Does vitamin C prevent colds, cancer, etc.?
Dear Cecil: Linus Pauling and others speak of the marvelous curative powers of vitamin C. I take it myself with superstitious regularity and virtually never get a cold. Yet others say there isn’t one shred of evidence that vitamin C prevents colds or any other disease. Your answer will be an inestimable service to mankind. — CC Writer, Chicago Cecil replies: All in a day’s work, bubba. The evidence for megadoses of vitamin C is mixed. One researcher, using data from eight separate studies, concluded that vitamin C freaks averaged about one-tenth fewer colds per year than other people, and their colds lasted one-tenth less time. More recently, researcher Elliot Dick at the University of Wisconsin studied 24 subjects, eight of whom had been exposed to a cold virus. Eight of the others vitamin C, and the other eight received a placebo. After a week of living together, seven of the eight placebo patients had colds compared with six of the eight vitamin C patients. The difference was that t
