IV Vitamin C
Blog ANVC IV Vitamin C
Dogs manufacture their own vitamin C and don’t need it added to their food. Oral vitamin C can be used to manage stress, as support for working dogs, for degenerative joint disease and for some types of respiratory infections. Very high doses of vitamin C, higher than can be tolerated orally, are used to help dogs with cancer.
Intravenous vitamin C has been shown to both improve quality of life and also the response to treatment in human cancer patients. The Nobel Prize laureate, Linus Pauling, first hypothesised a role for high doses of vitamin C in the treatment of cancer, back in the early 1970s.
Emerging evidence shows that Intravenous vitamin C has cancer cell-killing effects, as well as immunological effects. It can work synergistically with chemotherapy, to improve treatment outcomes, as well as mitigate side effects.
Although there is less research in dogs, high-dose sodium ascorbate in vitro decreased survival in osteosarcoma cell lines. There have also been studies establishing safety in dogs. We have been using intravenous vitamin C treatments in dogs for cancer support at All Natural Vet Care for over 15 years and have found it to be safe and well tolerated.
One of our integrative Vets can assess the suitability of this treatment for your dog. Sometimes we may need to run blood or urine tests, before recommending treatment.
Pharmacological ascorbate is given via an intravenous catheter. The time taken for the infusion can be up to 2 hours. Ideally, we have dogs with their owners relaxing comfortably in a room together, where the patient is checked regularly by our staff. The total number, and frequency of treatments will depend on the disease being treated, and any other treatments eg chemotherapy given concurrently.
The most common effects after treatment are increased thirst, and your dog will need a toilet break before travelling home. They may be tired that night but often have more energy than normal in the few days after treatment.
If you would like to learn more, then please contact the team at All Natural Vet Care. Please note, a holistic consultation is required before we can deliver IV Vitamin C as not every patient is a suitable candidate, this is a great opportunity to discuss other evidence-based Integrative Oncology options which may include repurposed drug therapy, herbal medicine, acupuncture, targeted food therapies; such as modified keto diets and also the role of complementary medicine to support conventional therapies such as chemo or radiotherapy.