Study: Vitamin C plus quercetin a solid remedy for coronavirus
Eastern Virginia Medical School and University of Rome, July 28, 2020
New research published in the journal Frontiers in Immunology has revealed that vitamin C combined with quercetin represents a powerful natural remedy for the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19).
Entitled, “Quercetin and Vitamin C: An Experimental Synergistic Therapy for the Prevention and Treatment of SARS-CoV-2 Related Disease (COVID-19),” the paper takes a detailed look at the antiviral properties of these two nutrients, which together show incredible promise in helping Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) patients recover.
It explains that quercetin has the ability to interfere “at multiple steps of pathogen virulence,” including at “virus entry, virus replication, (and) protein assembly” to inhibit the viral infection and proliferation. And when combined with vitamin C, quercetin is effective “for both the prophylaxis and the early treatment” of the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19), as well as other respiratory tract infections.
In case you are unfamiliar with it, quercetin is a plant pigment in the flavonoid family that possesses antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antiviral, and immune-protective properties. It has also been studied extensively for its ability to inhibit polymerases, proteases, and reverse transcriptase, as well as to suppress DNA gyrase and bind viral capsid proteins.
This might sound like complicated language to the average “Joe,” but suffice it to say that quercetin, especially when amplified by the presence of vitamin C, obstructs viral infection, as well as viral replication and proliferation.
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Amazing NEWS: Vitamin C has outperformed approved clinical and experimental drugs
Other recent, peer-reviewed research is blazing exciting new inroads into the area of potential uses of this powerful vitamin to stop cancer.
In a study newly published in Oncotarget, researcher found that high-dose vitamin C stopped tumors cold by impairing cancer stem cell metabolism and interfering with their ability to grow and spread.
Researchers noted that the nutrient worked as a pro-oxidant in cancer cells – stripping them of the antioxidant glutathione and producing oxidative stress and apoptosis, or cell death. In addition, vitamin C interfered with glycolysis, the process that creates energy in cell mitochondria.
And, while lethal to cancer cells, it left healthy cells unaffected.
The researchers concluded that vitamin C was a “promising new agent,” and called for more study to explore its use in preventing and slowing tumors.
The team also reported that vitamin C outperformed seven different substances, including stiripinol – an FDA-approved clinical drug – and various experimental medications. Researchers noted that vitamin C was 1,000 times – that’s right, 1,000 times – more effective in combating cancer stem cells than 2-DG, an experimental pharmaceutical drug.
(It is hard to understand why these eye-opening results have received so little attention from mainstream medicine. Especially in light of the fact that – unlike toxic chemotherapy drugs – this essential vitamin has caused few side effects in clinical studies.)
But, I think we can quickly see how this news might be threatening to the profits of the pharmaceutical industry.
The fact is: conventional medicine has long downplayed or ignored promising vitamin C research. But, as forward-thinking, innovative researchers continue to examine vitamin C’s many benefits, its potential to combat cancer may yet be recognized.
Sources for this article include:
MedicalNewsToday.com
Cell.com
SBS.com
NaturalHealth365.com
NewScientist.com
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Vitamin C stimulates a vital cancer-fighting enzyme
In leukemia, white blood cells fail to mature, so they regenerate themselves and multiply uncontrollably – a process that stops the body from producing the mature white blood cells needed by the immune system to fight infections. Researchers have discovered that a gene mutation plays a major role in the development of many cases of leukemia.
50 percent of patients with chronic myelomonocytic leukemia, 30 percent of patients with pre-leukemia and 10 percent of acute myeloid leukemia patients have a genetic disorder that decreases amounts of TET2 – a vital enzyme that helps undifferentiated cells mature into normal blood cells. This TET2 gene mutation accounts for 42,500 cancers yearly in the United States.
The new study, conducted at Perlmutter Cancer Center at New York University Langone Health and published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Cell, examined vitamin C’s potential to stimulate TET2 – and the results were encouraging.
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High dose vitamin C may stop the progression of leukemia, study reveals
by: Lori Alton, staff writer | August 28, 2017
(NaturalHealth365) The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that leukemia – cancer of the blood and bone marrow – claimed 23,564 lives in 2014 alone. Now, exciting new research shows that a six-month regimen of high-dose intravenous vitamin C slowed the progression of leukemia by stopping leukemic cells from multiplying.
The study builds upon other research that demonstrates vitamin C’s potential to inhibit and even kill cancer cells – without harming healthy tissue. Let’s take a closer look at how vitamin C is demonstrating its amazing potential to fight cancer.
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The remarkable effects of vitamin C over the past 70 years
by: Lori Alton, staff writer | May 22, 2020
(NaturalHealth365) Frederick R. Klenner, MD – who used high-dose vitamin C to treat such serious conditions as polio and viral pneumonia – called it “the safest and most valuable substance available to the physician.”
Nobel prize-winning researcher Linus Pauling believed that it could hold the key to treating cancer. And, a groundbreaking physician at a Virginia hospital is currently using it as part of a protocol to treat life-threatening advanced sepsis.
Vitamin C, also known as ascorbic acid, is a powerful antioxidant and anti-inflammatory that can boost the immune system and enhance the function of disease-fighting phagocytes. In addition, it is inexpensive, non-toxic, convenient and – when used in the proper dose – effective.
Yet, sadly, Western medicine tends to pay little attention to this remarkable vitamin. And, that’s a shame, as you’ll soon see why.
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Vitamin C stimulates a vital cancer-fighting enzyme – vitamin C with cancer drugs could provide an alternative to toxic chemotherapy
In leukemia, white blood cells fail to mature, so they regenerate themselves and multiply uncontrollably – a process that stops the body from producing the mature white blood cells needed by the immune system to fight infections. Researchers have discovered that a gene mutation plays a major role in the development of many cases of leukemia.
50 percent of patients with chronic myelomonocytic leukemia, 30 percent of patients with pre-leukemia and 10 percent of acute myeloid leukemia patients have a genetic disorder that decreases amounts of TET2 – a vital enzyme that helps undifferentiated cells mature into normal blood cells. This TET2 gene mutation accounts for 42,500 cancers yearly in the United States.
The new study, conducted at Perlmutter Cancer Center at New York University Langone Health and published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Cell, examined vitamin C’s potential to stimulate TET2 – and the results were encouraging.
Genetically restoring TET2 blocks replication of cancer cells and safely kills them
The researchers found that intravenous high-dose vitamin C helps restore TET2 function, causing “faulty” stem cells in bone marrow to die off.
Vitamin C produced results when it was used on human leukemia cells carrying the TET2 mutation – and it also stopped the growth of transplanted leukemia cancer stem cells in mice that had been genetically engineered to lack TET2.
The vitamin achieved this effect by promoting DNA demethylation in the cancerous cells. Researchers also found that combining vitamin C with PARP inhibitors – drugs which cause cancer cell death – improved its effectiveness even more. In fact, vitamin C seemed to have a potentiating effect, making the leukemic cells more vulnerable to the PARP inhibitors.
Study author Benjamin Neel, Ph.D., noted that the team was excited by the prospect that high-dose vitamin C might become a “safe treatment for blood diseases caused by TET2-deficient leukemia stem cells, most likely in combination with other targeted therapies.” Neel called for preclinical and clinical trials to test high-dose intravenous vitamin C in human patients – and for further research to identify other substances that might help to potentiate the vitamin C treatment.
Researchers are particularly hopeful that using vitamin C with cancer drugs could provide an alternative to toxic chemotherapy – which can be dangerous and even fatal to patients with acute myeloid leukemia.
Note: The researchers used extremely high dosages of intravenous vitamin C in the study – amounts that would be impossible to obtain by oral ingestion alone.
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Could appropriate vitamin C supplementation mean an end to deadly heart disease? 3 grams of vitamin C a day
Renowned researcher Linus Pauling believed that heart disease (along with supposed contributors to heart disease, such as oxidized cholesterol) is actually an early stage of scurvy, a severe deficiency of vitamin C.
This theory was recently confirmed by a study conducted by scientists at the Dr. Rath Research Institute and published in the American Journal of Cardiovascular Disease.
As vitamin C is not produced in the body, it must be obtained through diet or appropriate high-quality supplementation. And, shortfalls can have dire consequences.
A lack of vitamin C causes arteries to become fragile and to rupture – a problem which the body tries to repair with deposits of cholesterol. Unfortunately, this rescue attempt can backfire, with arteries becoming clogged with atherosclerotic plaque.
The result? A heightened risk of heart attack and stroke.
Dr. Mathias Rath, M.D. – a longtime research partner of Linus Pauling’s – maintains that appropriate supplementation can spur production of beneficial collagen and make arteries more flexible and less prone to breakage.
In fact, Dr. Rath has stated his hope that his Cellular Recommendations – which involve 3 grams of vitamin C a day, along with other antioxidants – could lead to the abolition of heart disease as a cause of human mortality.
Given the fact that heart disease is currently the leading cause of death in the nation, this is welcome news
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Research Proving Vitamin C’s Therapeutic Value in 200+ Diseases
Posted on:
Sunday, May 26th 2013 at 5:00 am
Written By:
This article is copyrighted by GreenMedInfo LLC, 2018
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Vitamin C is generally considered to be an important “nutrient,” but its perceived value usually ends there. Only rarely does the public (and the medical profession) glimpse its true potential in the prevention and treatment of disease — and this because, by legal definition (in the US), only FDA-approved drugs can prevent, treat and cure disease.
This does not mean, however, that essential nutrients like Vitamin C cannot in fact prevent and treat disease, i.e. only because it is illegal to speak truthfully about something, doesn’t mean that that something isn’t true. The National Library of Medicine, in fact, contains thousands of studies demonstrating vitamin C‘s ability to significantly improve health, with 220 disease applications documented on the research site GreenMedInfo.com alone. The best thing ‘we the people’ can do, despite our lack of medical degrees and licensure, and without the FDA’s iron-fisted legal and regulatory apparatus on our side, is to use the peer-reviewed research at our disposal to inform and protect our treatment decisions.
Perhaps we must revisit an important moment in history to regain a sense of how profoundly vitamin C deficiency and vitamin C therapy can affect health. James Lind (1716-1794), pioneer of naval hygiene in the British Royal Navy, conducted the first ever clinical trial proving that citrus fruits cured scurvy. Lind’s discovery saved tens of thousands of seamen from the ravages of scurvy, spurring England’s naval supremacy, putatively changing the course of world history.
If significant historical events like these don’t provide enough evidence to vindicate the efficacy of nutrients like Vitamin C, molecular biology and the science of genetics can help to fill in the gaps.
It is a little known and under-appreciated fact that all humans are born with a serious, life-threatening genetic defect: namely, the inability to manufacture Vitamin C.
This defect occurred approximately 63 million years ago, when our haplorrhini (“simple nosed”) primate predecessors lost the gene (Gulnolactone oxidase pseudogene – GULOP), responsible for the manufacture of Vitamin C from glucose.
The ability to synthesize Vitamin C, in fact, has been lost several times in vertebrates, e.g. in guinea pigs, some bats, some fishes, passeriform birds and in primates of the suborder Haplorrhini, which includes monkes, apes and humans.
It was Linus Pauling, two time Nobel Laureate, and the world’s foremost vitamin C proponent, who first brought this inborn error of metabolism to popular light. Pauling advocated taking large doses of Vitamin C (up to 10-12 grams a day) in order to offset the deficiencies of our modern diet. He believed that it was our movement away from a vitamin C rich fruit-and-vegetable based diet that explained the modern epidemic of heart disease.
According to this perspective, without adequate Vitamin C we are unable to produce the collagen necessary to heal our arteries. The Vitamin C starved body compensates for this by increasing the production of a very small and sticky type of cholesterol known as lipoprotein A, which leads to the formation of atheromatous plaque (clogged arteries). Linus Pauling advocated taking large amounts of vitamin C in combination with the amino acid lysine to reverse the damage done to the arteries, and to prevent recurrence.*
Indeed, a study published in 2008 showed that higher plasma vitamin C levels are associated with a significantly reduced risk of stroke. Scientists from the clinical gerontology unit at Addnbrooke’s University Hospital in Cambridge, UK, tracked 20,649 men and women aged 40 to 79 years, between 1993 and 1997. The group was followed through March 2005. Individuals who had the highest vitamin C levels showed a 42% reduction in stroke risk! If you compare this with Plavix’s 8.7 – 9.4% risk reduction, and the profound side effects drugs like these generate, one begins to understand why the media projection of “vitamins are toxic” propaganda serves only the interests of the drug companies.
Before one goes out and buys a bargain bottle of Vitamin C tablets, one should be advised that ascorbic acid is not exactly the same thing as Vitamin C. Ascorbic acid is found within the Vitamin C complex as it exists in food, but is complexed with a wide range of inseparable cofactors, such as rutin, bioflavonoids (vitamin p), protein chaperones, and various enzymes like tyrosinase, which together in their entirety constitute the whole food complex. Take the ‘vitamin c’ as isolated ascorbic acid out of the nutritional context of food and is behaves more like a chemical or drug.
Ascorbic acid is also 10 times more acidic than the naturally buffered Vitamin C found in raw food, and will on occasions lead to stomach upset, calcium loss from the bones, and kidney stones, in susceptible individuals. Traditionally ascorbic acid is produced semi-synthetically from corn or rice starch through a heavily chemical dependent process. Ascorbic acid can be considered no more natural than white flour, and yet despite this fact, has very little toxicity relative to pharmaceuticals, and can be used in much higher doses than the FDA’s Recommended Daily Allowance without adverse side effects.
The difference between ascorbic acid and Vitamin C in whole food form was perfectly clear to Szent-Gyorgi who received a Nobel Prize in 1937 for discovering Vitamin C. Even though Szent-Gyorgi received international recognition for identifying ascorbic acid as Vitamin C, his later research lead him to conclude that ascorbic acid had very little anti-scurvy activity in and of itself. Szent-Gyorgi found that the vitamin C found in organ meats and food sources like paprika, where the aforementioned cofactors are intact, were far superior in combating scurvy.
We would be well served to acknowledge that all raw fruits and vegetables contain a “life force” that can not be fully decomposed or reduced to the chemical skeleton within which the life force of “vitamin activity” works, no more than our life/soul can be reduced to the $10 or so worth of chemical building blocks that our body is composed of. Fortunately there are vitamin manufacturers out there who acknowledge this fact, and produce raw whole food concentrates rich in vitamin activity. When eating raw, organic fruits and vegetables is not an option, or when higher levels are needed, these supplements offer authentic therapeutic activity.
The history of vitamin C illustrates just how profoundly important it is for us to get these vital nutrients known as “vitamins,” and that they are best derived from food. If we choose to overlook the importance of vitamins in maintaining health, and yes, even preventing and reversing disease, we will be forced to accept a pharmaceutically driven medical perspective that believes that health is the absence of symptoms, and that symptoms are to be combated or driven back deep into our bodies with sublethal dosages of toxic chemicals, i.e. drugs. Such as perspective on disease is itself so diseased that there is no escaping the ill health that results from it. We must remember that there has never been a disease that has been caused by a lack of a drug… therefore, why would it ever be considered sound medical practice to treat disease with drugs, as a first line of treatment?
*If Linus Pauling and other Vitamin C researchers are correct and a deficiency of Vitamin C causes the breakdown of collagen in the artery, aspirin therapy, which causes Vitamin C deficiency, would not be considered a safe way to reduce cardiac mortality. To the contrary, it would further destabilize the strength and elasticity of the artery leading to hemorrhage, which is the primary deadly side effect of aspirin therapy.
Sayer Ji is founder of Greenmedinfo.com, a reviewer at the International Journal of Human Nutrition and Functional Medicine, Co-founder and CEO of Systome Biomed, Vice Chairman of the Board of the National Health Federation, Steering Committee Member of the Global Non-GMO Foundation.
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Sunshine Vitamin’ Regenerates and Detoxifies Your Hormones
Posted on:
Monday, August 20th 2018 at 4:00 am
Written By:
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Sometimes called the ‘sunshine vitamin’ because it is found in high levels in citrus fruits, vitamin C has a uniquely regenerative role in hormone health and cancer prevention that has been overlooked for over twenty years!
Truly groundbreaking research on the regenerative potential of vitamin C therapy for hormone health as well as cancer prevention was performed over twenty years ago, and yet still today it has received little to no attention.
Published in 1993 in the journal Radiation Physics and Chemistry and titled, “Photo-induced regeneration of hormones by electron transfer processes: Potential biological and medical consequences,” Austrian researchers explored the role that vitamin C plays in preventing the degradation of steroid hormones into toxic and cancer-promoting metabolites known as “hormone transients.” Their stated goal was “to investigate if hormone transients resulting by e.g. electron emission can be regenerated.”
The molecular structure of progesterone, estrone (a form of estrogen) and testosterone is such that when exposed to differing biological and/or environmental conditions, e.g. UV light, pH, temperature, they lose electrons, becoming toxic and often carcinogenic metabolites that represent a burden on the body’s eliminative capabilities. Vitamin C is a well-known electron donor, which is to say a substance that donates electrons to another compound (i.e. a ‘reducing agent’). Vitamin C’s ability to donate electrons can have an antioxidant effect as far as neutralizing free radicals, or as is the case with transient hormone metabolites, a structurally regenerative one.
The study’s design and results were summarized as follows:
“Investigations were performed using progesterone (PRG), testosterone (TES) and estrone (E1) as representatives of hormones. By irradiation with monochromatic UV light (λ=254 nm) in a media of 40% water and 60% ethanol, the degradation as well as the regeneration of the hormones was studied with each hormone individually and in the mixture with VitC as a function of the absorbed UV dose, using HPLC. Calculated from the obtained initial yields, the determined regeneration of PRG amounted to 52.7%, for TES to 58.6% and for E1 to 90.9%.”
Remarkably, vitamin C was capable of almost complete regeneration of estrone and quite significant regeneration of both progesterone (52.7%) and testosterone (58.6%).
These experimental results have profound implications if they prove to carry over to human physiology. For instance, vitamin C may offer an alternative (or at least adjuvant and/or ‘drug sparing’ effect) to hormone replacement therapy, which suffers from the problem of ‘feeding the deficiency,’ i.e. negative feedback loops operative within our endocrine system can result in the down-regulation of endogenous steroid hormone production when exogenous forms are supplied.
The researchers noted that this was (at the time) the first scientific evidence proving:
“[H]ormone transients originating by the electron emission process can be successfully regenerated by the transfer of electrons from a potent electron donor, such as vitamin C (VitC).”
While a preliminary study, the researchers identified two possible implications of their research to human medicine:
- Cancer Prevention/Treatment: “The regeneration of hormones by electron transfer process using a potent electron donor, such as VitC, might offer a new pathway for an efficient reduction in the formation of metabolites, also such initiating cancer among others.”
- Hormone Replacement Therapy: “The reported results concerning the ability of VitC to act as electron donor in the regeneration of hormone transients might also be of benefit in the clinical application of hormones (e.g. contraceptive, HRT).”
Vitamin C, of course, is exceptionally safe at high doses and has hundreds of proven health benefits (view our Vitamin C health benefit database), whereas conventional chemopreventive agents for cancer, e.g. Tamoxifen, and hormone replacement therapy using animal derived and/or synthetic hormone analogs, cause a wide range of adverse health effects, including at times increased mortality.
For additional related research you can read two previous on vitamin C’s role in cancer treatment in intravenous form and vitamin C rich foods like pomegranate as an alternative to hormone replacement therapy.
Sayer Ji is founder of Greenmedinfo.com, a reviewer at the International Journal of Human Nutrition and Functional Medicine, Co-founder and CEO of Systome Biomed, Vice Chairman of the Board of the National Health Federation, Steering Committee Member of the Global Non-GMO Foundation.
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