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Vitamin C can help stop this series before it starts.

The further you've gone down the path of sickness, the more "C" it will take to heal. The faster a locomotive is going, the more braking power it takes to stop it. Dr. Linus Pauling says to start taking more C at the very first sniffle. Good idea.

It is common for people to raise their eyebrows when many therapeutic claims are made for a single vitamin. "Vitamin C for colds, maybe. But pneumonia? C'mon!"

My central thesis may help explain it: The reason one vitamin can CURE so many conditions is that a deficiency of one vitamin can CAUSE many conditions. Disease is often the aggravated result of vitamin deficiency. If this seems to be too much emphasis on nutrition and not enough on microbes, we must remember that we live with viruses and bacteria all about us, all the time. Yet everyone is not sick all of the time. Differing nutritional status is at least as important a consideration as any other. A deficiency of any one vitamin can eventually cause death. Still, the aggressive use of vitamins to cure disease is seldom advocated.

Take vitamin C, for example. Because it is so good for so many illnesses, to the medical profession it is seen as TOO good for TOO MANY conditions. What a nice problem to have. This substance is too useful. Mmm. Can't have that, now, can we!

Of course, doctors use the same antibiotic for dozens of different infectious diseases. Their argument is that there is cause (pathogenic bacteria) that must be stopped. Antibiotics kill bacteria like an A-bomb. Vitamin C stops bacteria in a different way: it works through the body's immune system, like the French Resistance. You can probably win the war either way, but I'd rather avoid the negative effects of both the Bomb and the antibiotics.

A discussion of bacteria here is not entirely off-topic. Doctors (including a board-certified internist friend of mine who treated me, long ago) will give antibiotics for viral illnesses, such as pneumonia, to treat or prevent a secondary infection.

Robert F. Cathcart III, M.D., writes:

“Massive doses of ascorbate assist the immune system to kill bacteria within the body but also have the ability to kill bacteria by some mechanism, which does not seem to involve the immune system. These bacteria and L-forms of bacteria hide out in cells, especially when antibiotics are used, and explain some of the resistance acquired by bacteria against antibiotics. I have yet to see bacteria that can become resistant to massive doses of ascorbate in combination with first and second-generation antibiotics. Admittedly in a private practice, I do not see the most resistant bacteria, but this combination has been impressive and deserves to be tried against the most resistant bacteria. It may solve the impending problem of increasingly resistant bacteria.”

COLDS AND FLU

Dr. Robert Cathcart says vitamin C works exceptionally well as an antiviral (and antibiotic) if you take enough. "Enough" is called "saturation," and is indicated by loose bowels and/or intestinal gas. Try taking vitamin C until saturation is reached.

Additional suggestions:

20,000 IU of Vitamin A daily and a few grams of bioflavonoid supplements will also help. When sick, I drink lots of carrot juice and don't need to take extra vitamin A. During illness, if you eat almost entirely fruits and vegetables, you won't need the bioflavonoid supplement either.

The biggest difference you will find in treating influenza is that your saturation level of vitamin C will be higher (perhaps MUCH higher) than with the common cold. Dr. Linus Pauling has been saying this for decades, starting with his classic book, Vitamin C, The Common Cold and The Flu (Freeman, 1970). His more recent book, How To Live Longer and Feel Better (1986, revised 2006 and reviewed at http://www.doctoryourself.com/livelonger.html ), is even better. It is practical, clear, and contains hundreds of supporting scientific references.

BRONCHITIS AND PNEUMONIA

Preventing is obviously easier than treating severe illness. Immediate use of hourly gram doses of vitamin C up to saturation will usually stop bronchitis or pneumonia from ever starting. But if they have, treat serious illness seriously: in the very young or the very old, pneumonia can kill. Do not hesitate to seek medical attention.

Here is a second opinion. Dr. Cathcart advocates treating pneumonia with up to 200,000 milligrams of vitamin C daily, often intravenously. You and I can simulate a 24 hour IV of Vitamin C by taking it by mouth very, very often. When I had pneumonia, it took 2,000 mg of vitamin C every six minutes to get me to saturation. My oral daily dose was over 100,000 mg. Fever, cough and other symptoms were reduced in hours; complete recovery took just a few days. Bronchitis clears up even faster. That is performance at least as good as any antibiotic will give, and the vitamin is both safer and cheaper.

May I suggest consulting the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine for additional support for mega-vitamin therapies? The research is done, the write-ups are out there, and you can read hundreds of papers free of charge right now at http://orthomolecular.org/library/jom/ .

Treating respiratory infections with massive amounts of vitamin C is not a new idea at all. Frederick R. Klenner, M.D. and William J. McCormick, M.D. used this approach successfully for decades beginning back in the 1940's. You will want to consult their works, listed in the Bibliography under "Vitamin C," or do a website search for their names. Doctors who think that vitamin C generally has merit, but that massive doses are ineffective or somehow harmful will do well to read the original papers for themselves. Clinical evidence confirms the powerful antibiotic effect of vitamin C when used in sufficient quantity.

Speaking as a parent, I can confirm that vitamin C works as well as antibiotics since our children have never needed antibiotics, not even once. That is not because we did nothing; we used vitamin C instead.

Vitamin C can be used alone or right along with medicines if one so chooses. Prescription drugs are not doing the job. 75,000 Americans die from pneumonia each year (Vital Statistics of the U.S., Department of Health and Human Services, Vol. 2, 1989). There is no question that aggressive use of vitamin C would lower that figure a great deal. There is no excuse for excluding it.

Andrew Saul is the author of the books FIRE YOUR DOCTOR! How to be Independently Healthy (reader reviews at http://www.doctoryourself.com/review.html ) and DOCTOR YOURSELF: Natural Healing that Works. (reviewed at http://www.doctoryourself.com/saulbooks.html )

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Andrew W. Saul

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