Autumn: A time for pumpkin spice lattes, turtlenecks, leaf-peeping... and the sniffles. Fall and winter are the spike seasons for colds. And approximately everyone from Aunt Gladys to the cashier at the grocery store wants to inform the people about their magic bullet for combating wintertime bugs. One of the most beloved word-of-mouth cold countermeasures is Vitamin C.

But does increasing your vitamin C intake do anything at all to prohibit or lessen colds? 

One expert said that some analysis recommends that taking vitamin C has a limited impact on the common cold, but don't expect for miracles.

Stephen Lawson, who studies micronutrients and a researcher at the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University, stated that it's reasonable to say that vitamin C intake both minimizes the extent of cold and proposes some protection against colds, though it's not very climactic.

Vitamin C

Vitamin C attained its prominence as an essentially wondrous item after two-time Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling first publicized the advantages of the micronutrient in a sequence of books, with titles such as "How to Live Longer and Feel Better"  by W.H. Freeman on 1976 and "Vitamin C and the Common Cold,"  written by W.H. Freeman on 1976.

According to CBS News, Pauling recommended that taking huge shots of vitamin C could do all things from combating cancer to thwarting off heart disease. But a lot of Pauling's more climactic accounts were not carried out in research done since then, and at the time he died in 1994; some in the therapeutic organizations had identified him a faker.

But whether vitamin C is a legitimate way to cure the common cold stays as a more open question. The American Association of Family Physicians claims that the vitamin is not probable to minimize the span or asperity of colds, while the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners recommends that it could be adequate at lowering the extent of a cold, but not its asperity.

A 2013 review of dozens of research discovered that vitamin C decreases the span of colds by 8 percent in adults, and 14 percent in children. Considering that the typical cold lasts for almost a week.