Can Vitamin C Protect You from COVID-19?

An important note

No supplement will cure or prevent disease.

With the 2019 coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic, it’s especially important to understand that no supplement, diet, or other lifestyle modification other than 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.
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.

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

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.

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.

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.

    Summary

    Vitamin C is an important nutrient found in fruit and vegetables that may help shorten the duration and severity of colds. High doses are being studied for their potential to decrease lung inflammation, but more research is needed.

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 .

    Summary

    High dose IV vitamin C has been used in China to help improve lung function in people with COVID-19. However, vitamin C’s effectiveness is still being tested. There’s no evidence to support the use of oral vitamin C supplements for COVID-19.

Do you need to supplement?

Currently, no evidence supports the use of oral vitamin C supplements to prevent COVID-19.

Vitamin C may help shorten the duration and severity of colds caused by other viruses, but this is no guarantee that it will have the same effect on the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

Additionally, vitamin C is a water-soluble vitamin. It dissolves in water, meaning that excess amounts aren’t stored in your body but instead eliminated through your urine. Taking more vitamin C does not mean that your body is absorbing more .

High dose vitamin C supplements may even cause diarrhea, as they can signal your body to pull water out of the cells and into your digestive tract.

Moreover, although high dose vitamin C appears promising for COVID-19 treatment, these doses were exceptionally high and given via IV — not taken orally. Additionally, it was only given in cases severe enough to require hospitalization.

Your best bet is to eat a diet that’s full of a variety of fruits and vegetables, which naturally provide all the vitamin C a healthy person needs — along with many other nutrients and antioxidants.

Choosing a supplement

If you do choose to take a vitamin C supplement, it’s important to choose one that’s high quality and to take the correct dose.

While supplements are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), they aren’t held to the same safety standards as pharmaceuticals. Thus, it’s important to purchase supplements from reputable companies.

Some third-party organizations, such as NSF International, ConsumerLab, and United States Pharmacopeia (USP), test supplements for purity and label accuracy. You may want to choose a vitamin C supplement that has been tested by one of these companies.

Additionally, the Upper Limit (UL) for supplemental vitamin C — the amount most people can consume daily without negative effects — is 2,000 mg.

Most vitamin C supplements provide a daily dose of anywhere from 250–1,000 mg, so it can be easy to exceed the UL if you’re not careful. Be sure to read the packaging and take only the recommended dose to avoid complications.

Vitamin C may also interfere with chemotherapy, radiation treatments, or cholesterol lowering drugs .

That said, when used in clinical settings treating critically ill patients, very high dose vitamin C treatments are safe and not associated with significant side effects .

If you have any concerns about vitamin C supplements, you should consult your healthcare provider before adding it to your routine.

    Summary

    There’s no evidence that vitamin C supplements help prevent COVID-19. In fact, high doses are likely just excreted through your urine. If you do supplement, choose a product tested by a third party and don’t take more than 2,000 mg per day.

The bottom line

Vitamin C is an important nutrient that keeps your immune system functioning properly.

According to a report published by the Shanghai Medical Association, high dose IV vitamin C may improve lung function in hospitalized people with COVID-19.

However, there’s no proof that oral vitamin C supplements will help treat or prevent COVID-19.

To get plenty of immune-strengthening vitamin C in your diet, make sure you’re eating a variety of fruits and vegetables.

Though there’s currently no cure for COVID-19, preventive measures like social distancing and proper hygiene can help protect you from developing the disease.

 

This is only for your information, kindly take the advice of your doctor for medicines, exercises and so on.     

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Stress-related hormone cortisol lowers significantly after just 45 minutes of art creation

Whether you’re Van Gogh or a stick-figure sketcher, a new Drexel University study found that making art can significantly reduce stress-related hormones in your body.

Although the researchers from Drexel’s College of Nursing and Health Professions believed that past experience in creating art might amplify the activity’s stress-reducing effects, their study found that everyone seems to benefit equally.

“It was surprising and it also wasn’t,” said an assistant professor of creative arts therapies. “It wasn’t surprising because that’s the core idea in art therapy: Everyone is creative and can be expressive in the visual arts when working in a supportive setting. That said, I did expect that perhaps the effects would be stronger for those with prior experience.”

The results of the study were published in Art Therapy under the title “Reduction of Cortisol Levels and Participants’ Responses Following Art Making.” Kendra Ray, a doctoral student under Kaimal, and Juan Muniz, PhD, an assistant teaching professor in the Department of Nutrition Sciences, served as co-authors.

“Biomarkers” are biological indicators (like hormones) that can be used to measure conditions in the body, such as stress. Cortisol was one such the hormone measured in the study through saliva samples. The higher a person’s cortisol level, the more stressed a person is likely to be.

For Kaimal’s study, 39 adults, ranging from 18 to 59 years old, were invited to participate in 45 minutes of art-making. Cortisol levels were taken before and after the art-making period.

Materials available to the participants included markers and paper, modeling clay and collage materials. There were no directions given and every participant could use any of the materials they chose to create any work of art they desired. An art therapist was present during the activity to help if the participant requested any.

Of those who took part in the study, just under half reported that they had limited experience in making art.

The researchers found that 75 percent of the participants’ cortisol levels lowered during their 45 minutes of making art. And while there was some variation in how much cortisol levels lowered, there was no correlation between past art experiences and lower levels.

Written testimonies of their experiences afterward revealed how the participants felt about the creating art.

“It was very relaxing,” one wrote. “After about five minutes, I felt less anxious. I was able to obsess less about things that I had not done or need [ed]to get done. Doing art allowed me to put things into perspective.”

However, roughly 25 percent of the participants actually registered higher levels of cortisol — though that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

“Some amount of cortisol is essential for functioning,” Kaimal explained. “For example, our cortisol levels vary throughout the day — levels are highest in the morning because that gives us an energy boost to us going at the start of the day. It could’ve been that the art-making resulted in a state of arousal and/or engagement in the study’s participants.”

Kaimal and her team believed, going into the study, that the type of art materials used by participants might affect cortisol levels. They thought that the less-structured mediums — using clay or drawing with markers — would result in lower cortisol levels than the structured — collaging. That, however, wasn’t supported by the results, as no significant correlation was found.

The study did find a weak correlation between age and lower cortisol levels. Younger participants exhibited consistently lower cortisol levels after they’d created art.

Those results made Kaimal wonder about how young college students and high school students deal with the stress that comes from academia — and how creative arts can help.

“I think one reason might be that younger people are developmentally still figuring out ways to deal with stress and challenges, while older individuals — just from having lived life and being older — might have more strategies to problem-solve and manage stress more effectively,” Kaimal said.

In light of that, Kaimal plans to extend the study to explore whether “creative self- expression in a therapeutic environment can help reduce stress.” In that study, other biomarkers like alpha amylase and oxytocin will also be measured to give a more comprehensive picture.

Additionally, Kaimal also plans to study how visual arts-based expression affects end-of-life patients and their caregivers.

“We want to ultimately examine how creative pursuits could help with psychological well-being and, therefore, physiological health, as well,” she said.

this is only for your information, kindly take the advice of your doctor for medicines, exercises and so on.     
https://gscrochetdesigns.blogspot.com. one can see my crochet creations  
https://gseasyrecipes.blogspot.com. feel free to view for easy, simple and healthy recipes    
https://kneereplacement-stickclub.blogspot.com. for info on knee replacement