Hepatitis C is a viral infection that causes liver damage and, in many cases, eventual liver failure. While it's natural to want to find vitamins or natural remedies for hepatitis C to avoid needing treatment with powerful pharmaceutical drugs, you can't treat hepatitis C with vitamins; neither will DNA and RNA help you.
Misconceptions
There's a common misconception that anything you take as a supplement is a vitamin. You may have heard that amino acids, for instance, are vitamins -- or that DNA and RNA supplements are vitamin supplements. This is not true; vitamins are specific molecules that your cells need to engage in certain chemical reactions, and not all supplements are vitamins. "Multivitamins," for instance, also contain minerals like iron and calcium; these are not vitamins, and neither are DNA and RNA.
DNA
Unlike vitamins, which you have to take because you can't make them or can't always make enough of them, DNA and RNA are biomolecules that your cells contain permanently or produce as needed. DNA stands for deoxyribonucleic acid, and it's the genetic material in the nucleus of most of your body cells. It contains the information your cells need to act as they do and make the structural and functional proteins they require.
RNA
Unlike DNA, RNA -- short for ribonucleic acid -- isn't stored permanently in cells. Instead, you make it as needed. There are different types of RNA, but in simple terms, they work together to help your cells generate functional and structural proteins from the genetic information in your DNA. Some RNA fetches information from DNA and transports it out of the nucleus into the main body of the cell, while other types of RNA build proteins from that information.
Treating Hepatitis C
Hepatitis C isn't a problem with your DNA or RNA; it's a viral infection. Therefore, you can't treat it with DNA and RNA. Furthermore, if you take oral DNA and RNA, you can't absorb it into your cells and "fix" problems with their genetic material. In reality, you have almost no capacity for absorbing nucleotides -- the building blocks of DNA and RNA -- from the food or supplements you use, meaning DNA and RNA supplements are essentially useless in treating hepatitis C.
References
- PubMed Health: Hepatitis C
- "Biochemistry"; Reginald Garrett, Ph.D., and Charles Grisham, Ph.D.; 2007
- "Human Physiology"; Lauralee Sherwood, Ph.D.; 2004
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