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One hospital tries Vitamin C to treat coronavirus patients




KestneradminMAK

KestneradminMAK

Like everything else concerning the coronavirus pandemic, the usefulness of Vitamin C is subject to various medical opinions.  

Some physicians and hospitals in the United States and elsewhere around the world are providing intravenous Vitamin C treatment for those affected. Other medical experts and clinicians remain unconvinced of its effectiveness.

Vitamin C is a naturally occurring chemical that is involved in many processes in our body. Vitamins are important to many chemical processes in our body because they act as catalysts. A catalyst is something that facilitates or enhances a chemical reaction between two other substances. In other words, for many chemical reactions to occur in our bodies, it is vitally important that various vitamins be present to ensure that all the necessary chemical reactions occur as they should in your body.

Vitamins are crucially important to staying healthy. Vitamins are organic (carbon containing) compounds that our body needs in small amounts. Vitamins make our body work properly. Without the right amounts of vitamins, we will inevitably have some type of health problem. It is impossible to be truly healthy without an appropriate number of vitamins in our body.

There are 13 named vitamins. These are chemicals that are needed throughout our body to make sure that all the other chemicals in our body interact as they should.

Our bodies are enormously efficient and complex chemical factories. The number and diversity of chemical reactions going on at this instant in your body is staggering. Considering that you have trillions of cells carrying on routine or sometimes non-routine activities using the 60 chemicals that you are made of; it is easy to imagine that the chemistry going on is astounding.

Just existing requires a multitude of chemical reactions to occur in repetitious fashion in your body. Lungs breathing in, breathing out, heart pumping, digestive processing, bone and muscle building, blood filtering and cleaning … on and on it goes. All of these activities are the result of an endless array of chemical processes.

Vitamin C is especially valuable for a wide range of important functions related to your health.

Lately vitamin C (ascorbic acid) has been in the news because some doctors and hospitals utilizing it in their treatment of patients that have tested positive for Covid-19 or coronavirus.  Although some doctors feel strongly that Vitamin C is an important part of their treatment regimen, others are not convinced.  Therefore, some patients get vitamin C and others do not.

Dr. Andrew G. Weber, a pulmonologist and critical-care specialist affiliated with two hospitals on Long Island, immediately provides his intensive-care coronavirus patients with 1,500 milligrams of intravenous vitamin C.  This dose will then be repeated 3-4 times per day.

He reports that the patients that receive the Vitamin C respond significantly better than those that do not receive the vitamin.  He stated that the patient’s levels of Vitamin C drop precipitously at a certain point in the disease and it just make sense for him as a specialist physician to supplement the vitamin C.

Dr. Weber is not the only doctor that is enthusiastic about using vitamin C for Covid-19 patients. According to the National Library of Medicine a clinical trial on the effectiveness of intravenous vitamin C on coronavirus patients began Feb. 14 at Zhongnan Hospital in Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the pandemic.  The randomized, triple-blind study involved an estimated 140 participants and is expected to be complete by Sept. 30, according to information posted on the US National Library of Medicine’s (NLM) website.

Vitamin C has already been shown to be helpful for a wide range of inflammatory and infectious conditions.  According to the NLM website describing the study:  

“Vitamin C is significant to human body and plays a role in reducing inflammatory response and preventing common cold. In addition, a few studies have shown that vitamin C deficiency is related to the increased risk and severity of influenza infections.”

Note that there is as yet no evidence that vitamin C is effective in preventing Covid-19 or that consumers can take the vitamin orally in doses that are sufficient to treat Covid-19.  It is used intravenously in select hospital settings only.

We know vitamin C can act as an effective natural antihistamine which can be helpful during allergy season as well as in wound healing and other common conditions. (Try it for your seasonal allergy relief.)  Immune system function is enhanced by vitamin C supplementation.  Vitamin C is one of the most helpful and least expensive nutritional supplements available today.

Do I take it?  Yes, I do.  I prefer a chewable orange-flavored vitamin C supplement that is made by a company here in Tennessee that has been trusted by healthcare professionals for more than 50 years. It is available in our office.

Dr. Mark Kestner is a licensed chiropractic physician in Murfreesboro. His office is at 1435 NW Broad St. Contact him at mkestner@DrKestner.com.

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