I can’t prove it, but I am hopeful that giving the right doses of vitamin C assisted by some other supplements will prove to be fantastically effective for treating toddlers with runny noses. I recommend using three supplements that are inexpensive and easy to find. These are 500 mg chewable vitamin C tablets, children’s chewable multivitamins, and 250 mg time-release niacin gelcaps. When your toddler’s nose starts running, feed him or her 6 of the vitamin C tablets, one multivitamin, and 1/2 of one 250 mg time-release niacin gelcap. Follow up with 4 more vitamin C tablets before bedtime. Many toddlers are happy to take one kid’s chewable multivitamin and lots of chewable vitamin C. These taste good. The half niacin gelcap is the only toddler-unfriendly ingredient. It is, however, an essential part of the treatment and works synergistically with the vitamin C. Fortunately, niacin has a mild flavor. The gelcap is filled with tiny white spheres. It can be pulled apart and half the spheres added to ice cream or pudding, or some other soft, sweet, toddler-friendly food. The niacin may cause the toddler to flush – a temporary reddening of the skin. Although the flushing can be unpleasant, it is short lived and harmless. Further, flushing is unusual with time-release niacin at such a moderate dosage. A single dose of niacin is often all that is needed to obviously get the cold and runny nose into remission. Keep going with one multivitamin daily. Keep going with the vitamin C, 3 chewable tablets every morning and every bedtime until the cold is gone. 3 chewable vitamin C tablets and a multivitamin can be taken every day, even when healthy.

My experience suggests that this treatment is much more effective for toddlers than any other age group. This makes sense to me because toddlers entering daycare often have almost no prior exposure and no immunity to colds. Vitamins would be expected to be most useful during this period of growth and development when the immune system is learning how to defend against cold viruses. In my opinion, the primary function of vitamins is to catalyze the growth and development of an egg and sperm into a healthy adult. Building the immune system is among the most important and complex aspects of this process.