What is Vitamin C?
Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) is a nutrient your body needs to form blood vessels, cartilage, muscle, and collagen in bones. Vitamin C is also vital to your body’s healing process. Vitamin C is an antioxidant that helps protect your cells against the effects of free radicals — molecules produced when your body breaks down food or is exposed to tobacco smoke and radiation from the sun, X-rays, or other sources. Free radicals might play a role in heart disease, cancer, and other diseases.
How Vitamin C Helps Your Health
One vitamin alone cannot make you healthy, but vitamin C is one of the most important for overall health and wellness. Vitamin C offers health benefits in these areas:
Stress: A deficiency in vitamin C is related to many stress-related diseases. This is ironic because Vitamin C is the first nutrient to be depleted in alcoholics, smokers, and overweight people–those people most likely to suffer from stress-related diseases.
Stroke: Although research has been conflicting, one study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that those with the highest concentrations of vitamin C in their blood were associated with 42% lower stroke risk than those with the lowest concentrations.
Colds: Increasing your intake of vitamin C when you have a cold may help reduce your risk of developing further complications.
Skin: Vitamin C’s antioxidant properties can be beneficial when it comes to the appearance of your skin. Vitamin C has been shown to reduce wrinkles, improve dry skin, and help the skin remain young looking.
Eyes: Some studies also suggest that people who have higher levels of vitamin C in their diets have a lower risk of developing cataracts. Taking a vitamin C supplement can also help with macular degeneration of the eye.
How Much Vitamin C Do I Need?
Depending on the individual, the amount of vitamin C needed daily varies. The Recommended Dietary Allowance for adults 19 years and older is 90 mg daily for men and 75 mg for women. Smoking can deplete vitamin C levels in the body, so an additional 35 mg beyond the RDA is suggested for smokers.
The Tolerable Upper Intake Level is the maximum daily intake unlikely to cause harmful effects on health. The UL for vitamin C is 2000 mg daily; taking beyond this amount may promote gastrointestinal distress and diarrhea.
10X Health can inform you of exactly how much vitamin C you personally need through our comprehensive blood test. The blood test measures 68+ biomarkers to figure out what exactly you’re deficient in, then 10X Health can help make recommendations to help you feel better.
Why Should I Consider Taking a Vitamin C Supplement?
Because the human body does not make vitamin C and is incapable of storing it, we need to consume the amount we need each day. While some fruits and vegetables will get you the minimum amount of vitamin C you need, a vitamin C supplement provides enough of the vitamin to have some very positive effects.
People with higher intakes of vitamin C can expect many benefits, including:
Prevention of some chronic diseases: Vitamin C strengthens your body’s immune system, your natural defense against diseases. Taking a vitamin C supplement can increase the antioxidants in your blood by 30% which allows your body to fight inflammation, a major health concern that presents itself in many diseases.
May lower your risk of heart disease: Heart disease is the number one cause of death worldwide. Increased intake of vitamin C can help with high blood pressure and high cholesterol which are both factors leading up to heart disease.
Increases the body’s ability to absorb iron: Iron is crucial to your body working efficiently. Iron is responsible for making red blood cells which are essential for transporting oxygen throughout the body. Vitamin C helps the body absorb the iron it needs.
Vitamin C supplements are a great way to boost your immune system and give your body the fuel it needs to operate successfully.
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Interested in learning more about Vitamin C supplements and other ways to help your body reach optimal health? Reach out to 10X Health to learn more.