Taking vitamin C pills might make your cold symptoms less severe if you're a healthy person.

39

Pro

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Against

Evidence from Studies

Supporting (1)

39

Community contributions welcome

39

Vitamin C reduces the severity of common colds: a meta-analysis

Systematic Review With Meta-Analysis

Human

2023 Dec 11

The study shows vitamin C reduces cold severity by about 15%, which supports the claim that it reduces severity by 13%, so it's a good match.

Contradicting (0)

0

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No contradicting evidence found

Gold Standard Evidence Needed

According to GRADE and EBM methodology, here is what ideal scientific evidence would look like to definitively prove or disprove this specific claim, ordered from strongest to weakest evidence.

Source Study

Vitamin C reduces the severity of common colds: a meta-analysis

Score: 39

DOI: 10.1186/s12889-023-17229-8

Similar Assertions

Taking vitamin C pills every day might make your colds less severe, according to some studies that looked at healthy people.

39

0

91%

Vitamin C helps reduce bad cold symptoms a lot (by about a quarter), but doesn't really help with mild cold symptoms. This is based on studies of over 2700 colds.

39

0

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Taking vitamin C after you already have a cold doesn't really help you get better faster or feel less sick, according to several big studies.

33

0

87%

Taking vitamin C might help people who are stressed and in cold weather get over bad colds faster, cutting the time sick by about half, but we're not totally sure because only a few studies have looked at this.

39

0

85%

Taking vitamin C pills might help a little with colds, especially for people who are under a lot of physical stress or don't get enough vitamin C from their diet.

1

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84%