from Common cold.

So is that means Vitamin C isn’t important or a scam? Of course not, Vitamin C is a water soluble vitamin that contains antioxidant which neutralizes free radicals and prevents early cell death which is important to guard against cancer and infections. Also vitamin C  has a great importance in building healthy blood vessels, bones and muscles, Vitamin C is essential for collagen formation so it’s also important for healthiness of skin, nails, hair and eyes.

The real deal about vitamin C is its helpful role in boosting the immune system.   Vitamin C proved to raise the concentration of antibodies in the blood. Mainly Immunoglobulin IgA which exist in the mucus lining of nasal and respiratory system. IgA attach the microorganism that invades the body trying to prevent its entrance to the cells. Vitamin C also increases the concentration of immunoglobulin IgM which is the antibodies responsible for the immune response against infection of a new organism for the first time.

Vitamin C deficiency are very common because it is water soluble daily washed by kidney and it is not stored in the body. So eating healthy fresh food every day is important to get the daily requirement of vitamin C. The daily requirement or Vitamin C is 90 mg in adult male and 75 mg in adult female. Supplement of vitamin C over 200 mg a day aren’t useful as they pass directly through the kidney and may be very harmful for people with kidney conditions.

Vitamin C deficiency symptoms are weakness, gum bleed, nose bleed, skin changes, eye changes and Scurvy (disease affecting people with long standing vitamin C deficiency)

It is better to get your vitamin C requirement from fresh fruits and vegetables such as citrus fruits and tomatoes rather than a medication. Vitamins at Medications are more concentrated and after usage for long time they make your intestine more dependent on them and unable to extract the vitamins from food.

The bottom line here, Vitamin C doesn’t have a proven role in preventing or treating flu as we assumed before. But it has a great role in maintaining your body sound and healthy.