Can Vitamin C Prevent and Treat COVID 19?

Dr. Richard Cheng, M.D., Ph.D., the Founder and Director of Dr. Cheng Integrative Health Center, and a retired United States Army Physician (Major) participated in Risk Roundup to discuss whether Vitamin C can Prevent and Treat COVID 19.

Please note Risk Group is not giving medical advice and not recommending any preventive or therapeutic treatment for COVID-19. Please consult your doctor and follow your nation’s guidelines in treatment options.

Can Vitamin C Prevent and Treat COVID 19?

Humanity is at crossroads. The coronavirus, COVID-19 that emerged in Wuhan, China, is now a full-blown pandemic spread all across nations. So, as we begin to evaluate why we are as a species so vulnerable to infectious diseases, I not only learned a lot, but I also came across passionate professionals who like me are looking for answers to the ongoing crisis.

We at Risk Group are committed to bringing you all our analysis. The first in our COVID-19 report is to evaluate the role of vitamin c. The reason is we found that there has been an extensive series of animal studies over the years, that has concluded that vitamin C plays a role in preventing, shortening, and alleviating several infections. There have also been reports that vitamin C has similar effects in humans.

Many controlled studies have shown that vitamin C shortens and alleviates the common cold, flu, and pneumonia. In fact, in the referenced study, controlled trials found significant effects of vitamin C against pneumonia. While the practical importance and optimally efficacious doses of vitamin C for preventing and treating infections are not known, perhaps the coronavirus outbreak can shed new light on the role vitamin c can play in the current crisis.

As we witness the Wuhan virus, which is now known as COVID-19 coronavirus wreak havoc in not only China but Iran, Italy, Europe and is aggressively spreading in the United States, and many other nations, it is crucial to understand and evaluate:

• Why are humans so susceptible to viral infections?
• Do most of us have vitamin c deficiency?
• Why is there a current lack of interest in understanding the effects of vitamin C on infections?
• Do we understand the role vitamin c plays on our immune system?
• Is there any data being collected that can give us insight into the vitamin c level of the infected people?
• If the human body is already hosting other infections, is the vitamin C metabolism altered and have decreased vitamin C levels?
• Since viral infections increase oxidative stress and many infections lead to the activation of phagocytes, (which release oxidizing agents referred to as reactive oxygen species (ROS) ) and vitamin C is an antioxidant, are the effects of vitamin C most prominent under conditions when oxidative stress is elevated?
• Since many of the reactive oxygen species (ROS) appear to be harmful to the host cells, and in some cases, they seem to play a role in the pathogenesis of infections, how does Vitamin C play a role in protecting host cells?
• Since there is evidence that plasma, leukocyte, and urinary vitamin C levels decrease in the common cold and in other viral infections, does it imply that vitamin C administration might have a treatment effect on many patients with COVID 19 infections?
• Since a profound vitamin C deficiency was associated with pneumonia in the early literature, is it plausible that the same is the case with COVID 19 outbreak?
• While low vitamin C levels are not just of historical relevance, could they be the root cause of our current crisis?
• Since we as a species have gone through numerous virus triggered pandemics over the years, does it mean we always had vitamin c deficiency? Or some other variables play a role in the onset of disease?
• While vitamin C has effects on the immune system and has been shown to affect the functions of phagocytes, the production of interferon, replication of viruses, and maturation of T-lymphocytes, etc. in laboratory studies, should there be a study on the role of vitamin c?

Many of the vitamin c studies are old. Perhaps it is time to re-evaluate the role of vitamin c in the current crisis. The time is now to evaluate the role vitamin c can play in virus triggered disease onset crisis!

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About the Guest

Dr. Cheng is the founder and director of Dr. Cheng Integrative Health Center and Doctor’s Anti-Aging and Weight Loss Center, of Columbia, SC, since inception in 2003. Dr. Cheng and his colleagues take an integrative approach to help patients with chronic diseases esp. diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer.

In recent years, Dr. Cheng grew particularly interested in functional medicine or anti-aging medicine. The current healthcare focuses on symptomatic treatments for many diseases, ignoring the root causes. For example, when we control the blood sugar of a diabetic patient or the blood pressure of a hypertensive patient, we are only treating the symptoms. We are not doing anything to the underlying disease processes. Functional medicine tries to address the disease processes in addition to symptomatic treatment holistically.

Dr. Cheng is a Fellow and board-certified anti-aging physician by the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine (A4M) and also a Fellow and board-certified, A4m Integrative Cancer Therapy.

Dr. Cheng served in the United States Army as a commissioned officer (Major) and an Army physician and completed his Army duty in Dec. 2006. While in the Army, Dr. Cheng served in various positions including Chief and Medical Director of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Member of Risk Management Committee, Credentialing Committee, and Staff Physician of Soldier Readiness Program, Consultant to the Shaw Air Force Base Laboratory, and College of American Pathologist Inspection Team Leader for the Greenville SC Hospital Lab Inspection.

Before serving the United States Army, Dr. Cheng was a senior physician-scientist at Variagenics, a research organization affiliated with MIT and Harvard Medical School in Cambridge, MA. Variagenics later merged with Hyseq. At Variagenics, Dr. Cheng’s primary responsibilities include overseeing joint clinical studies with Massachusetts General Hospital and the University of Pennsylvania Hospital, establishing a cancer tissue bank, and developing protocols for the tumor gene library. While at Variagenics, Dr. Cheng was invited as a host of a research conference held by the National Institutes of Health at Bethesda, MD, on tumor gene library establishment using laser microdissection technology. Dr. Cheng was also a visiting scholar to the Netherlands TNO (national health institute) on a NATO Scholarship.

Dr. Cheng served as a medical staff fellow at the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, in hematology/pathology. While at NIH, his time was split between patient care and clinical research. He participated in several clinical research projects, in collaboration with the National Human Genome Research Institute, NIH (Dr. Francis Collins’ group), and research groups in Europe, Hong Kong, and Japan.

Dr. Cheng completed residency training programs in internal medicine and laboratory medicine at Shanghai Medical University and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.

Dr. Cheng completed his medical school at Shanghai Medical University in Shanghai, China, and completed his Ph.D. degree at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in biochemistry and molecular biology.

Dr. Cheng published several research papers in peer-reviewed scientific and medical journals and was an invited speaker at several scientific conferences by Dr. Harold zur Hausen (2008 Nobel Laureate) of the German Cancer Research Center, Shanghai Medical University, and China National Genome Center (Shanghai) (upon invitation of Dr. Zhu Cheng, former Health Minister of China).

Dr. Cheng has medical licenses in several states, including South Carolina (active), Arkansas, Maryland, and Virginia (inactive).

About the Host of Risk Roundup

Jayshree Pandya (née Bhatt), Ph.D., is a leading expert at the intersection of science, technology, and security and is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Risk Group LLC. She has been involved in a wide range of research, spanning security of and from science and technology domains. Her work is currently focused on understanding how converging technologies and their interconnectivity across cyberspace, aquaspace, geospace, and space (CAGS), as well as individuals and entities across nations: their governments, industries, organizations, and academia (NGIOA), create survival, security, and sustainability risks. This research is pursued to provide strategic security solutions for the future of humanity. From the National Science Foundation to organizations from across the United States, Europe, and Asia, Dr. Pandya is an invited speaker on emerging technologies, technology transformation, digital disruption, and strategic security risks. Her work has contributed to more than 100 publications in the areas of science and commerce. She is the author of the books, Geopolitics of Cybersecurity and The Global Age. She writes about Artificial Intelligence on Forbes.

About Risk Roundup

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Please note certain statements in my introduction and questions were based on the analysis of Dr. Cheng and the video that was posted on youtube. It seems that the video has been removed now. This discussion is simply to evaluate the need for further analysis.