Vitamin C Kills Bacteria Drugs Can’t: Study

Wednesday, 22 May 2013 02:35 PM, By Charlotte Libov

This information can apply to Lyme and other infections as well.

A groundbreaking new study showing that vitamin C can kill drug-resistant tuberculosis could pave the way for the nutrient to go into widespread use as an effective defense against many diseases, says a top holistic physician.

“Vitamin C fell out of favor when antibiotics came in, but this study shows the potential of using vitamin C to kill infection,” David Brownstein, M.D., told Newsmax Health.

Researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University reported they had discovered that vitamin C kills drug-resistant tuberculosis bacteria, a finding that could lead to future disease-fighting applications.

Scientists made the discovery when they were experimenting to learn how TB bacteria become resistant to isoniazid, a first-line TB drug. When pairing the drug with vitamin C they discovered they had killed the bacteria. In doing subsequent experiments, researchers reported in the journal Nature Communications that the vitamin killed off the TB bacteria by itself without the drug.

An estimated 650,000 people worldwide have multi-drug-resistant TB. Based on this study, which showed vitamin C’s effectiveness in the lab, researchers say they next want to test it in the real world. The Einstein College scientists noted that vitamin C is inexpensive, widely available, safe.

Dr. Brownstein said that researchers have generally not taken vitamin C seriously as a disease fighter, but that may now change. “There’s a track record of vitamin C effectively treating diseases like measles as well as pertussis (whooping cough),” said Dr. Brownstein, author of the newsletter Natural Way to Health.
Vitamin C is superior to antibiotics because the nutrient marshals the body’s natural resources to fight off infection, Dr. Brownstein said. Also, he added, “If you look at the history of vitamin C I don’t know of one infectious organism that has grown resistant to it.”

Drug resistance, on the other hand, has emerged as a worldwide problem.  Another new study of vitamin C showed that high doses may stop cancer. Researchers at Cancer Treatment Centers of America reported they had recently completed a trial in which intravenous vitamin C inhibited tumor growth in mice.

IV injection of vitamin C is used in alternative medical centers to treat cancer and other disease but it is generally not recognized by mainstream medicine as an effective treatment.


“Again, the results of this new cancer study does not surprise me because we use vitamin C both orally and intravenously in the fight against many types of disease, including cancer,” Dr. Brownstein said.
He generally recommends 3,000-5,000 mgs a day of supplemental vitamin C to maintain good health.

© 2013 NewsmaxHealth. All rights reserved.

Vitamin B3 may be the cure for drug-resistant superbug infections

Tuesday, September 04, 2012 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer - Natural News

While the pharmaceutical industry is busy trying to conjure up new drugs to tackle the antibiotic-resistant "superbug" epidemic, a recent study published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation explains how simple vitamin B3, also known as nicotinamide (NAM), taken in high doses may effectively thwart staph and other potentially life-threatening infections without the need for drugs.

Researchers from both Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in California and the Linus Pauling Institute (LPI) at Oregon State University (OSU) collaborated with one another to test the effects of high doses of NAM administered to both live mice and human blood infected with Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus). What they found was that vitamin B3 significantly boosts the number and effectiveness of neutrophils, or white blood cells that target infections.

It turns out that, when taken in doses far higher than those recommended by the federal government, vitamin B3 is capable of significantly boosting the body's own natural immune system to the point where many diseases simply cannot survive. According to the study, vitamin B3 is capable of increasing immune capacity by 1,000 times, allowing the body to naturally fight MRSA and other deadly pathogens.

"This could give us a new way to treat staph infections that can be deadly," said Adrian Gombart, an associate professor at LPI, about the dramatic findings. "It's a way to tap into the power of the innate immune system and stimulate it to provide a more powerful and natural immune response."

NAM is not just effective against S. aureus, though. Several other virulent pathogens, including human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), also seem to respond favorably to NAM's dramatic immune-boosting capacity. By bolstering the immune system's natural defenses, NAM appears to facilitate the destruction and elimination of a host of deadly pathogens and viruses.

"NAM is not only effective against S. aureus, it also has demonstrated efficacy against other major human pathogens, such as K. pneumoniae (Klebsiella pneumoniae) and P. aeruginosa (Pseudomonas aeruginosa), in our human peripheral blood killing assay," wrote the authors in their discussion. "We have demonstrated that NAM, as an HDAC inhibitor, can improve host defense and thereby promote bacterial clearance."

And unlike antibiotic drugs, vitamin B3 does not destroy all the beneficial bacteria in the gut along with the harmful bacteria. So for most people, taking mega-doses of therapeutic vitamin B3 is preferable to taking immune-destroying antibiotics that can later promote the growth of Candida albicans and other harmful yeast overgrowths and bacterial imbalances within the body.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.jci.org/articles/view/62070?key=a39ce7efc2f764ede04

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