Every now and then, a non-scientific myth makes its way into the public psyche. These myths are supposedly supported by science, but in reality they’re only as good as old wives’ tales in their medical accuracy.
The idea that vitamin C helps cure common colds is one of them. Most people think that vitamin C can help cure a common cold if someone becomes infected, and even more people think that vitamin C can help prevent a common cold.
Turns out, it’s completely untrue that vitamin C can cure a cold, and the preventative effect is negligible as well. — Click to Tweet.
The Research
This news comes straight from Robert M. Douglas, emeritus professor at Australian National University, Canberra. He and his colleagues have reviewed over 60 years of clinical research, and come to the conclusion that vitamin C isn’t worth taking to reduce cold symptoms or prevent a cold.
The original speculation that it might be worth it, which has lasted decades since then, came from the fact that vitamin C affects resistance to viruses in lab animals. But the clinical trials on humans that followed showed varying results.
Douglas and his colleagues conducted a Cochrane Review, analyzing all of these studies with widely accept techniques. Their conclusions are as follows:
- “When taken after a cold starts, vitamin C supplements do not make a cold shorter or less severe.”
- “When taken as a daily preventive medicine, vitamin C very slightly shortens cold duration — by 8% in adults and by 13.6% in children.”
- “When given as a preventive medicine to highly fit people in conditions of extreme cold — data based mostly on marathon runners — vitamin C cuts the risk of getting a cold in half.”
Clearly, vitamin C does have some effect, but as Douglas points out, if an adult is going to suffer from a cold for a total of 12 days in a year, taking vitamin C in the mega-dose range on a daily basis would still result in him suffering from a cold 11 days in that year. A child would only receive a slightly larger benefit. Because of the uncertain side effects of taking vitamin C in such large doses, it doesn’t make medical sense to continue taking vitamin C supplements just to prevent colds.
The Extreme Conditions Exception
The only exception is for people engaged in extreme physical exercise under extremely cold conditions. And Douglas warns that these results may be hard to apply to the general public because the data is collected almost exclusively from marathon runners.
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