Inner Shift

Doctors call for vitamin C as a Covid treatment.

More than 5000 doctors and 20 medical institutes have launched a campaign to get vitamin C accepted as a primary treatment for Covid-19.

The campaign, Vitamin C for Covid, follows the publication of a major review of 100 trials that discovered the vitamin can save the lives of people badly infected by the virus and reduce the symptoms of milder infections.

Vitamin C is “safer than water, inexpensive and widely available,” said nutritionist Patrick Holford, who headed up the research project. “The appropriate use of vitamin C as early as possible in infection, and in high intravenous doses in intensive care units (ICUs), would potentially be a game-changer.”

High-dose vitamin C therapy is already being used in China, and 50 million one-gram doses were shipped into Wuhan, the epicentre of the Covid outbreak, as early as February last year, Holford added.

The campaign is seeking to get health authorities around the world to accept vitamin C as an effective therapy for Covid—instead of dismissing it as false information.

A little alcohol is good for you—but only if you’re over the age of 40. If you’re younger, no amount is safe, a new study has claimed.

Health benefits from alcohol only begin for the over-40s when a small glass of red wine, for instance, could help reduce the risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes.

By the time you reach your sixties, two glasses a day can have a beneficial effect, while those over the age of 65 can safely drink three glasses of alcohol a day.

Researchers from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation analysed data from 204 countries to discover that age is the key factor that determines the benefits—or dangers—of alcohol. In each of the countries, people aged between 15 and 39 were drinking dangerous amounts of alcohol; overall, 1.34 billion people were drinking excessively, with men being three times more likely than women to be consuming harmful amounts.

“Our message is simple: young people should not drink, but older people may benefit from drinking small amounts,” said Emmanuela Gakidou, one of the researchers. Although the researchers accept that their message is likely to be ignored by young people, they feel they should share their findings so that people can at least make informed choices.

Countries with ageing populations that may have higher risks of cardiovascular disease could benefit from encouraging moderate drinking among its older citizens, the researchers add.

But although alcohol—and red wine in particular—is known to benefit the heart and reduce the risk of diabetes, it is also linked to higher rates of cancer and dementia. Alcohol-related deaths and hospital admissions have risen sharply among the over-55s in the UK in the last 15 years.

(Source: Lancet, 2022; doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(22)00847-9)
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