Why IV Vitamin C Deserves a Place in Your Hospital or Vaccine Prep Plan

If there’s one nutrient that deserves its moment in the spotlight, it’s vitamin C — a powerful substance that does far more than help you fight off the occasional cold.

It boosts the immune system, promotes healing, reduces inflammation, helps build healthy teeth and bones, and so much more. In fact, if you’re critically deficient in vitamin C for one to three months, you’ll start to develop scurvy, and unless you take drastic action to reverse the course of the illness, you’re on your way to being unalived, as online kids like to say today.

Here at PROVOKE Health^®, we advise and encourage almost all of our patients to take vitamin C daily, and we recommend intravenous (IV) vitamin C to clients who are hospitalized, preparing for hospitalization or vaccination, or dealing with certain health conditions.

Vitamin C, like many other vitamins, serves multiple functions in the body without the unwanted side effects of many pharmaceutical and over-the-counter medications. Compare this to aspirin or non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), which have multiple side effects and very short-lived benefits. Taking vitamin C (orally or intravenously) is a safe and effective way to ensure health during cold and flu season and anytime you’re feeling run down.

In this post, I explain why it’s so important to boost your vitamin C levels prior to hospitalization and vaccination. I also reveal the many other health benefits of vitamin C, and I provide guidance to help you decide whether IV therapy featuring vitamin C is right for you.

Boosting Vitamin C Prior to or During Hospitalization: Why It’s So Important

If you’re hospitalized or planning for hospitalization, you have many good reasons to boost your vitamin C. And, unless your doctor or surgeon expressly says not to consume it, the advantages include:

• Reducing the risk of complications
• Shortening your stay in the hospital

So why don’t hospitals routinely give their patients intravenous vitamin C? If you guessed, any of the following, give yourself a point for each correct answer:

• Big pharma control
• Poor medical management of patient nutrition (just look at the food they serve in most hospitals!)
• Lack of attention to science

Whenever you’re hospitalized, the staff routinely orders blood tests, but not for vitamin C. Even during the COVID pandemic, when many doctors were advocating strongly to add vitamin C to the treatment regimen for ill patients, their warnings were ignored.

Before we go any further, it’s important to point out that studies show most patients who enter the hospital are deficient in Vitamin C. And if you have an infection, either in the hospital or prior to being admitted into the hospital, you’re even more likely to have a vitamin C deficiency. The deficiency is due in part to poor nutritional status before entering the hospital, and the body’s increased need for vitamin C as a result of the infection.

In short, if you’re going to be hospitalized, you likely need IV vitamin C. It will lessen the severity of whatever condition you have, reduce your time in the hospital, and lower the risk of complications. However, we all know that hospitals don’t include IV vitamin C as part of their routine hospitalization protocols. Instead, they’re more likely to prescribe a pain reliever and, in some cases, steroids, which can compromise your body’s ability to fight infection.

This is one reason why I encourage both daily supplementation with Vitamin C for healthy people and IV vitamin C for those with any chronic condition that is related to infection, mold, poor absorption of nutrients, irritable bowels, Long COVID, chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), or other health conditions that deplete vitamin C.

Why Vitamin C? Vitamin C helps when you are sick by reducing the replication of viruses. It stimulates immune responses that engulf the antigens. And it provides antioxidant protection from the resulting inflammation occurring with infection. It’s no surprise that many people going to hospitals today are low in Vitamin C.

Boosting Vitamin C Prior to Vaccination

If you’re planning to get vaccinated, I strongly recommend that you build up your vitamin C reserves. Here’s how vitamin C can help:

• It supports healthy immune function. Vitamin C is a powerful antioxidant that plays a significant role in immune health. It helps your body produce white blood cells, which fight off infections and respond to vaccines.
• It reduces inflammation. Vaccines can cause mild inflammation as your immune system reacts. Vitamin C’s anti-inflammatory properties may help ease those side effects.
• It may strengthen the immune response. While vitamin C doesn’t make the vaccine more effective, it helps your immune system function optimally — meaning you may build a more robust immune response.
• It may mitigate oxidative stress. If your body is under stress (mental, physical, or nutritional), your immune system can be a bit sluggish. Vitamin C helps combat oxidative stress, giving your system a better shot (pun intended) at responding well to the vaccine.

Note that every COVID vaccine introduces the body to the spike protein. With each vaccine, the need for vitamin C increases. (The spike protein is the part of a virus, like the one that causes COVID-19, that sticks out like a key and helps it unlock and enter our cells to infect them.)

Recognizing the Many Benefits of IV Vitamin C

Vitamin C delivered by IV offers a quick boost of this vital nutrient, delivering the following potential benefits:

• Repairs collagen, which is important for blood vessels, skin, tendons, and ligaments
• Supports healing of tendons and ligaments from athletic injuries or chronic disease
• Boosts immune function to protect against viruses and bacteria
• Facilitates absorption of iron
• Supports healthy bones and teeth
• Boosts resilience for those who have been exposed to mold
• Provides antioxidant support for people with chronic conditions including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, Long COVID, and autoimmunity, which often involve inflammation
• Supports wound healing
• Reduces inflammation from sepsis

Who Should Have IV Vitamin C

If you’re wondering whether intravenous vitamin C might be right for you, take a look at the following list covering who should consider it:

• Anyone planning a hospitalization for surgery — because vitamin C helps with healing and increasing resilience to prevent infections or reduce their severity
• Anyone with autoimmunity — to reduce stress on the immune system
• Athletes who are looking for optimal performance and recovery
• Anyone with chronic fatigue or encephalitis
• Anyone suffering from head trauma, traumatic brain injury (TBI), or concussion — the faster inflammation is reduced, the better
• Long-COVID sufferers
• Diabetics
• Patients with high blood pressure
• Patients with cardiovascular disease
• Anemic patients or those with low iron
• Patients with intestinal problems that limit absorption of nutrients
• Patients with hypothyroid or Hashimoto’s thyroiditis — vitamin C has a protective effect
• Patients with pneumonia
• Patients with sepsis

Vitamin C isn’t a drug, but if it were, I’d consider it a wonder drug. It delivers a host of valuable health benefits and has a very benign side-effect profile. Most people can take up to about 2,000 mg of vitamin C daily without experiencing common side effects such as stomach cramps, nausea, and/or diarrhea. When you take higher doses, your body just flushes out the excess.

However, IV vitamin C is a form that the body can absorb much more readily. For therapeutic use  such as chronic illness, severe infection, or as an adjunct cancer therapy, doses can range from 25,000 mg up to 75,000 mg or even higher depending on the patient and medical condition.

I strongly recommend that you take an oral vitamin C supplement daily and take a higher dose prior to or during hospitalization or prior to vaccination. In certain situations, you may benefit from IV vitamin C. If you think you may be a good candidate for it, discuss your options with a doctor who is well versed on the role that nutrition plays in supporting restorative health.

If you’re in or near Tampa, Florida, are planning to visit, or would like us to consult with your primary care physician, contact us to schedule an evaluation.

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About The Author: Dr. Matthew Lewis, D.C., DACBN, CFMP^® is the founder of PROVOKE Health^®(Functional Healthcare Group, PLLC) — a Tampa, Florida-based functional medicine and integrative healthcare practice that is committed to motivating, guiding, and supporting patients on their journey to regaining their confidence, resiliency, and health. By creating and co-managing highly personalized plans of care that address complex health problems and offer advanced preventive care, Dr. Lewis and the team at PROVOKE Health repair patient’s confidence, resiliency, and health.