It’s been said that desperate times call for desperate measures.
And you know that conditions are truly desperate when mainstream medical practitioners are beginning to embrace a cheap and easily found alternative treatment that has been saving lives when nothing else has worked.
That treatment is high-dose intravenous vitamin C (IVC), and the deadly condition it can cure is sepsis.
As we’ve been reporting right here in the eAlert, IVC has already saved an untold number of lives when all else has failed.
Now, a group of doctors from several large medical centers are putting C to the test in a couple of large studies designed to be ultimate, gold-standard research.
It could be a literal turning point for acceptance of IVC, which is wonderful news!
However, research such as that takes time and money. And that means that people who could be saved from sepsis are going to die while many physicians simply watch and wait.
Certainly, I hope sepsis isn’t anything that you or a family member will ever experience. But if you should, knowing about this life-saving vitamin C protocol could be priceless.
Back from the brink of death
Sepsis is basically a bacterial infection of the bloodstream that causes the body’s inflammatory response to go haywire, rapidly leading to organ failure… and death.
It’s now reached crisis proportions, striking an estimated 1 million Americans a year — young, old, and in between — and killing over 700 people a day. While any infection (especially a UTI) can lead to sepsis, it’s quickly becoming the nation’s No. 1 hospital-acquired killer.
But although it’s saved lives when nothing else has worked, IVC is still being used as a last-ditch approach, rather than the go-to cure.
But that may soon be changing.
Dr. Craig Coopersmith, a critical-care surgeon at Emory University tells of a patient who was “so sick” from sepsis that he had to be flipped “upside down to get oxygen into his body.” His kidneys, liver, and bone marrow had all failed.
“His chance of dying was nearly 100 percent,” Dr. Coopersmith said.
With basically nothing to lose, he tried what’s now been dubbed the “Marik cocktail,” a lifesaving combo that contains high-dose vitamin C, delivered via an IV.
In a week, the patient had improved enough to be moved out of the ICU!
And that’s just one of many dramatic stories of patients who should have died from sepsis but didn’t — all thanks to this miraculous discovery.
This cocktail is named for Dr. Paul Marik from the Sentara Norfolk General Hospital, who has used it to save hundreds of lives during the past two years with no significant side effects. He attributes its success to its ability to disarm the deadly molecules that sepsis creates in the body.
But now, as other doctors are beginning to realize the incredible potential of IVC, two major clinical trials are in the works. One — which is now underway at Emory in Atlanta, Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, and other hospitals — has been dubbed VICTAS, an acronym for the Marik cocktail ingredients vitamin C, thiamine, and steroids.
A second study already in progress is being conducted by doctors at Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
As Dr. Coopersmith puts it, if the latest research proves positive, IVC will be “a game-changer, almost a miracle cure.”
It will also be “very, very cheap and accessible throughout the world,” he added.
Imagine that — a cure for a now-common killer that’s affordable, safe, and doesn’t involve Big Pharma!
But it still may be a while before this cure becomes standard procedure in hospitals across the U.S. Right now, just 10 to 20 percent of intensive care specialists are already using the Marik treatment, Coopersmith estimates.
But something else you need to know about sepsis is that diagnosing it is not as simple as you might think, and you’ve got to catch it and begin treatment ASAP to have the best chance for survival. That’s why some hospitals even have trained “sepsis nurses” to monitor patients for the top warning signs.
Those can include:
- running a fever of over 101 F with shivering and extreme chills,
- rapid pulse and fast breathing, which may include a drop in blood pressure, and
- swollen, inflamed tissue that’s extremely painful around any cut or injury.
And if you don’t have the benefit of a specialized nurse’s expertise, the most important question a patient or family member can ask a doctor to help nip this killer in the bud is simply, “Could this be sepsis?”
If it could, then you need to inquire whether your hospital offers this lifesaving cocktail to sepsis patients. If not, ask your doc if he’ll give it a try.
They will have nothing to lose, and you may have everything to gain.
