An article published in The Star newspaper yesterday titled Vitamin C pills ‘unnecessary’ got me frowning. Seems like our beloved vitamin C isn’t needed as an immune booster anymore. Taking vitamin C supplements to prevent a cold is deemed a waste of time and money, according to researchers who carried out a study to examine the effects of vitamin C on human health.
The research was carried out by the Cochrane Collaboration, a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to disseminating research on health care. A review of 30 studies involving more than 11,000 people found that taking the tablets had no effect on the average person. According to the authors, the benefit of taking vitamin C supplements is so slight when it comes to colds that it is not worth the effort or expense, for most people.
“It doesn’t make sense to take vitamin C 365 days a year to lessen the chance of catching a cold,” said the co-author Harri Hemila, a professor in the Department of Public Health at the University of Helsinki. Professor Peter Openshaw, from Imperial College London, had the same opinion and maintained that a normal healthy diet provided enough vitamin C to prevent deficiency. He stressed that there is no evidence that taking huge doses of vitamin C does any harm but it would be costly and hence, spending money on getting fresh food rather than making up for a bad diet by taking vitamins is a better solution.
However, despite all the evidence that vitamin C is unnecessary when it comes to combating colds, researchers found that people under physical stress who took the recommended daily amount of vitamin C (1,000mg) were 50% less likely to have colds.
Personally, I feel that vitamin C supplements do help in driving away colds. Every time a feel a cold approaching, or whenever I have a sneezing fit, I will just reach for that bottle of ascorbic acid and take a dose of 500mg-750mg. And yes, my sniffing and sneezing would stop! No more reaching for tissues to blow my nose, and no more sniffing and sneezing during extremely quiet lectures (which would be quite embarassing and irritating, especially when the lecturer himself say “Bless you!”). It is indeed helpful to me in preventing colds, as proven on numerous occasions.
I’m sure a lot of people would prefer to take vitamin C pills rather than conventional cold medicine when having a cold. Consumers, being more educated and health conscious nowadays, are trying to avoid drugs as much as possible because of the potential side effects that comes with it. Of course, the most cold medicine can do is to cause sedation, although newer cold medicine do not cause that effect, but most people would still rather go for vitamins first, and drugs later.
The question here is: how much vitamin C do we need? Is the amount from our daily diet sufficient to prevent deficiency? Is the recommended daily allowance (RDA) just adequate to prevent deficiency and not to prevent colds? This, I would have to refer to my friends who will be dietitians in the future, who can determine the exact amount that each individual requires, according to their daily diet. Perhaps that would help in deciding whether vitamin C supplements are necessary. Of course, I would definitely get free consultations from my dietitian friends.
1 Comment
February 25, 2008 at 3:51 am
To me it is necessary to find