Can high doses of Vitamin C cure cancer?

Social media users are claiming Vitamin C can cure cancer.

"Blend a whole lemon fruit with a cup of hot water and drink it for about 1-3 months first thing before food and cancer would disappear," reads the post.

It's 1000 times better than chemotherapy, claims the viral post.

Whether a person's cancer can be cured depends on the type and stage of cancer, the type of treatment they can get, and other factors. Some cancers are more likely to be cured than others. But each cancer needs to be treated differently. There isn't one cure for cancer.

Fact Check

For many decades, people believe that the higher the dose of Vitamin C, the higher will be the chances of a cure. In our investigation, we found multiple studies and research works nullifying the initial studies which made people believe that a high dose of Vitamin C helps cure cancer.

According to Dr.Karthik Giridhar, initial studies in humans had promising results, but these studies were later found to be flawed.

Subsequent well-designed, randomized, controlled trials of vitamin C in pill form found no such benefits for people with cancer. Despite the lack of evidence, some alternative medicine practitioners continue to recommend high doses of vitamin C for cancer treatment, he added.

Even FDA does not approve dietary supplements as safe or effective. The company that makes the dietary supplements is responsible for making sure they are safe and that the claims on the label are true and do not mislead the consumer. The way that supplements are made is not regulated by FDA, so all batches and brands of IV vitamin C may not be the same.

In a clinical study by Cancer Research UK, Martin Ledwick, Cancer Research UK's head information nurse, says cancer patients shouldn't take them without first talking to their doctor.

"The key thing is we just don't know if it is safe to take them alongside conventional treatment that is known to work. It is possible that in some situations they may interfere with the way chemotherapy works, which might make treatment less effective. This doesn't mean to say vitamin C won't be of benefit to some patients one day. But there's certainly no evidence yet from any clinical trial that vitamin C improves cancer survival," he added.

The same study also mentions that there's no evidence a vitamin C jab cures cancer, and may even cause harm, this is unlikely to become a treatment any time soon.

There are a number of studies that talk about mixed clinical trials. There is no evidence to prove the effectiveness of Vitamin C alone.

Hence, the claim is partly false.