Posted on 11/17/2010 3:14:50 PM PST by decimon
Physicians caring for patients with sepsis may soon have a new safe and cost-effective treatment for this life-threatening illness. Research led by Dr. Karel Tyml and his colleagues at The University of Western Ontario and Lawson Health Research Institute have found that vitamin C can not only prevent the onset of sepsis, but can reverse the disease.
Sepsis is caused by a bacterial infection that can begin anywhere in your body. Your immune system goes into overdrive, overwhelming normal processes in your blood. The result is that small blood clots form, blocking blood flow to vital organs. This can lead to organ failure. Babies, the elderly and those with weakened immune systems are most likely to get sepsis. But even healthy people can become deathly ill from the disease.
According to Dr. Tyml, a professor at Western's Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, patients with severe sepsis have a high mortality rate, nearly 40 percent, because there is no effective treatment.
"There are many facets to sepsis, but the one we have focused on for the past 10 years is the plugging of capillaries," says Dr. Tyml. Plugged capillaries prevent oxygenation and the supply of life-supporting materials to your organ tissue and stop the removal of metabolic waste product. Plugged capillaries are seen in organs of septic patients. These organs may eventually fail, leading to multiple organ failure and death. Dr. Tyml's lab was the first to discover this plugging by using intravital microscopy, a technique Dr. Tyml pioneered in Canada.
According to Dr. Tyml's most recent publication, oxidative stress and the activated blood clotting pathway are the major factors responsible for the capillary plugging in sepsis. Through his research, Dr. Tyml has discovered that a single bolus of vitamin C injected early at the time of induction of sepsis, prevents capillary plugging. He has also found that a delayed bolus injection of vitamin C can reverse plugging by restoring blood flow in previously plugged capillaries.
"Our research in mice with sepsis has found that early as well as delayed injections of vitamin C improves chance of survival significantly," explains Dr. Tyml. "Furthermore, the beneficial effect of a single bolus injection of vitamin C is long lasting and prevents capillary plugging for up to 24 hours post-injection."
Dr. Tyml and his colleagues are eager to find appropriate support to move this research from the bench to the bedside to see if these findings translate to patients with sepsis.
The potential benefit of this treatment is substantial. "Vitamin C is cheap and safe. Previous studies have shown that it can be injected intravenously into patients with no side effects," says Dr. Tyml. "It has the potential to significantly improve the outcome of sepsis patients world-wide. This could be especially beneficially in developing countries where sepsis is more common and expensive treatments are not affordable."
Ping
Isn’t that something? A deadly disease/condition that doctors might be able to stop with something as cheap and readily available as Vitamin C.
Pretty awesome!
Also...
add 2000-3000mg C to your cold or allergy meds.
Vitamin C reduces mucus.
I caught a patient going into septic shock a few weeks ago. He, like everybody else in the long term acute care facility, was taking ascorbic acid (vitamin C). That was a great night though because I’m pretty sure my persistence and due diligence saved a man’s life. Anyways, I see sepsis all the time. Vitamin C might help but i have my doubts that it is a miracle cure.
Looks like a biggie to me. But the article concerns a 'bolus' of vitamin C administered intravenously. It seems that a bolus is a dose or a large dose so I'm guessing that this wouldn't work with an oral dose. Unless a regular intake of vitamin C would be preventative.
An large intravenous jolt would be different, no?
The article doesn't mention dosage levels, but when it's used for serious infections patients don't "take" vitamin C. It's used as injections or intravenously in doses up to 100 grams per day. There's a lot of much older evidence than this on the use of vitamin C for many infectious conditions.
Natural healing experts use IV vit C to treat cancer.
This could be very big. Sepsis has probably killed more soldiers than bullets.
Right now in Afghanistan, any Taliban who gets wounded has about a 50/50 or worse chance of dying from an infection that turns into sepsis. They are so incapacitated by this that they will raid hospitals to demand treatment of their casualties.
And a lot of enemy in both Iraq and Afghanistan have turned themselves in because without treatment they are dead. Ironically, by the time an infection had turned to sepsis, it was almost always too late.
Cheers! (for the Vitamin C discovery)
Far more than we can tolerate in oral dose, no?
Possibly. Sepsis leads to a host of complications and, as the article stated, the very young and the very old are particularly susceptible hosts. It looks like it will help but I think septic patients, especially those that are truly at risk will still require a comprehensive treatment plan and an ICU.
Don’t forget to stock supplemental “C” in your survival pantry along with a bunch of those inexpensive Orange drinks powders that are fortified with Vitamin C. If you’re drinking boiled water, a scoop of Tang in the pitcher makes it taste better and is a good preventative tonic to boot.
Dunno. But if it's the clotting that gets you with Ebola then maybe it would help.
I use Vit C for pain control. I routinely take 2 grams Ester C each am and each pm. I take no drugs.
Research intravenous Vit C.
Salt for brushing teeth and curing gum problems , gargle kills sore throat germs , etc..
Epsom salt for almost everything, scrub a handfull over your skin near the end of a shower everyday.
Could go on and on, just do your own medical anthropological research and enjoy a long healthy life w/o pharmaceutical side effects.
“Vitamin C might help but i have my doubts that it is a miracle cure.”
Check out “Curing the Incurable: Vitamin C, Infectious Diseases and Toxins” by Thomas Levy MD.
The original work was done by Dr Fred Klenner, a Duke University Medical School graduate.
We always kept epsom salts around the house when I was a kid. It really is pretty amazing stuff in that it is useful for such a wide range of everyday maladies extenal and internal. A couple capfuls in a hot bath was the best stuff in the world to soak in when I had sore muscles from weightlifting, etc.
From what I just googled, it also has apparently has medical applications for certain forms of asthma and may even help prevent the onset of cerebral palsy in unborn children.
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