Has anyone used or heard of high dosage Vitamin C IV to treat cancer?

My husband is currently taking 80 g of IV Vitamin C as part of his supplemental Metabolic Cancer protocol. Our Metabolic Oncologist at Care Oncology recommends treatment 3 times a week.

Vitamin C, when administered IV at High Doses turns to Hydrogen Peroxide in the blood. One Oxygen molecule then breaks off and get into cancer cells which creates an oxidized environment that the cancer cells can not survive in. The rest is H20 which is discarded through normal means.

I would not recommend it at the ONLY treatment, but it can be supplemental. There are a number of articles in PubMed that are free and you can read online that go into alot more detail.

My husband was only diagnosed in Feb. 2023 so I have no experience regarding whether this will work for him or not, but we are going for it.

I hope that all goes well with you.

Beth

Mayo Clinic’s Dr. Karthik Giridhar, medical oncologist offer this information:

- High-dose vitamin C: Can it kill cancer cells? https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/cancer/expert-answers/alternative-cancer-treatment/faq-20057968

In brief:
“ There's still no evidence that vitamin C alone can cure cancer, but researchers are studying whether it might boost the effectiveness of other cancer treatments, such as chemotherapy and radiation therapy, or reduce treatment side effects.

There are still no large, controlled clinical trials that have shown a substantial effect of vitamin C on cancer, but some preliminary studies do suggest there may be a benefit to combining standard treatments with high-dose IV vitamin C. Until clinical trials are completed, it's premature to determine what role vitamin C may play in the treatment of cancer.”

Just make sure you're checking for interactions with other meds before you start or stop anything.

In my specific scenario, my pharmacist gave me the following info related to my 3-drug chemo cocktail:

"Avoid any component listed as an antioxidant - this has the potential of reducing the efficacy of cisplatin. These include high levels of Vitamin E, Vitamin C, coenzyme Q, tumeric, and many others. In addition many of these components can add to any bleeding risk, and should be held if your platelets are low (good possibility for any one on gemcitabine, cisplatin and Abraxane)."

Cisplatin is supposed to help a lot for people with ATM mutations (poster child here), so I want to make sure I'm not counteracting that.

Since my chemo is every two weeks, and I'm starting to develop a little more fatigue and anemia, I've resumed some of my previous vitamins (at lower doses) between treatments, but avoid them 3-4 days before & after treatments to minimize overlapping with chemo during its highest concentrations in my bloodstream.

Good advice. I’m post chemo; wondering if high dose vitamin C IV would provide any preventative benefit to prevent reoccurrence?

As @markymarkfl suggests, it is important to check that there is no interactions when taking a non-prescribed supplement with your care provider. One care team member often overlooked because many patients were never introduced is the hem/onc pharmacist. When your oncologist or N.P. doesn't know the answer regarding drug combination interactions, they consult the hem/onc pharmacist. Ever wonder who the person in the white lab coat delivering the IV bags of chemo and pre-meds to your infusion cubicle/ That is usually the hem/onc pharmacist. There is a satellite pharmacy on the in or on the infusion clinic floor where this specialized pharmacist works in preparing your customized IV medications. Take the time to make an introduction. They are the ones that graduated pharmacy school and studied pharmacology and why your oncologist and N.P. consult with them for getting accurate and up-to-date information on medications and supplements.

Both my oncologist & the oncology pharmacist said that continuing to take your multi vitamins through treatment including calcium with Vitamin D is a good idea. I also take B-Complex vitamins which they said was ok. B-Complex wards of neuropathy. I am on chemo #6 and still no sign of neuropathy. They advised to stop taking all supplements that I was previously taking including black cumin seed oil, Agaricus Blazei mushroom tincture, turmeric & numerous others. They do not know how many of these supplements interact with the chemo. Some may make the chemo stronger & others may cause the chemo not to work. Going through all this torture, we all want the chemo to work as best it can, right?

I do drink fresh squeezed OJ occasionally but I do avoid the Vit C supplements as I don’t know how it affects the chemo. I have read that Vit C does cause a reaction with many chemo drugs.

Maybe ask your oncology pharmacist? You can also look up drug interactions on drugs.com

Hope this helps!

This is also a good reference for various supplements from a reliable source:
https://www.mskcc.org/cancer-care/diagnosis-treatment/symptom-management/integrative-medicine/herbs/search
FWIW, there has been some recent interest and research regarding the potential of Metformin to be helpful wrt pancreatic cancer. If anyone gets good details from reliable sources, please post!

Additionally there is a clinical trial using hydroxychloroquin with high doses of vitamin in D for pancreatic cancer but no results in yet. I was advised to take water soluble ADEK vitamin and some extra D.

There is alot of controversy about the use of High Dose IV C - mostly because it is being assumed that IV C acts the same as oral C and it does not. Oral C acts as an anti-oxidant. IV C when in high dose acts as an oxidant and makes the environment unsuitable for cancer - thus weaking is and killing some of it.

It should not be used as a sole method to fight cancer. Chemotherapy is currently the best cancer killer. However, High Dose IV C along with many other off-label medicines as well as supplements can help.

Please do research on this by Googling Pubmed and searching for articles on High Dose Intravenous Vitamin C and cancer . https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/

Think about an approach that seeks to use anything that looks like it could help with solid research behind it - even if not part of the "Standard of Care".

I probably spend one to two hours a day reading and searching for anything that may help. My goal is to hit this thing with tons of bullets concurrently. Pancreatic cancer is aggressive and sneaky.

Beth

I would also recommend reading the book "How to Starve Cancer" by Jane McClelland. It is NOT a book about fasting or what foods to leave out. It is a book about using off-label existing relatively harmless medications to inhibit the way cancers feed themselves- thus weakening them and enabling chemo and other mechanisms to kill them .... INCLUDING cancer stems cells.