There\u2019s new research indicating that vitamin C could be an affordable way to reduce the amount of time that patients need to spend in the intensive care unit at hospitals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The researchers pooled data from 12 trials and discovered that giving patients vitamin C helped cut their ICU stay by an average of 8%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For ICU patients who required more than 24 hours of mechanical ventilation, the results of adding vitamin C were even more dramatic. It reduced the time people needed mechanical ventilation by 18.2%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although most people know that vitamin C is vital to our health, not everyone understands that our bodies depend entirely on us getting it from food consumption because the human body can\u2019t make it or store it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Vitamin C helps the human body in multiple ways, including:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 maintaining or lowering blood pressure<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 helping to produce proteins that make energy in cells<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 activating and silencing genes<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 assisting with cardiovascular functions<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 shortening the duration of the common cold<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 reducing blood glucose in people with diabetes<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 opening constricted airways<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 decreasing rates of atrial fibrillation<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unfortunately, certain conditions and illnesses decrease our supply of vitamin C, which is why hospital patients often have very low levels. This is especially true for people with burns, infections or high stress, as well as those who have had surgery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While healthy people need about 0.1 grams of vitamin C daily, a critically ill patient needs to consume more like 4 grams daily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To be clear, the researchers aren\u2019t saying vitamin C is a cure-all, or that there\u2019s enough evidence to make ICUs all change their practices. But they do say the results of their analysis show \u201cproof of concept\u201d and they encourage more research into the effects of vitamin C on ICU patients. Best of all, vitamin C is incredibly inexpensive.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There\u2019s new research indicating that vitamin C could be an affordable way to reduce the amount of time that patients need to spend in the intensive care unit at hospitals. The researchers pooled data from 12 trials and discovered that giving patients vitamin C helped cut their ICU stay by an average of 8%. For […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13525,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[690],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wellness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13486\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}