This is Dr. Lam founder of Drlam.com and today we will be talking about the question of why
is Vitamin C so important in the adrenal fatigue syndrome recovery.
First of all, let's understand what Vitamin C does and what it is.
Vitamin C was first discovered in the early 1900s by some really break through scientist,
it is found that the humans cannot make Vitamin C but Vitamin C is essential not only as an
antioxidant, but it is an essential component of collagen.
The collagen benefits of Vitamin C is so critical that if you don't have that you develop a
clinical disease called Scurvy, yet the amount of Vit you need to prevent this terrible disease,
which happened to sailors that crossed the ocean without any fruit, is only about 75mg
per day, and that is why over time the recommended daily allowance for Vitamin C is 75mg, however
we have learned through a lot of research over the last close to 100 years that the
Vitamin C dosage and importance in the body is really far reaching.
Collagen building is one of them that can obviously prevent Scurvy as we have talked
about earlier as well as prevention of cardiovascular disease.
Because when you really have a cardiovascular event such as a stroke or a thrombosis,
in the cardiovascular vessels, it really reflects, fishers in the inner part of the vascular
world, what we call the endothelium, that is the result of the lack of collagen.
So when you rebuild the collagen with Vitamin C, then the body's vascular system becomes
more stable and therefore atherosclerosis will go down.
Vitamin C along with proline and lysine, the two Amino acids that are critical in the formation
of collagen, is really the building block of the blood vessels as well as the skin structure,
as well as organ framework in the body.
They form what we call the scaffolding, that sustains the body's organs.
Well, how does this relate to Adrenal fatigue, in animal studies it shows that when a person
is under stress or an animal is under stress, for example being put on a treadmill, produced
twenty times more Vitamin C intrinsically, why, because Vitamin C is necessary as the
building block of hormones including cortisol. Cortisol is the main anti-stress hormone
in the body.
The human body, unfortunately, has all the substrates but lack the enzymes that make
the Vitamin C, so therefore Vitamin C has to be supplied externally.
The proper Vitamin C amount in time of stress is very high and can be anywhere from 1000
to 20,00mg, for example, in order to overcome stress related demand, in fact, the highest
concentration of Vit C in the body is in the adrenal gland and for a good reason.
So, collagen benefits aside, Vitamin C is a critical piece in adrenal fatigue, because
in adrenal fatigue, the body's adrenal glands are exhausted and its ability to produce cortisol is deficient
and suboptimal because the raw material necessary to create the cortisol, which includes Vit C,
pantethine, cholesterol, and other enzymes are required.
The more stress a person is the more Vitamin C is necessary and that is why it is critical
to have a sufficient amount of Vitamin C in order for the proper adrenal fatigue recovery.
Having said that is is also important to know that there are flip sides, in other words,
too much Vitamin C in too weak of a body may backfire.
In other words, Vitamin C is not universally good when you are in an advanced state.
For reason that we still don't quite understand, often times Vitamin C can be stimulating for
the body and one has to be very careful.
So simply by loading up Vitamin C is not a solution even though it is an important substrate,
one has to understand the body and understand the stage of adrenal exhaustion, the amount
of requirement and then give the proper amount of Vitamin C doses and for some people it can
be a small amount.
The more is not necessarily better but it is an important substrate to consider for sure
and the proper adrenal recovery must factor this is in as part of the solution in part of the tool box.