Known for its anti-fatigue role, the star of vitamins, also known as ascorbic acid, has more than one asset. Like most people, who I have served for a long time, you certainly have false beliefs concerning vitamin C. For example, you may think that Vitamin C irritates or you can not sleep. Well, that’s not entirely true. Yet you say, you have seen for yourself that if you take it in the evening or late afternoon, you had trouble falling asleep. I believe you, of course, but throughout this folder, you’ll understand why, and you will also discover that vitamin C in large doses for the therapeutic effect you can not even imagine.
Most people also know that vitamin C deficiency will cause health problems known as Scurvy, a disease that was familiar with the old sailors. Today, thanks to the regular intake of vitamin C, Scurvy is a bad memory. Vitamin C deficiency moves silently, insidiously in each of us. Its consequences are the onset of colds, flu, lowered immune system, chronic fatigue that develops gradually, sometimes hypoglycemia (low blood sugar), bleeding gums nuisance during tooth brushing, other diseases of the mouth, inflammation of the gums. Also, there are even bruises on the skin at the slightest shock, metabolic stress responsible intolerance, allergy, and the progressive degradation of all our functions that can also lead to death.
You should know that animals deprived of vitamin C develop cataracts, unrecoverable, or recoverable after correction of this deficiency. Researchers found that the intraocular pressure tends to normalize in many cases of glaucoma, within fifteen days following the correction of vitamin C deficiency by sufficiently essential contributions of this vitamin.
scurvy
Scurvy, which was later found that it was due to a vitamin C deficiency, was a known evil and described since antiquity. Some of the disorders that accompany Scurvy (bleeding, inflammation of the gums, anemia, fatigue, abnormal ossification) are already mentioned in the Old Testament and the writings of Hippocrates (460-370 B.C.). Scurvy decimated the army of the Crusaders than did the Saracens. The severity of the disorders suffered by sailors induced; as early as in 1600, some trials antiscorbutics treatments, based on lemon juice, were presented on ships of the East India Company.
Role of Vitamin C
- Vitamin C plays an important role in repairing bone collagen, cartilage, ligaments, and small blood vessels (capillaries).
- It promotes the absorption of dietary iron.
- It is involved in resistance to infection (immunity), strengthening the role of white blood cells, the body’s cells that defend us against external aggression.
- Like vitamin E, vitamin C is an antioxidant vitamin that is involved in the fight against free radicals. It will play a particular role in preventing the risk of cataracts by fighting against the clouding of the lens-induced free radicals.
- It is an essential agent in the manufacturing process of the collagen (cement of the skin) and therefore prevents wrinkles.
- It helps to fight against allergic asthma and colds.
Causes and consequences of deficiencies
Several factors can cause a vitamin C deficiency:
- Smoking: each cigarette pump 25 mg of vitamin C.
- Alcoholism
- Undernutrition, particularly in the elderly
- Low consumption of fruits and vegetables
- Stress, a major consumer of vitamin C
- Intensive sports
- This can manifest as fatigue, lack of appetite, muscle pain, shortness of breath on exertion, drowsiness, dry skin, and reduced resistance to infections.
The daily recommended intake of vitamin C
- Children: 60 to 100 mg
- Adolescents: 110 mg
- Adult men and women: 110 mg
- Pregnant women: 120 mg
- Nursing mothers: 130 mg
- Elderly: 120 mg
- Smoking: 140 mg
Where can you get vitamin C
Vitamin C is mainly found in fresh vegetables. Top of the list, we find the famous Acerola, a native of the Antilles and the Caribbean Sea; the Acerola, Malpighia punicifolia or glabra, is a shrub native to tropical America. This shrub bears fruit whose color and shape are like our cherries, hence its named Acerola cherry or the West Indies. It is rich in vitamin C, about 1745 mg per 100 g. The different nutritional tables show that Acerola is 20 times more abundant in vitamin C than orange or lemon. Furthermore, Vitamin C, Acerola, additionally contains small amounts of minerals and bioflavonoids.
Other sources of vitamin C include a plant we find in the rose hips Bay (1250 mg/ 100 g), raw red pepper (370 mg/ 100 g), parsley (170 mg/ 100 g), kiwi (100 mg/ 100 g), the cutter (55 mg/ 100 g), orange (55 mg/ 100 g), grapefruit (35 mg/ 100 g). I will not list them all, but at the bottom of the list, we still find the potato with 15 mg/ 100 g, apricots with 10 mg/ 100 g, and plum with 5 mg/ 100 g. Knowing that the RDI, recommended daily intake, is only 60 mg/day, we can easily say that just eating one orange or two each day is enough.
However, the problem of vitamin C is that it is one of the most unstable of all vitamins. Heat, exposure to air, and water solubility are conditions that affect the vitamin C content In our time. Talk about the inadequacy of vitamin C deficiency with your doctor and s/he may well laugh in your face.
Coming to our time, and relative to the amounts recognized as the minimum to the body 60 mg/ day, if you have a balanced diet, eat vegetables and fruits, you will maintain enough vitamin C in your body. And yet, fruits and vegetables that are canned, frozen or dehydrated, suffer first bleaching, which destroys up to 95% of vitamin C. The storage of vegetables in a store, supermarket, or even simply in your home can destroy up to 80% of vitamin C, e.g., an apple that contains up to 10 mg of vitamin C per 100 g only contains more than half after 11 weeks. When you buy an apple from a store, you do not know since when it is picked, spinach simply left at room temperature lose up to 30% of their vitamin C in one day.
Vitamin C and the nervous system
Do you know, for example, that a decline in attention and concentration difficulties are related to a drop in the production of norepinephrine, a neurotransmitter produced by the nerve fibers of the sympathetic system, the central nervous system and in fewer quantities by the adrenal medulla. The reduction is often associated with a lack of vitamin C. The adrenal glands are put to use as soon as our body is under stress! The vitamin C content of the adrenal glands falls significantly as a result of stress.
Vitamin C and insomnia
As I said before, most people mistakenly think that vitamin C has a stimulating and exciting effect that will help one sleep. How many times have you heard that one should not take vitamin C after 16 hours if you were going to have insomnia! This is unfortunately wrong. If you take 500 mg of vitamin C to 16 hours as your body suffers from vitamin C deficiency, the body rejoices too quickly for this contribution, “and you, due to the exuberance, may not be able to sleep.
Vitamin C and depression
Pre-scorbutic states are much more common than one might think at first. Depression causes are poorly understood, but it may be due, at least partially, to a vitamin C deficiency, the disease being one of the first clinical symptoms of Scurvy. What is clear by cons is that if we quickly supplemented with vitamin C a person with symptoms of the onset of depression in many cases, the person recovers quickly, without having to take (even temporarily) antidepressants or anxiolytics. In the case of depression, the dosage vitamin C can reach 10 to 15 grams/ day in 3 or 4 dosages.
Vitamin C and the immune system
The main aggressors of our immune system are stress, tobacco, alcohol, pollution from heavy metals, chemotherapy treatments, radiation therapy, anti-inflammatories, antibiotics, analgesics, anesthetics, surgery, vaccinations, tranquilizers and psychotropic all kinds, antipsychotics, birth control pills, etc.. Chemicals used without our knowledge to preserve and store the food we eat are also located in the water we drink and the air we breathe, following the spraying and spraying by farmers on their crops that we eat also.
Indeed these chemicals spread on plants, the first rain is absorbed by the roots of plants we eat and finally penetrate into the soil, reach groundwater, underground where the water pump distribution companies the water we use in soups, but also for washing vegetables, cooking pasta or rice, etc.
The list is very long for all these pollutants that tap into our inventory quantities vitamin increasingly important to counteract the harmful effects of the environment and civilization. Of course, vitamin C is very important to strengthen the natural defenses of the body. White blood cells (leukocytes) are the guardians of immunity and be aware that they contain a lot of vitamin C, nearly 60 times the blood plasma.
The reserves are quickly exhausted in case of diseases, infections, or traumatic shock. Various studies have demonstrated that high concentrations of vitamin C allowed a better mobilization of white blood cells and neutrophils, allowing them to tackle more easily bacteria. Vitamin C is also essential for the synthesis of antibodies and, therefore, has an antiviral effect in high doses. So it must, therefore, be widely used in all infections, whether due to bacteria, viruses, fungi, yeast, or parasites.
Vitamin C and Cancer
The researchers have shown that vitamin C plays an active and important role in cancer prevention and a low vitamin C (hypovitaminosis) doubles the statistical risk of cancer. Furthermore, vitamin C reduces the effects of side effects of chemotherapy and radiation therapy, while participating itself in the destruction of malignant cells and preventing their propagation. Again, it must be inferred to the question of whether vitamin C only will cure cancer? I think not, for cons, I am convinced that vitamin C used in high doses, and other therapeutic supplements, will greatly assist the work of “repair” your organization. The question that one can logically ask, therefore, is why all these discoveries remain without practical application? I am sure that if you think about it, you’ll find the answer. It is always a matter of interest.
Vitamin C and collagen
Without vitamin C, our body is unable to produce collagen. Collagen is a set of proteins that form the connective tissue on which are deposited minerals and especially calcium, which form the bones, teeth, cartilage, etc. When you lack vitamin C, your body produces less collagen that produces a lack of strength.
