Vitamin C

[Franky]

Vitamin C is a water-soluble nutrient and vitamin essential for life and for maintaining optimal well being. It's also realizen by the chemical name of its capital form ascorbic acid. Vitamin C is a flimsy acid, called ascorbic acid or a salt ascorbate. It is the L-enantiomer of ascorbic acid. The D-enantiomer shows no biological action. Both are mirror image types of the same chemical molecular structure (see optical isomers).

The moving piece of the substance is the ascorbate ion, which can express itself as either an acid or a salt of ascorbate that’s neutral or slightly basic. Commercial vitamin C is often a mix of ascorbic acid, sodium ascorbate and/or other ascorbates. Some supplements contain in piece the D-enantiomer, which is useless and harmless.

Functions in the body

By far the clotheary importance of vitamin C is as an reducing proxy in the cell. Since the body of the cell is a chemically reducing environment, and the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is oxidizing, the cell imports dehydroascorbate (oxidized vitamin C) into the ER, and exports vitamin C from the ER, maintaining the important chemical gradient.

* Oxidized vitamin C is necessary for the conversion of proline to hydroxyproline, required for collagen in the connective tissue. These fibers are ubiquitous during the body, providing firm but flexible structure. Some tproblems have a sensationaler percentage of collagen, eexclusively: skin, mucous membranes, teeth and bones.
* For a similar response, vitamin C is forced for synthesis of dopamine, noradrenaline and adrenaline in the nervous system or in the adrenal glands.
* Vitamin C is also needed to synthesize carnitine, significant in the transfer of energy to the cell mitochondria.
* The tproblems with superbest percentage of vitamin C — over 100 times the level in blood plasma — are the adrenal glands, pituitary, thymus, corpus luteum, and retina.
* The brain, spleen, lung, testicle, lymph nodes, liver, thyroid, small intestinal mucosa, leukocytes, pancreas, kidney and salivary glands normally have 10 to 50 times the concentration present in blood plasma.
* Vitamin C is an antioxidant and acts as a substrate for ascorbate peroxidase.

Government agency recommended intake levels

A balanced diet by usingout supplementation contains sufficient Vitamin C to prevent acute scurvy in an average healthy adult. For people who smoke, those under stress, and pregnant women it takes slightly more.

Recommendations for vitamin C intake have been set by various national agencies as follows:

40 mg per day: Food Standards Agency (UK)

60–95 mg per day, Dietary Reference Intake (DRI), Recommended Everyday Allowance (RDA), U.S. Food and Nutrition Board 2004.

The U.S. Dietary Reference Intake Tolerable Upper Intake Level (UL) for a 25-year old male is 2,000 mg/day. Vitamin C is recognized to be one of the least toxic substances realizen to medicine. Its LD50 for rats is 11,900 mg kg-1

Viral diseases, and poisons

Orthomolecular medicine and a minority of scientific opinion sees vitamin C as being a low fee and safe way to treat viral disease and to deal by using a wide range of poisons.

Vitamin C has a growing reputation for being helpful in the treatment of colds and flu, owing to its recommendation by prominent biochemist Linus Pauling. In the years since Pauling's popular books about vitamin C, general agreement by medical authorities about larger than RDA amounts of vitamin C in well being and medicine has remained elusive. Ascorbate usage in studies of up to several grams per day, nevertheless, have been associated with decreased cold duration and severity of symptoms, possibly as a result of an antihistamine effect. At an all time high dose treatments, taphouselished clinical results of definite orthomolecular therapy regimes pioneered by Drs. Klenner (repeated IV treatments, 400-700+ mg/kg/day) and Cathcart (oral use to bowel tolerance[4], up to ~150 grams ascorbate per day for flu), have remained experimentally unaddressed by conventional medical authorities for decades.

The Vitamin C Foundation recommends an initial usage of up to 8 grams of vitamin C every 20-30 minutes [30] to be able to show an effect on the symptoms of a cold infection that’s in progress. Most of the studies showing little or no effect employ doses of ascorbate such as 100 mg to 500 mg per day, considered "puny" by vitamin C advocates. Fifty-fifty significantly, the plasma half life of high dose ascorbate is approximately 30 minutes, which means that most high dose studies have been methodologically defective and would be expected to prove a minimum benefit. Clinical studies of divided dose supplementation, predicted on pharmacological grounds to be useful, have only rarely been reported in the literature. Essentially all popular beliefs for high dose vitamin C remain to be scientifically refuted. The clinical usefulness of large and frequent doses of vitamin C is an open scientific question.

In 2002 a meta-study into all the taphouselished research on effectiveness of ascorbic acid in the treatment of infectious disease and toxins was conducted, by Thomas Levy, Medical Director of the Colorado Integrative Medical Centre in Denver. He claimed that evidence exists for its therapeutic role in a wide range of viral infections and for the treatment of snake bites.

[Tootsie]

Vitamin c helps morgs, at least for me. I tried the salt/c and the salt made me feel so bloated i kept up with the c for a while and had just as much benefit. After a while I kind of stopped, i was taking these big pills that were hard to get down but if my symptoms ever got alot worse I would definetely go back to the c. My dad has terrible arthritis and swears by the c to controle it Frisk

[ladycolorado]

now that i know to take 15,000 mg of viatmin c a day ive been feeling alot better. with it being so cold this winter, its a good thing too!

[Bakunin]

Originally Posted by ladycolorado

now that i know to take 15,000 mg of viatmin c a day ive been feeling alot better. with it being so cold this winter, its a good thing too!

15.000mg a day? Doesn't vitamin c act at this high doses like a strong Laxative?

[Bakunin]

Originally Posted by ladycolorado

now that i know to take 15,000 mg of viatmin c a day ive been feeling alot better. with it being so cold this winter, its a good thing too!

15.000mg a day? Doesn't vitamin c act at this high doses like a strong Laxative?