I would welcome any information on using ... - Healthy Evidence
I would welcome any information on using Intravenous Vitamin C for/with cancer treatment
This NHS page gives a summary and a link to the original paper. It appears to have been tried in only a small group of women so far.
You may find this article by Prof Edzard Ernst interesting:
Intravenous vitamin C as a treatment for cancer, a hallmark for cancer quackery?
edzardernst.com/2013/10/int...
He concludes:
"The question whether the regular intake of high doses of vitamin C have a preventative effect for certain cancers is currently open. But there is no good reason to suggest that high dose IV vitamin C is an effective treatment for any cancer. To pretend otherwise, as so many alternative practitioners seem to do, is less than responsible – in fact, it is a hallmark for cancer quackery."
There's a good take on the most recent stories on the Science-Based Medicine blog: sciencebasedmedicine.org/th... Also Cancer Research UK (who I work for) wrote a blog post a while ago on it: scienceblog.cancerresearchu...
Digging deeper into the actual literature, at the moment there aren't any decent large trials in patients supporting its effectiveness - this review concludes that there isn't really good evidence for benefit in patients based on the current evidence: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/245...
This was one small trial of 15 patients looking at dosage, not effectiveness: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/236... And this study looked at the impact of high dose vitamin C (aka ascorbate/ascorbic acid) on inflammation in 45 cancer patients, but not on whether it had any effect on the tumours: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/229... And this study hit the headlines last year, but was also small, not that conclusive, and is discussed (or rather, dissected) in depth in the Science-Based Medicine blog I linked to above: stm.sciencemag.org/content/...
There are some papers showing various effects - both positive and negative - on cancer cells grown in the lab or in animal models, here's a PubMed search for "high dose ascorbate cancer": ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?te... and one for "high dose vitamin C cancer" ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?te... so you can explore at your leisure.
Also the picture is quite confused with regard to antioxidants like vitamin C - some cancer treatments (especially radiotherapy) rely on the production of free radicals to work. these get mopped up by antioxidants, so they might actually have a negative impact, for example jn.nutrition.org/content/13... But in the absence of well-conducted, scientifically-rigorous, large clinical trials, it's very difficult to know for sure. Hope this is useful. K
Check out Linus Pauling. There's lots of information about him and Vitamin C on the internet. Also I watched a film a little while ago. It was the true story of an american man, I forget his name, who cured himself of ankylosing spondylitis, using intravenous Vitamin C. He did have the help of a doctor.
It's impossible to confirm that any one individual cured themselves of anything by using some sort of evidence-free treatment. An anecdote is not evidence I'm afraid.
His name is Norman Cousins, a political journalist. There's a lot about him on Wikipedia. He cured himself with laughter, positive thinking and VIT C. I'm aware that anecdote is not evidence.
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