If You Think You Know Everything about Vitamin C, Think Twice!



VITAMIN C or ascorbic acid is an essential, water soluble micronutrient that has numerous roles in the body. Unlike other mammals, humans cannot producer their own vitamin C, which means it must be obtained from the diet. The importance of vitamin C is often sighted from the research of James Lind, who back in the 1700’s proved that scurvy could be treated with citrus fruit (later discovered to be the vitamin C found in citrus fruit). While no longer common in the developed world, symptoms of scurvy (fatigue, bone and muscle pain, gum pain and loosening of the teeth, skin changes and poor wound healing) can begin within a few weeks without any vitamin C intake. These symptoms give light to the many ways that the body uses and requires vitamin C for heath.

Antioxidant: Vitamin C can act as an antioxidant and protect the body from free radicals, which contribute to a variety of diseases, such as cancer, diabetes, atherosclerosis, inflammatory joint disease and dementia. Recent research, however, also sights vitamin C as protectant against persistent organic pollutants (POPs) found in the many chemicals that we are exposed to in our environment and the food chain. It is thought to do this both by neutralizing the oxidative stress caused by these chemicals, but also by increasing their breakdown and elimination from our bodies.

Carnitine Synthesis: Vitamin C is thought to be required for the synthesis of carnitine which is nutrient responsible for transporting fatty acids into the mitochondria of the cell (the power generator) to be used as fuel for the body. This is thought to be a reason for the symptoms of fatigue associated with vitamin C deficiency.

Collagen Synthesis and Bone Health: Vitamin C plays a vital role in the synthesis and stabilization of collagen, which plays a role in preventing osteoarthritis and healing damaged tissues that contain collagen. Most of the symptoms of scurvy are due to this impaired collagen structure and production. Bone healing is also impaired with vitamin C deficiency and it has been found that both healing time and the strength of callus formation are improved with vitamin C.

Immune Support: In 1970, Linus Pauling, a two-time Nobel prize winner, wrote a best seller titled Vitamin C and the Common Cold where he suggested that high doses of vitamin C could help treat colds and other viruses. A large meta-analysis involving over 11,000 subjects concluded that vitamin C at doses over 200mg/day resulted in 8-14% reduction in cold duration and a significant decrease in severity of cold measured by “days away from work.” While the incidence of the common cold was not decreased in the normal population, vitamin C was shown to decrease in the incidence of the common cold by 50% in subjects under significant physical stress due to exercise and extreme cold environments.
Iron Absorption: Vitamin C significantly increases the absorption of iron across the intestine and can this play a role in preventing and reversing iron deficiency anemia.




Sources:
Florence TM. The role of free radicals in disease. Aust N Z J Ophthalmol. 1995 Feb;23(1):3-7.
Guo W et al. Vitamin C intervention may lower the levels of persistent organic pollutants in blood of healthy women - A pilot study. Food Chem Toxicol. 2016 Jun;92:197-204.
Hart A, Cota A, Makhdom A, Harvey EJ. The Role of Vitamin C in Orthopedic Trauma and Bone Health. Am J Orthop (Belle Mead NJ). 2015 Jul;44(7):306-11. Review.
Ha TY, Otsuka M, Arakawa N. Ascorbate indirectly stimulates fatty acid utilization in primary cultured guinea pig hepatocytes by enhancing carnitine synthesis. J Nutr. 1994 May;124(5):732-7.
Roxas M, Jurenka J. Colds and influenza: a review of diagnosis and conventional, botanical, and nutritional considerations. Altern Med Rev. 2007 Mar;12(1):25-48.

 <Written by David Health Research Centre>


03/30/2017





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