• Original Articles By Dr. Lavin Featuring Expert Advice & Information about Pediatric Health Issues that you Care the Most About

    The ABC’s of Vitamins Failing to Help with Colds: Time to add the D

    By Dr. Arthur Lavin

    Readers of Real Answers will already be familiar with the very large amount of evidence that vitamins don’t prevent or treat colds.

    Now comes a very recent and large look at whether Vitamin D needs to be added to the extensive proof that Vitamins A, B, and C fail to do anything about colds.

    http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2643763?amp%3butm_source=JAMALatestIssue&utm_campaign=18-07-2017

    In this study, about 700 children were either given 400 or 2000 international units (IU) of Vitamin D a day.  The low dose group had lower Vitamin D levels in their blood than the high dose group, so we know the two groups did indeed have different experiences of Vitamin D in their bodies.

    The study looked to see how many colds each child got in each group, they actually swabbed everyone to see when a respiratory virus appeared and infected the child.

    So it’s a real good look at whether pumping up our children with Vitamin D does anything to change how many colds they get.

    Guess what?

    The high dose group got an average of 1 cold during the study period, and the low dose group got an average of….  1 cold  …. during the study period.

    No difference.

    The power of the great mind of Dr. Linus Pauling lives on.  He mused that Vitamin C would prevent colds and cancer later in his life.  He took loads of Vitamin C, as did his wife, but they both passed from cancer.  But the power of his mind launched a wild goose chase we are still running in now 50 years or more later.

    Vitamin C, then Vitamin A, then all the B Vitamins, and now today Vitamin D, have each been proposed to keep you from getting a cold or getting rid of one you have.

    In every instance, when we give people any of these vitamins, nothing happens to their colds, they get the same number and they last as long.

    After a few dozen studies prove vitamins have no impact on colds, one day, a lot of people will start believing the vitamin-cold concept was wrong all along, and move on to more productive theories.

    Who knows, maybe this very final word on Vitamin D and colds might just be the info that ends the interest in vitamins doing anything about colds.

    To your health,
    Dr. Arthur Lavin

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