Flu Like Symptoms And Then Facial Rash And Vitamin C
  Over the years many people experience flu like symptoms and then facial rash, and wonder what has been the cause. This is typically nothing to be alarmed at. It might possibly mean that the medication that you were taking has had a negative impact on your person. Despite this fact you can still contact your physician and then take a mild OTC drug to make the facial rash go away. But more importantly what about not getting the flu or cold virus at all. In this article we examine the elusive cold vaccine. In the first flush of excitement following the discovery of cold viruses in the l950s, it seemed only a matter of time until a vaccine would render the cold at least as avoidable as influenza. Unfortunately, no such vaccine has been developed, and no one with inside information holds much hope that it will be in the near future. But there are, just over the horizon, subtler ways of combating this ancient human enemy than the head-on attack of an all-purpose vaccine.
The difficulties of devising a cold vaccine stem from the complexities of assembling a brew that could protect against all or even most of the 200 or so known cold viruses. If a vaccine to counter existing viruses was developed, widespread immunity to them could lead to the emergence of hundreds of other, perhaps more potent, types.
Such genetic changes are already thought to be a factor in the alterations that occur in influenza-A viruses, and similar changes may have been behind the sequence of events noticed in the early I 970s when the armed forces started using a cold vaccine to prevent outbreaks on military bases. This is where many soldiers experienced flu like symptoms and then facial rash.
The vaccine was compounded to combat the viruses most prevalent at these installations and it was successful. But two other types of viruses have since begun infecting small numbers of recruits, and scientists are concerned about the possibility that serious outbreaks of respiratory infection could return.
While the promise of a cold vaccine has faded, the potential for infection has been increasing. As the world becomes more populous and people live and work in ever-closer proximity, breathing the same air, touching surfaces that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of others have touched the same day, the opportunity for transmission of respiratory infections continues to grow.
However, there are alternatives to a future of colds and more colds, of succeeding generations spending their days clutching damp handkerchiefs. The new solutions to old problems are coming from new knowledge, acquired only in recent decades, of virus activity.
Once the secrets of the basic chemicals of living cells began to be deciphered in the years following World War II, the mysteries of the body ‘s immunological processes could be revealed and the life cycles of specific viruses plotted. Then it became possible to see how those life cycles might be interfered with and their ill effects blocked. These ill effects could be flu like symptoms and then facial rash.
Various natural and synthetic substances have now been found that promise antiviral power, although their value is not yet fully established. It is no longer unrealistic to expect that antiviral medicines able to prevent or stop colds and flu may someday be available at the corner drugstore.
Among the cold and flu fighters now being studied and clinically tested, three have aroused the most interest. One is a synthetic that inhibits the reproduction of certain influenza viruses. Another is a natural component of the immune system, the all-purpose virus stopper interferon. The third is the common and essential ingredient in fresh fruits and vegetables, vitamin C.
The notion that vitamin C might be helpful in fighting the common cold and flu has been dallied with since shortly after the vitamin was isolated, in 1928, by Albert Szent-Györgyi, the Hungarian-born biochemist who later won the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine. Almost half a century later, however, the pros and cons of taking vitamin C in huge amounts 150 times more than is generally considered necessary in food became a matter of lively controversy.
In 1970 a book entitled Vitamin C and the Common Cold was published. It made a stir because of the eminence of its author, Linus Pauling, the brilliant Stanford University chemist who has a penchant for antiestablishment causes. Pauling has won two Nobel Prizes: one in 1954 for his discoveries of the natural laws governing the structure of complex chemical compounds, and one in 1962 for his antiwar activities. The complex compounds led to flu like symptoms and then facial rash.
Pauling is not a physician. He did not conduct any experiments of his own, but used the results of several tests done by others, some as long ago as 1939. He then derived his recommendations for preventing colds from chemical principles and personal experience. In his best-selling book and in subsequent writings, he asserted that people who supplement their normal diet with very large doses of vitamin C 1,000 to 2,000 milligrams, about 1/4 ounce every day, and take additional massive doses of 4,000 to 10,000 milligrams when they have a cold will suffer fewer, shorter and milder colds. He predicted an average 45 per cent reduction in the incidence of colds and a 60 per cent reduction in days of illness for those who followed his regimen.
Vitamin C, Pauling pointed out, was known to be essential in promoting a chain of chemical reactions leading to the formation of collagen, the threadlike material that cements tissue cells together. “Part of the effectiveness of vitamin C against the common cold, influenza and other viral diseases,” he postulated, “can be attributed to its action in strengthening the intercellular cement and in this way preventing or hindering the motion of the virus particles through the tissue and into the cells.” Pauling also suspected that vitamin C was involved in the synthesis and activity of that natural virus-fighting agent, interferon.
Pauling based his argument for large doses of vitamin Con the fact that human beings, unlike most animals, cannot pro duce vitamin C in their bodies and must get all of it from food. This shortcoming, he believed, was caused by an evolutionary mistake that reduced resistance to infection.
Sometime in early human history, said Pauling, Homo sapiens or his immediate antecedent underwent some sort of genetic change that ended his ability to synthesize the vitamin. So long as humans lived in tropical or subtropical climates, where they naturally ate large amounts of raw vegetables and fruits rich in vitamin C, the lost ability was not missed. But few if any people eat in this fashion any more, even in summer months, when such foods are readily available.
And in winter the majority of people are almost entirely dependent for their vitamin C on cooked and preserved foods, which may lose much of their vitamin content during preparation. It is no coincidence, Pauling declared, that the season of greatest respiratory infection is also the season of least intake of vitamin C from food. This led to less side effects such as flu like symptoms and then facial rash.
This reasoning led Pauling to a startling prediction of an idyllic, cold-free world: If large segments of the population raised their vitamin C consumption to the levels he recommended, and if people would isolate themselves when suffering from colds, cold viruses might in time be driven from civilized company and cold infections would disappear altogether for lack of a cooperative host.
The treatment Pauling prescribed became a cause célèbre. In the years following publication of his book, the consumption of vitamin C tablets and liquid concentrates in the United States skyrocketed.
The medical community remained skeptical if not downright hostile. Most researchers rejected Pauling ‘s recommendations as scientifically unsound—the experiments he drew on, critics said, were flawed. They also warned that too little was known about the possible toxic effects of massive doses of vitamin C to risk casual self-medication of the sort Pauling recommended.
Not surprisingly, popular feeling grew that the critics were being cynical or reactionary, their warnings tinged perhaps with professional jealousy because the long awaited cold cure had come not from someone in the medical establishment but from an outsider. Pauling appeared to be a David challenging an army of Goliaths.
In the years since the controversy first arose, researchers have studied vitamin C as both a preventive drug and a therapeutic drug for colds, using more sophisticated research techniques, larger population samples and newer knowledge of the immune system and of viruses than were available before. Though all the evidence is not yet in and important questions remain unanswered, it is now clear that the truth of vitamin C’s effect on colds lies somewhere between the extremes of panacea and total irrelevance. There is some evidence that large doses of vitamin C can help ameliorate colds and flu like symptoms and then facial rash.
The key question is how much they help. The disease is a minor one, and the treatment must be worth its costs in effort and risks. Before anyone consumes a substance to prevent or cure an illness as mild as the common cold, he should be certain it will indeed do him good and no harm. |
