Experts at the Linus Pauling Institute sponsored an extremely interesting presentation of vitamin C this week. You may remember Dr. Pauling, a brilliant and sometimes controversial chemist who published numerous books and articles on the role of vitamin C and other nutrients in human health. The institute at Oregon State University that bears his name continues to carry out this type of research.
The webinar opened my eyes to a whole new area of investigation, however. Instead of discussing vitamin C and the common cold, researchers Dr. Jeanne Drisko and Qi Chen, Ph.D., from the University of Kansas are now studying the use of vitamin C infusions to treat certain diseases, including cancer.
As wild as it may sound, these experts are finding evidence that giving large doses of vitamin C intravenously (into the veins) makes the vitamin work as a drug, not a nutrient. This approach, though still in its infancy, is showing some encouraging results in the treatment of some health conditions. Stay tuned as we learn more about this from larger clinical trials.
