The TRUTH About VITAMIN C and CHEMOTHERAPY – Dr Anderson Explains

Let's say you have good kidney function, but you're also getting an infusion of chemotherapy, maybe one, maybe two, maybe a few chemotherapies. And those chemotherapies, many of them do, are hard on the kidneys and slow kidney function down while they're working through your body. Hey everyone, welcome to my YouTube channel. I'm Dr. A, and we get into all things integrative therapies and many other related things on this channel. Today, our topic is, is vitamin C, specifically intravenous vitamin C, safe with chemotherapy? Let's break it down. The first thing we have to think about is chemotherapy is not one thing. There are many types of chemotherapy and many subcategories of those types of chemotherapy. And also intravenous vitamin C is actually not one thing either. Even though the bag might have vitamin C in an IV setting, there are differences in doses and structure of the bag chemically, et cetera. Now we've talked about dose structuring and all of that in other videos. We'll put some links to them. We have a playlist. You can knock yourself out over there. What I wanna specifically get into is vitamin C, especially intravenous vitamin C and chemotherapy and what we do and don't know about that. Okay. So the first thing is in cancer treatment, there's 2 main outcome areas that are used for intravenous vitamin C and cancer, at least in the minds of the doctors who infuse vitamin C into cancer patients and what the cancer patients are really asking for. Now, almost everybody wants the first target, which is quality of life. Whether you have cancer or not. We all want the best quality of life that we can have, generally speaking. If you have cancer, you may know, like everybody does, that we have a limited amount of time here on Earth. If we have cancer, we usually sometimes know the time might be shorter than it would've been if we didn't have cancer, although we never know that for sure. But quality of life is sort of a universal desire amongst most people. Now, I'm sure there are people who don't want quality of life, but Most people I've met, if all things being equal and they are working with any disease, but especially cancer, they want the best quality of life they can have. The other impact or target would be to help your immune system and either be synergistic with other therapies that could be chemotherapy or other natural therapies or whatever, or at least be synergistic with the way that your immune system is trying to respond to either your cancer treatment or your cancer itself. And so these 2 areas, uh, have a lot of crossover in this spectrum of intravenous vitamin C, both with research that have been positive with quality of life, especially in low-dose type settings. And then some research which has indication that it might be synergistic with, uh, other types of therapies, chemotherapies, et cetera. So to get into the primary question of vitamin C and its safety with chemotherapy, We want to look at a couple of strata of safety. So the first thing is, is the vitamin— let's say independent of chemotherapy— is the vitamin C safe for you as a human to put it in an intravenous bag and put it in? First thing about that is who's doing the IV for you? The IV should be done by a licensed and qualified and trained individual wherever your jurisdiction is, and they should be trained specifically in intravenous nutrient therapy and more specifically In in intravenous vitamin C therapy, and if you have cancer, ideally they should have some experience in giving intravenous therapy to a cancer patient. So that's first thing is who's giving it, right? And there is a lot of places where intravenous therapies can be done. Nothing wrong, you know, with most of them as long as people are, you know, licensed, qualified, following all the rules. But If you are, say, a cancer patient who's maybe on a lot of chemotherapy and other cancer drugs, et cetera, you might want a, you know, an individual or a practice that's giving you the vitamin C that has done that before and can deal with the specificity of you as a human. So, the first thing is, you know, where and how you're getting it is an important thing. The next thing is the screening process. Now, When I was in charge of the interventional part of an NIH research-funded trial—that's the United States NIH—we were looking at the human use of different substances by people with cancer. My section was intravenous and injection therapies in people with stage four cancer, so a little tougher end of the spectrum. So the first thing that you have to do when you are working with people and you're going to give them intravenous therapy of any kind, but especially IV vitamin C, is you have to check a few things in their blood. The first thing would be their metabolic profile to make sure that their kidneys are working appropriately. We have cutoff levels for kidney functions, just like with any other drug. If you're going to give IV anything, Often there's a cutoff for if you have low kidney function, you can only give this much of the drug. Well, vitamin C, when it's in an IV bag, is a drug considered that way by the government and really should be considered that way by the patient as well. If you're getting a sterile IV, it's a drug. So if you have good kidney function, that's the first test to pass. If you have low kidney function, we might have to adjust the dose or not give you any depending. The next thing is the presence or absence of a genetic enzyme deficiency called G6PD. And we test for that at the baseline, at the very least, with people getting IV vitamin C, especially the higher doses. And the reason for that is if you're genetically deficient in G6PD enzyme, you can't have higher doses of vitamin C. You have to stick with lower doses or none. There's other parameters that have to be looked at, such as particular types of red blood cell problems and things that may preexist in somebody. These are done with some very basic types of tests. G6PD can be run at any lab. The metabolic panel and the blood count, maybe a blood smear, those can be done at any lab. And so, those are really kind of a low entry, but they have to be done before you just start putting vitamin C into people who are sick. So, we've got, do you have a facility and practitioners who are licensed and trained and following all the rules to do it? Do you have the proper labs done to screen to make sure it's safe for you? And then the next thing is, now let's say you pass the first two bars. You got a good place to get it done. Your labs look really good. Then the next level is what medications are you on or not on? What kind of disease state do you have, etc.? So this is where you start to look at specifically the questioner: Is chemotherapy and vitamin C okay together? Well, there's shades of gray around that. So the first thing is. What chemotherapy are you on? Now, generally speaking, when we were doing that research, this was a big open question, and we were in collaboration with two universities, two very large cancer centers. And so we had a lot of people with eyes on the project that we were doing. And because A, first do no harm in medicine, and B, we're doing a research project, we wanted to know. Can we legitimately tell the referring oncologist that yes, we have some data to show you're putting them on chemotherapy A and B? We have data to show that chemotherapy A and B are going to be fine with vitamin C. Well, believe it or not, prior to 2008, nobody had really looked at that in one place in one paper, and then in somewhere along the lines of 2011 or '12, I took a new look because that's when we were doing the research and wrote a new summary paper. And that looked at all of the chemotherapies that had been studied with vitamin C. And so it's, you know, close to 30 pages long just as a summary. There's no way I can read that all to you and you wouldn't want me to. But the punchline is, and much to my surprise, but also the surprise of the oncologists who were referring in and I was working with, most of the Research, like the lion's share of the research, shows that the vitamin C and the chemotherapy are either neutral—they don't hurt each other—or the vitamin C actually gives some synergy to that type of chemotherapy. So while this is individual, and everybody who has cancer and getting chemotherapy may get different chemotherapies, generally speaking, yes, it is safe, and it is something that can be employed safely. Now here. Is one of these clinical things where it looks okay on paper, but is okay for you, the patient. Considerations that you need to have for you, the patient, are let's say you have good kidney function, but you're also getting, uh, an infusion of chemotherapy, maybe one, maybe two, maybe a few chemotherapies. And those chemotherapies, many of them do, are hard on the kidneys and slow kidney function down while they're working through your body. Now, the same thing happens with higher doses of vitamin C while it's working through your body. Intravenous vitamin C slows your kidney function down, then it recovers, same as with chemotherapy. So while it may be good on paper to do them at the same exact time, for your kidney's sake, we might separate it. This is a clinical decision that needs to be made. I have a colleague who is a medical oncologist who in their office, they give the chemotherapy at an adjusted dose and they give the vitamin C at an adjusted dose and they do them back to back. So in the same sitting, in order to do that, if that's what you're going to do, you would have to find a provider who actually does that. And that's not terribly common right now because vitamin C in oncology, at least in North America, is nowhere near part of the standard of care. This is an add-on integrative type therapy. But generally speaking, what the research says is that vitamin C is either neutral or generally synergistic with most chemotherapy types. But you may have a situation where you get a big hit of chemotherapy and every chemotherapy has a different schedule. But let's say you're getting it all on this day and then they're gonna do it in 7 days or 14 days or 21 days or something. Again, we may do a vitamin C a day or two before your chemotherapy. But then we may not do the other one until you've had 48, 72 hours to recover from the chemotherapy. Because again, it's, it's not that it's gonna be harmful to the chemo, it's that your kidneys can only filter so much at one time. So when it comes to is it safe with chemotherapy, you have to go through these different layers. Number one, provider, you know, licensing, training, are they doing all the things right within the law, et cetera. Number 2, have you had the screening labs? Number 3, what are the chemotherapy agents? Number 4, what's their schedule? And then the next thing is if the chemo is slowing down your kidney function for 24 hours while it's working through the body, let's say, and the vitamin C is slowing down your kidney function for, you know, 10 to 12 hours while it's working through, maybe even though they're fine together, we still separate them a little bit. The final thing would be, why would somebody want to do this? Okay. Now, there have been some studies that have been done with individual chemotherapies. As I said, a lot of them are just looking at, is, is there synergy or is there competition, things like that. But some of the early, certainly preclinical and, and maybe clinical, uh, information that we're seeing with vitamin C and chemotherapy is that You often, and we saw this in, in the human research we were doing, you often can have a patient and they're getting vitamin C dosed appropriately, you know, around their chemo. And the person often who's on the vitamin C and the chemo will stay healthy enough to get their full course of their standard therapy. And this was one of the things early on that got the attention of the medical oncologists because one of the problems that can be very difficult in medical oncology is if they set you up for a particular Protocol of, so let's say, certain amount of chemotherapy. If you can't complete it, then you sort of fall out of there and then they have to take you off of the chemo and let your body heal. If there are other therapies that can help you to keep level and also not harm, you know, either of the therapies, then you're more likely to finish your course of treatment. So in many cases, practically speaking, done appropriately with the appropriate monitoring, Not only was the vitamin C and the chemotherapy safe together, managed appropriately, but actually the vitamin C was helpful to the overall cancer treatment in keeping the person healthy, high enough quality of life, able to receive the full course of treatment, whatever was prescribed by their medical oncologist, generally speaking. All right. I hope that answered the question about vitamin C and chemotherapy. As you can see, There's a lot of nuance to it, and you really do want to work with, you know, providers who have done this before, not just with giving IVs, but giving IVs with people with cancer, and that know the unique pharmacologic aspects of vitamin C in the human, but also in the human getting chemotherapy as well. I will see you all on the next video, and thank you for listening.