Can Vitamin-C resist us from COVID-19?

An important note

No supplement will cure or prevent disease totally.

With the 2019 corona virus COVID-19 pandemic, it’s especially important to understand that no supplement, diet, or other lifestyle modification other than physical distancing, also known as social distancing, and proper hygiene practices can protect you from COVID-19.

You may have noticed the vitamin C section of the supplement aisle looking bare these days or seen the claims on social media that vitamin C can help with COVID-19.

While physicians and researchers are studying the effects of high dose intravenous (IV) vitamin C on the new coronavirus, no supplement, including vitamin C, can prevent or treat COVID-19.

This article reviews what vitamin C is, how it affects immunity, how it’s being tried for COVID-19 treatment in a hospital setting, and whether taking an oral supplement is beneficial.

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What is vitamin C?

Vitamin C is an essential nutrient with several roles in your body. It’s a potent antioxidant, meaning it can neutralize unstable compounds in your body called free radicals and help prevent or reverse cellular damage caused by these compounds .Trusted Source

It’s also involved in a number of biochemical processes, many of which are related to immune health.Trusted Source

The Daily Value (DV) for vitamin C is 90 mg per day, but breastfeeding women need an extra 30 mg and people who smoke need an extra 35 mg per day.

It’s pretty easy to meet your vitamin C needs through your diet as long as you eat a variety of fruits and vegetables. For example, a single medium orange provides 77% of the DV, and 1 cup (160 grams) of cooked broccoli provides 112% of the DV.

Trusted Source

How does it affect immunity?

Vitamin C affects your immune health in several ways. Its antioxidant activity can decrease inflammation, which may help improve your immune function.

Vitamin C also keeps your skin healthy by boosting collagen production, helping the skin serve as a functional barrier to keep harmful compounds from entering your body. Vitamin C in the skin can also promote wound healing.

The vitamin also boosts the activity of phagocytes, immune cells that can “swallow” harmful bacteria and other particles.

In addition, it promotes the growth and spread of lymphocytes, a type of immune cell that increases your circulating antibodies, proteins that can attack foreign or harmful substances in your blood.

In studies of its effectiveness against viruses that cause the common cold, vitamin C doesn’t appear to make you any less likely to get a cold — but it may help you get over a cold faster and make the symptoms less severe.Trusted Sourc).

There’s also some evidence from animal research and case studies in humans that high dose or IV vitamin C can reduce lung inflammation in severe respiratory illnesses caused by H1N1 (“swine flu”) or other viruses.

However, these doses were far above the DV, and there’s not enough research to support the use of high dose vitamin C for lung inflammation at this time. You shouldn’t take high doses of vitamin C supplements — even orally — because they can cause side effects like diarrhea.

Vitamin C and COVID-19

In an article published in the Chinese Journal of Infection Diseases, the Shanghai Medical Association endorsed the use of high dose vitamin C as a treatment for hospitalized people with COVID-19.

Doses that are magnitudes higher than the DV are recommended to be given through IV to improve lung function, which may help keep a patient off of mechanical ventilation or life support.

Additionally, a 2019 review found that both oral and IV high dose vitamin C treatment may aid people admitted to intensive care units (ICUs) for critical illnesses by reducing ICU stay length by 8% and shortening the duration of mechanical ventilation by 18.2%.

Chinese researchers have also registered a clinical trial to further study the effectiveness of IV vitamin C in hospitalized people with COVID-19.

However, it’s important to note that vitamin C is not yet a standard part of the treatment plan for COVID-19 because evidence is still lacking.

Though high dose IV vitamin C is currently being tested to see if it can improve lung function in people with COVID-19, no evidence suggests that high doses of oral vitamin C supplements can help with the disease. In fact, they can cause complications like diarrhea.

Vitamin-C based foods:-

	Food	Serving size	Milligrams (mg) per serving	Percent of 90 mg daily value (DV)
1	Guava, raw	1 cup, raw	377	419%
2	Sweet red pepper, raw	1 cup, raw	190	211%
3	Tomato juice	1 cup, canned	170	188.9%
4	Orange juice	1 cup	124	137.8%
5	Sweet green pepper	1 cup, raw	120	133%
6	Hot green chili pepper, raw	1 pepper, raw	109	121%
7	Oranges	1 large fruit	97.5	108.8%
8	Strawberries	1 cup, sliced	97.6	108%
9	Papaya	1 small fruit	95.6	106.2%
10	Pink grapefruit juice	1 cup	93.9	104.3%
11	Broccoli	1 cup, raw	81.2	90.2%
12	Pineapple chunks	1 cup, raw	78.9	87.7%
13	Potato	1 large vegetable	72.7	80.8%
14	Brussels sprouts	1 cup, raw	74.8	79.8%
15	Kiwifruit	1 fruit	64	71.1%
16	Mango	1 cup, raw	60.1	66.7%
17	Cantaloupe	1 cup	57.3	63.7%
18	Cauliflower	1 cup, raw	51.6	57.3%
19	Lemon	1 fruit	44.5	49.4%
20	White grapefruit	½ medium fruit	39	43.3%