By Karen Aney (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: November 16, 2011
Vitamin C is also known as L-ascorbic acid or L-ascorbate (or that singer that sang that corny graduation song). Our bodies don’t produce it and aren’t that good at storing it, so it’s one of those things that we need to ensure is present in our diet. Why, you ask?
While the vitamin doesn’t do much that is particularly spectacular on its own, it acts in conjunction with other elements to perform some pretty key tasks. One of these tasks is preventing scurvy, as demonstrated by an experiment performed on prisoners at the Iowa State Penitentiary in 1969. According to the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, “six apparently healthy men… volunteered for metabolic studies of human scurvy”. The good folks administering the test then locked them in the hospital ward and gave them a diet that had absolutely no vitamin C but was nutritionally sound in every other area. The results speak for themselves: “although two of the prisoners escaped, the remaining four developed clinical signs of scurvy; follicular hyperkeratosis of the thighs, buttocks, calves, and the posterior aspects of the arms; swollen bleeding gums; perifollicular haemorrhages and congested follicles; and conjunctival hemorrhages”. Here’s the translation, for those of you who haven’t been keeping up with Grey’s: they got gross pustules all over their bodies and then started bleeding out of every available orifice.
Further examination of the study’s data from the Complementary Health Practice Review suggests the timeline for symptoms to appear at around 83 days. One flaw in the study is that it did not account for the other side effects of not ingesting vitamin C. According to Health Canada, it’s quite a long list: vitamin C deficiency can lead to trouble metabolizing fats and proteins, can lower bone density, and inhibit the body’s ability to heal wounds.
Another function performed by vitamin C is as an aid to the immune system. While the vitamin’s function in fighting infection has not yet been isolated, it has been proven by many studies that our bodies deplete vitamin C levels much faster when our immune systems are compromised. That means that if you’re worried about getting sick, it might be a good idea to up your intake. Not that we know why – but still.
Further studies, notably by Oregon State University, have found that smokers have increased need for the vitamin. The study found that when smokers ingested vitamin C supplements, the depletion of vitamin E that is known as a by-product of smoking was drastically reduced. As a result, it found that smokers who ingested higher levels of vitamin C reduced their risk of lung-borne diseases.
Health Canada suggests that adults must ingest a minimum of 6.0 mg per day of the vitamin, and a maximum of 2000 mg. They estimate the healthy range to be 75 mg per day for adult females, and 90 mg per day for adult males. What does this look like in food? A half a cup of raw red pepper has about 142 mg, and only 20 calories. An orange, the traditional fruit associated with the vitamin, has only 70 mg. Other great sources are broccoli, kale, brussel sprouts, kiwi, strawberries, and cantaloupe. A single serving of any of these will put you well within the healthy range for your daily intake.
As it’s nearing that time of year where everyone and their brother is sick, and our lovely campus turns into an incubator for the viral plague, it’s a good idea to make sure you’re getting enough vitamin C. A great by-product of this is that sufficient levels of the vitamin encourage higher energy levels by ensuring your body is functioning at optimally. Vitamin C supplements are available, but don’t rely on them too heavily. One such popular supplement is the Emergen-C drink crystal packets, which contain approximately 1000 mg of the vitamin. While these will up your body’s store of the nutrient, they don’t provide any of the other nutrients found in vitamin-rich foods, and could easily put you over the recommended 2000 mg per day. Risks of going over this number include diarrhea, nausea, and cold-like symptoms. Translation? You’ll be right back where you started.
