Proven, Effective, Low Cost Treatment for A Leading Cause of Hospitalization and Death Ignored…Why?
You need to know about an effective treatment for a condition that according to the CDC, impacts more than 1.5 million Americans annually; a quarter of a million die from it each year and a third of patients who die in a hospital have this condition. It could save your life or a loved one’s.
Despite these staggering numbers, most people have never heard of sepsis.
Last week, while Skyping with my godson, who recently began his residency (junior doctor) training in the UK, he shared with me a harrowing case of a seriously ill patient, with a suspected and later proven cases of sepsis (a life endangering infection), I shared with him a very promising study I’d discovered earlier this year, about a proven, effective and low cost treatment, that remains unknown and overlooked. I’m excited to share this info with you.
Sepsis is a condition caused by an invading bacteria, that includes severe damage, primarily caused by an uncontrollable response, that causes severe cellular damage, characterized by oxidative damage, hyper-inflammation, immune dysfunction, low oxygen levels, increased blood coagulation, usually caused by an infectious agent.
When susceptible persons are infected, there can be an uncontrolled severe response by the immune system inflammatory response that disrupts organ function and blood flow.
Instead of targeting the offending bacteria or virus, the immune system mounts inflammatory reactions that can result in circulatory collapse, multi-organ failure, and eventual death.
What you need to know
Sepsis is a life-threatening medical condition, affecting approximately 26 million people worldwide every year. The disease is a continuum, with uncontrollable inflammation, instability of blood vessels, leading to shock, organ dysfunction and failure, and ultimately death.
Medical treatment has focused on the early identification and treatment of sepsis primarily with bundled and goal directed therapy. Despite these advances, complications and death has remained high, and led to investigating unique therapies.
Vitamin C is a water-soluble vitamin that plays a role in managing inflammation through antioxidant activities and is also important in the synthesis of cortisol, catecholamines, and vasopressin, which are key mediators in the disease process. A growing body of evidence provides initial data in support of the administration of vitamin C in addition to standard therapy to ameliorate the effects of inflammation and improve hemodynamic stability in patients with sepsis and septic shock; however, further evidence is needed to support this practice.
There is an urgent need to find better treatments for sepsis, as it causes approximately 250,000 American deaths each year. A recent clinical study has revealed that a combination therapy with vitamin C was able to dramatically lowered death from septic shock compared to current treatment.
In a study published in 2017, a group of 47 hospitalized sepsis patients were treated with intravenous vitamin C, hydrocortisone, and vitamin B1.
Compared to sepsis patients treated with conventional therapy, those receiving the intravenous vitamins and hydrocortisone had a striking 87% reduced mortality.4
These impressive small-scale studies have ignited eight new clinical trials in 2018 that will use this three-prong approach, i.e., intravenous vitamin C, vitamin B1, and hydrocortisone.
Tragically this particular treatment approach was documented several decades ago As you’re about to learn, this kind of approach to sepsis treatment was demonstrated in the late nineties. Millions may have needlessly succumbed because this therapy was overlooked by the medical establishment.
It described the staggering costs of hospitalized sepsis patients, along with better ways to treat sepsis that had been published in the 1990s.
Move forward 20 years and virtually none of those published methods to save sepsis patients have been adopted into hospital practice.
Sepsis is a frustrating condition to offer suggestions for from the outside. That’s because the septic patient is confined to a hospital, where the treating physician exerts dictatorial authority.
There has been fierce hostility by many physicians against the use of intravenous vitamins in the hospital setting, despite persuasive evidence of efficacy. This prejudice may soon change.
Pioneering ICU Doctor Defies Conventional Wisdom
If you happen to reside anywhere near Norfolk, Virginia, and require hospitalization, you may want to enroll as a patient of Dr. Paul Marik at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital.
Dr. Marik has incorporated intravenous vitamins + hydrocortisone therapy into routine treatment of sepsis. Patients threatened with death are instead leaving the hospital alive within days.
According to Dr. Paul Marcik noted, “Our experience has been echoed by now hundreds, if not thousands, of clinicians across the world,” said Dr. Marik, chief of the division of pulmonary and critical care medicine, Eastern Virginia Medical School, Norfolk.
Local media are reporting on Dr. Marik’s “miracle juice,” quoting an ICU nurse:18
“We started having patient after patient have these remarkable results…They’d be at death’s door and, 24 to 48 hours later, they had turned around. We have seen patients walk out of here we didn’t think would leave.”
Critics state that full blown clinical trials involving large numbers of septic patients are required to prove this therapy is really working.
Dr. Marik agrees, but initially noted it may be difficult to fund large studies because it uses a drug (hydrocortisone) and vitamins that have been on the market for decades. Dr. Marik was quoted earlier this year:18
“We are curing (sepsis) for $60. No one will make any money off it.”
He also informed Life Extension magazine that over 700 American patients have now been treated with consistent response. He stated there was no evidence of side effects in thousands of patients treated around the world using his protocol of intravenous vitamin C, thiamine and hydrocortisone.
When asked if additional nutrients or drugs might provide greater benefits, Dr. Marik replied:
“I believe that our current combo is safe, cheap and very effective…so it’s difficult to beat this.”
He went on to state that there are three new clinical trials using his protocol underway or about to begin in the United States and another five around the world are beginning.
The good news is that new studies using this protocol are being launched this year, despite there being no blockbuster new drug involved.
Low Vitamin C in Sepsis Patients
A study published in 2017 looked at vitamin C plasma levels in sepsis patients.
This study found overall that critically ill sepsis patients had low vitamin C levels with one-third having frank vitamin C deficiency.
Nearly 40% of septic shock patients in this study were deficient in vitamin C compared to 25% of non-septic patients. (Septic shock is severe sepsis that often precedes death.)
This misconception is startling when considering hospitalized patients rapidly use up their vitamin C to suppress acute oxidative reactions brought on by sepsis-induced inflammation.
This finding was initially reported more than 20 years earlier.10,11
A 2018 published report titled “Vitamin C: The next step in sepsis management?” describes mechanisms through which vitamin C functions to suppress inflammation and oxidation while improving blood flow to organs.12
In 2018, y there are eight new clinical trials that will study the effects of intravenous vitamin C, thiamine, and hydrocortisone in sepsis patients. Funding is coming largely from philanthropic donors.
Hydrocortisone + Vitamin C = Synergy
A 2017 published study involving sepsis patients were given intravenous vitamin C, vitamin B1, and the anti-inflammatory drug hydrocortisone.
This study showed only four of 47 (8.5%) septic patients treated with these vitamins (+ hydrocortisone) died compared to 19 of 47 (40.4%) of historic controls. This represents a remarkable 87% reduction in death
Also, this study found the Sepsis-Related Organ Failure Assessment score decreased in all patients in the treatment group (vitamins + hydrocortisone). None of these treated patients developed progressive organ failure.
Patients in the treatment group were weaned off a class of drug used to support blood pressure (vasopressors) 18 hours after starting the vitamins + hydrocortisone protocol.
Control patients, on the other hand, needed these blood pressure-boosting drugs for about 54 hours…three times longer than the group treated with intravenous vitamins + hydrocortisone.4
(Vasopressors constrict blood vessels and thereby boost dangerously low blood pressure.)
Why Hydrocortisone + Vitamins Are Effective
The same researchers who showed remarkable survival improvements (87% better) in human sepsis patients sought to clarify why vitamin C + hydrocortisone was so effective in their study.
These researchers pursued answers by identifying lethal process of sepsis including blood vessel lining (endothelial) dysfunction and capillary leakage.
Using endothelial cells from human lungs, the researchers were able to identify how vitamin C and Hydrocortisone together enable more potent protective effects against inflammatory damage to vascular cells.
This finding showed that vitamin C or hydrocortisone alone was not satisfactory. But when combined before or after inflammation was induced, vitamin C + hydrocortisone demonstrated a dramatic reversal of loss of vascular barrier function, i.e., capillary permeability.
The ability of vitamin C to protect against capillary leakage should not be surprising since that is a critical role this nutrient plays in a healthy body.
Death by scurvy (severe vitamin C deficiency) often comes from massive internal bleeding as the scurvy victim’s vasculature can no longer contain blood volume.15
A paper published in 2017 describes prior studies in animal and experimental models of sepsis, which demonstrate the ability of vitamin C to protect against microvascular dysfunction caused by the kind of systemic inflammation that occurs in sepsis.16
With hundreds of thousands of Americans likely to die from sepsis this year,23 and robust data indicating that large numbers can be saved, it is beyond cruel to deny a septic patient the option of intravenous vitamin C, thiamine plus hydrocortisone.
Economics of Sepsis Treatment
The annual cost of treating sepsis in the United States is $23 billion.24 Sepsis treatment is a huge revenue driver for hospitals.
Patients who present or contract sepsis are confined to the ICU for days, weeks or months, often on ventilators and receiving multiple IVs.
Hospitals can bill Medicare and insurance companies hundreds of thousands of dollars for each septic patient.
There is now a way for people with symptoms that indicate sepsis to potentially prevent it, possibly utilizing intravenous vitamin C and thiamine in outpatient infusion centers.
Even if one is contracting the flu or other infections/trauma, these nutrients may help protect against short- and long-term tissue damage inflicted by inflammation-induced oxidative stress, while improving immune responses.
For those who develop sepsis, Dr. Marik’s protocol of intravenous vitamin C, thiamine plus hydrocortisone may enable most to leave the hospital in days instead of lingering at death’s door for agonizing periods.
With Medicare, Medicaid and private insurers so financially stressed, this represents a unique opportunity to significantly slash the healthcare cost burden.
How to Avoid Becoming a Sepsis Casualty
Anyone over age 60 is likely to suffer some degree of immune senescence leading to higher septic risk. Sepsis can strike people of any age, however, including neonates.
In reviewing Dr. Marik’s sepsis protocol that is now being studied in several clinical trials, an intravenous dosage protocol administered in the hospital might consist of:
- Vitamin C: 1.5 grams (administered as an infusion over 30 to 60 minutes) every six hours for four days or until ICU discharge;
- Thiamine: 200 mg every 12 hours for four days or until ICU discharge;
- Hydrocortisone: 50 mg every six hours for seven days or until ICU discharge, followed by a taper over three days.
Sepsis Symptoms
The clinical presentation of sepsis is highly variable depending on a wide range of clinically relevant factors.
Common sites of primary infection are respiratory, genital/urinary, gastrointestinal, skin, and soft tissue.
Fever is often the first manifestation of sepsis, with pneumonia being one of the most common presentations leading to sepsis.
Early initiation of therapy decreases in-hospital mortality. Some early indicators of sepsis include:
- Fever
- Hypothermia (lower than normal body temperature)
- Heart rate >90 beats per minute
- Fast respiratory rate
- Altered mental status (confusion/coma)
- Edema (swelling)
- High blood glucose (without diabetes)
Since some of these symptoms might indicate a flu virus or other infection, it might make sense for people developing these symptoms to load up on oral antioxidant nutrients, or ideally, go to a local infusion center for intravenous administration of vitamin C, vitamin B1, and possibly glutathione.
With 250,000 Americans perishing each year from sepsis, we look forward to updating you regarding the results from clinical trials that will study the effects of intravenous vitamin C, thiamine and hydrocortisone on large numbers of sepsis patients.
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