A new Cochrane review says: Vitamin C and the common cold.?.
breath! Source The answer is that, as always, the methods of such negative studies on vitamin C are crucial. There are very few conditions where there is just one cause / risk factor; and thus very few conditions e.g. scurvy where an isolated drug or micro-nutrient can make much difference alone – so taking just vit C alone for anything, except scurvy, is only moderately successful. BUT as in the original common cold studies in the UK, Prof Linus Pauling pointed out that there were indeed significant reductions in duration and severity of the common cold even with relatively low doses of vit C. Vit C usually helps greatly when combining a good multivitamin / mineral with Vitamin C orally to tolerance i.e. until diarrhoea starts, which in my case (with pneumonia) was 4 tsp (20 grams) of vit C every 2 hours. That’s when I turned the corner (within 6 hours) and could start reducing the dose. Vit C reduces the duration and severity as well as the incidence of infections by one-third which
