On my almost annual family trips to Florida, a visit to the local used bookstore has become a tradition.

On my latest trip I found quite a treasure…an original copy of Linus Pauling’s Vitamin C and the Common Cold.

Today, the scientific consensus is that vitamin C does not reduce the incidence of the common cold, but rather, will only reduce the severity and duration. However, considering the lack of agreement among studies in combination with yesterday’s post, this may be yet another example of confusion arising from trials on genetically heterogeneous populations. Who knows…only future research will tell. And until then, eat your citrus, because when it comes to fruit, you can’t go wrong!!

I learned about this fact from:

Pauling, Linus. Vitamin C and the Common Cold. W.H. Freeman and Company; San Francisco: 1970.

Douglas RM, Hemilä H, Chalker E, Treacy B. Vitamin C for preventing and treating the common cold. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2007 Jul 18;(3):CD000980.