Ascorbic acid, or vitamin C, is essential to human health and involves thousands of metabolic reactions.
You can get an idea of the power of vitamin C easily. As it plays an important role in every tissue and fluid in the body. Since vitamin C is water soluble, it has a limited life in the body and must be consumed daily to maintain optimal health. It implies that we need it daily to maintain our health.
Vitamin C serves a wide variety of purposes in the body. Power of vitamin C gets high because of its antioxidant function. It is crucial to maintain a healthy immune system. It aids detoxification by triggering liver enzyme production.
It helps keep your heart healthy, reduces allergies, and protects your eyes from illness. Vitamin C not only aids in the breakdown of cholesterol but also plays a role in creating crucial neurotransmitters and hormones.
- Humans cannot produce vitamin C, unlike most animals, so it must come from diet or supplements.
- Vitamin C can reduce the severity and duration of colds but doesn’t prevent them.
- Citrus fruits aren’t the highest in vitamin C; guavas and bell peppers top the list.
- Vitamin C strengthens blood vessels, reducing bruising.
- This vitamin may protect skin from aging by boosting collagen and reducing sun damage.
- High-dose vitamin C therapy is being researched for its potential in cancer treatment.
Why You Should Not Tolerate Vitamin C Deficiency in Your Body?
As said earlier, vitamin C is an all-rounder vitamin that supports and speeds up many bodily functions. Besides this, it saves us from several diseases and adds a healthy glow to the skin.
Persons with life-threatening diseases, including diabetes, arthritis, pneumonia, Crohn’s disease, cancer, etc., show extremely low vitamin C levels.
Following are the essential health benefits of vitamin C, which are necessary for everyone to know. This knowledge will make it easier to incorporate the vitamin into your diet.
Heart disease is avoided when vitamin C is consumed
As an anti-atherosclerosis measure, vitamin C performs well. It provides excellent defense against the atherosclerotic heart disease and stroke risks.
If atherosclerosis has already been established, taking a large dose of vitamin C—three to four grams per day— acts like a miracle. This is no doubt one of the greatest health benefits of vitamin C.
Vitamin C also aids in the breakdown of cholesterol, which reduces its presence in the blood. It does this while simultaneously increasing levels of “good” HDL cholesterol.
Vitamin C helps relax blood arteries and prevents platelets from sticking together when taken in large concentrations. In turn, this aids in warding off hypertension.
Vitamin C as an immunity-booster
Vitamin C boosts white blood cell synthesis, improving the immune system’s capacity to fight off infections. Immune cells contain a vitamin C level that is 40 times greater than that of regular blood cells.
In the early stages of an illness, immune cell function is compromised when vitamin C levels are quickly depleted.
It would help to take thousands of milligrams of vitamin C daily at regular intervals to fight the infection. You can safely take 3-4 grams in a day.
Also, zinc in large amounts is suggested for colds and other infections.
Allergy suffering is alleviated by vitamin C
Vitamin C deficiency is common in those who suffer from allergies. Vitamin C alleviates symptoms in people with asthma, allergic rhinitis, and atopic dermatitis.
Curing diabetes with vitamin C
High blood sugar levels in people with diabetes increase their risk of cardiovascular complications, including stroke and heart attack, because sugar clings to proteins and lipids in the blood, preventing blood from flowing freely.
Incorporating only 1 g of vitamin C daily decreases sticky molecules called AGEs. Greater improvements could be possible with higher vitamin C dosages.
Anti-gout vitamin C
A regular daily dose of vitamin C has been shown to dramatically lower blood uric acid levels. Vitamin C may be a preventative measure and a remedy for gout pain.
Mental health and vitamin C
Vitamin C’s role in synthesizing neurotransmitters, including adrenaline, norepinephrine, and serotonin, makes it a promising treatment for mental health problems like depression.
Fatigue, exhaustion, and lack of energy are all things that may be helped by vitamin C.
Cancer and vitamin C
Vitamin C is crucial in the fight against free radicals and, by extension, preventing cellular damage caused by oxidation. Vitamin C’s anti-cancer properties include a role in detoxification.
Vitamin C is often administered intravenously at very high dosages to treat advanced cancer effectively. Vitamin C taken orally is typically sufficient for cancer prevention.
Other Common Health Benefits of Vitamin C
- Iron absorption is improved by vitamin C.
- Vitamin C helps alcoholics because it protects the liver from the toxins in alcohol.
- Vitamin C inhibits the body’s uptake of toxic metals. Lead levels are reduced by 80 percent when smokers take 1000 milligrams of vitamin C daily.
- Vitamin C also helps stop gum bleeding and lowers gum inflammation.
- Its regular intake helps in weight reduction and lessens fatigue and weakness.
- Cataracts and the evolution of cataracts are slowed by vitamin C.
- Particularly important for the production of new collagen fibers, vitamin C is found in wounds. When vitamin C levels are high, wounds heal quickly and effectively.
- Vitamin C deficiency increases the risk of gastrointestinal disorders.
How to Get the Best Possible Results Through Vitamin C?
Vitamin C is easily eliminated from the body through urine due to its water-solubility. Here are some important things to remember:
- Extremely high daily doses of vitamin C (up to 10 g) are well tolerated and pose no safety concerns for the subjects.
- Diarrhea (around 4 grams a day), nausea, and heartburn are the worst.
- Vitamin C might cause stomach discomfort in those sensitive to its effects on the stomach lining.
- You may either take your vitamin C right after a meal or use a slow-release formulation that starts working in the small intestine.
- Taking vitamin C once a day is OK, but doing so more than three times daily is the best way to ensure a steady supply.
- In cases of severe disease and insufficiency, vitamin C administered by infusion proves to be quite effective and safe. Taking natural vitamin C regularly is suggested.
- One argument against processed vitamin C is that it is less well-absorbed and does not have the same results as when paired with other antioxidants present in natural sources.
Who Needs More Vitamin C?
ALL need vitamin C to keep them healthy and fit; the weak and chronically sick people need it most. Let us enlist them.
- This is true for persons on dialysis or those with intestinal illnesses that might cause absorption problems.
- Some medications need vitamin C to work better or even to start the effectiveness.
- Women who are pregnant or nursing need it more than others.
- Youngsters and athletes, as well as drinkers, are frequent travelers.
- Those who work in X-ray and irradiation facilities are particularly vulnerable to radiation exposure.
Since vitamin smokers metabolize vitamin C more quickly, they need more than twice as much as non-smokers. The vitamin C needs of those over 60 are double the overall average.
The demand for vitamin C is already high, but it’s substantially increased by stress, affecting about half of everyone.
How to Prevent Vitamin C Deficiency?
We have many vitamin C-rich foods, but do they contain the required amounts of vitamin C, which can help you attain super health?
Natural foods lose vitamin C quickly
Taking the example of apples, vitamin C is lost in the days to weeks it takes to transport and store regular apples, so they don’t have any. Of course, apples plucked straight from the tree taste delicious and contain considerable amounts of nutrients, including vitamin C.
Raw fruit, vegetables, and herbs are excellent sources of vitamin C and should be consumed often.
Foods lose vitamin C while cooking
Similarly, due to its solubility in water, most vitamin C in food is destroyed during cooking. Blackcurrants, peppers, broccoli, cabbage, and parsley are especially rich in vitamin C.
In the autumn, you may pick rosehips straight off the bush for a delicious, vitamin C-rich snack (just be sure to take out the seeds first).
Maintain vitamin C reserve in your body
Many reasons, including the above, cause the vitamin C content of even the most vitamin-C-rich meals to fall short of human needs. Therefore, vitamin C supplements are necessary for optimal health and well-being.
Vitamin C is rich in antioxidants, and you may also obtain some of the antioxidant benefits of vitamin C by eating fresh fruit or vegetables.
Antioxidants are typically already included in the powder or pills. Not only is their delayed-release formulation better for the stomach, but it also allows for twice as much vitamin C.
Takeaway
Vitamin C is beneficial, particularly in the long run, although its effects may take time to notice. You will be healthier and get fewer colds immediately, but the long-term advantages and power of vitamin C will become clearer in the years and decades to come.
It is so because almost every illness may be helped by taking vitamin C supplements due to its vast range of benefits. Unfortunately, today’s usual daily diet only provides around 100 milligrams, which needs to be revised.
The fresh herbs and vegetables our forefathers ate every day provided them with at least 1,000 mg daily. What it means is we’re all severely deficient in vitamin C.
So, to keep good reserves of this healthy booster, get some of your vitamin C from natural sources and fill up the remainder with a pill containing vitamin C plus another antioxidant.
You Might Also Like
-
heena256 6 Min
Which Foods Are Rich In Vitamin E?
-
heena256 5 Min
What is Vitamin B12, and why is it Important?
-
heena256 6 Min
Vitamin Deficiency: Anemia, and its Causes
-
heena256 8 Min
Vitamin D3: The Most Ignored And Underrated Cornerstone Of Health
-
heena256 8 Min
Vitamin D Supplements: Who Needs Them