IV High-Dose Vitamin C for Cancer

What is Vitamin C?

L-ascorbic acid, more commonly known as Vitamin C, is an antioxidant that plays a large role in immune health and overall wellness. This antioxidant is not naturally produced by your body, but is easy to find in many types of food, especially citrus. Vitamin C is also readily available as an over-the-counter supplement or as part of an IV treatment.

Like other antioxidants, vitamin C helps prevent free radicals from causing damage to your cells and DNA by pairing with these molecules and expediting their removal from your body. Vitamin C plays an important part in the production of collagen, a type of connective tissue that promotes wound healing.

Taken all together, Vitamin C is a significant element of a healthy immune system. While Vitamin C is most often associated with cold and flu, new research has found that high doses of vitamin C may be a complementary type of cancer treatment. This treatment may also ameliorate the symptoms of cancer for an improved overall quality of life.

High-Dose Vitamin C for Cancer

High-dose vitamin C is not a substitute for therapies such as radiation or chemotherapy. These therapies target cancerous cells and impair or destroy their ability to regenerate, ultimately leading to cell death. High-dose vitamin C is also not a replacement for surgery, in which malignant cells are physically removed from the body.

At this moment, high-dose vitamin C is a complementary therapy in addition to traditional treatments. Early studies suggest that high doses of vitamin C may kill cancer cells by naturally breaking down into hydrogen peroxide that can damage tissue and DNA. This damage may impair cell repair much like chemotherapy or radiation therapy, thereby leading to tumor shrinkage and malignant cell death.

High doses of vitamin C for non-cancer patients may be doses up to 2mg. High doses of vitamin C for cancer patients, on the other hand, may range anywhere between 25 – 50mg.

Intravenously-Administered High-Dose Vitamin C for Cancer

Although oral supplements are convenient to pick up at the local pharmacy, they may not be ideal for high doses of vitamin C for cancer. The relative bioavailability (the amount your body can use) of oral vitamin C supplements depends on the dose. Low doses of vitamin C are well-absorbed, but higher doses undergo exponential diminishing returns as the absorption mechanism is overwhelmed.

IV therapy may be more a effective option than oral supplements to deliver high doses of vitamin C to the body. IV therapy delivers fluids, vitamins, and antioxidants directly into your bloodstream, bypassing the digestive system to ensure maximum absorption.

High doses of IV-administered vitamin C have a higher absorption rate than oral supplementation, leading to higher concentrations in the blood. One study found that IV-administered concentrations were as much as twenty-five times higher than orally-administered doses.

The benefits of delivery IV high-dose vitamin C for cancer include:

• Fewer side effects
• Improved quality of life
• Slow the progression of the disease by decreasing proliferation of cancer cells
• Reduce the side effects of co-therapies
• Decrease side effects of toxicities caused by traditional co-therapies
• IV drip administration of high-dose vitamin C effective for people who have conditions that restrict the body’s ability to absorb nutrients
• May be a beneficial supplement to traditional cancer treatments as part of combination therapy
• Helps remove free radicals and regulates redox reactions that cause damage to DNA, which in turn leads to aging and certain health conditions
• In addition to these, high doses of vitamin C may boost the effectiveness of traditional treatments by helping boost the immune system, which is often weakened by the demands of traditional therapy.

It’s important to note that high doses of vitamin C appear to affect a specific type of cancerous cells – those with low levels of catalase enzyme. These types of cancers cells have a diminished ability to remove hydrogen peroxide, causing damage that can lead to cell death. Cancer cells with higher levels of catalase enzyme are less affected by this treatment. DNA damage only occurs to cancerous cells. Healthy cells are able to function normally and are not harmed by the hydrogen peroxide produced by high doses of vitamin C.

Want to know more? You can learn more about High-Dose Vitamin C and Cancer at the National Institutes of Health. You can also learn more about antioxidants and free radicals an their role in cancer at Cancer.gov.

Improved Quality of Life

In addition to its role as a complementary type of cancer treatment, high-dose Vitamin C may improve the quality of life for individuals undergoing traditional cancer treatment. Whether patients are receiving chemotherapy, radiation therapy, surgery, or a combination of therapies, they may experience symptoms such as fatigue, nausea and vomiting, pain, loss of appetite, insomnia, or a combination of these.

Intravenous high-dose vitamin C in particular shows promise for improving a patient’s quality of life. IV high-dose vitamin C bypasses the absorption mechanism in the digestive system, leading to a superior concentration of this vitamin in a patient’s body. In this study, patients reported improved physical as well as cognitive and emotional symptoms.

Improving a patient’s quality of life during recovery can help an individual’s comfort and energy levels during recovery, or provide an additional facet to palliative care in terminal patients.