so let's talk about how to determine a vitamin C deficiency a major
vitamin C deficiency like a subclinical scurvy type situation just from looking
at the tongue so the name of this would be scorbutic tongue so you have a
combination of glossitis which is a condition where the tongue is inflamed
kind of shiny sometimes red with red blotches on the side through here and
that's basically a very tiny micro hemorrhaging of the blood vessels and
you can also see that in other parts of the body like the lower legs we lose
these red purple spots and the reason for that is vitamin C is intimately
involved in making collagen and it's involved in connective tissue so the
inside of your vascular system is all connective tissue so if you don't have
enough vitamin C to make that that network everything falls apart and you
start getting little areas of bruising and bleeding and little red spots and
blotches and it can happen on the tongue anywhere in the body and so there's
other vitamin C deficiencies as well but realize a vitamin C deficiency starts
off very very gradual and the more deficient you are the more symptoms
you're going to have you don't want to necessarily wait until you have all of
these symptoms to do something about it but it does usually take about a month
of not consuming vitamin C to have this show up and there's other things too
that can create a deficiency by preventing the absorption of vitamin C
so you may be consuming vitamin C or even taking it as a supplement but if
you're consuming this thing called sugar or you have high levels of sugar in your
bloodstream because you're diabetic that can block your vitamin C levels why
because the chemistry of vitamin C is very similar to sugar so if you consume
them at the same time the sugars going to go in and the vitamin C will not so
if you're going to consume sugar consume it not when you're taking the vitamin C
at a different time period and I'm being very sarcastic because you don't want to
consume any sugar at all there are many other symptoms of a vitamin C deficiency
one would be fatigued and that's probably gonna be the first one you
experience you have this lethargy you're weak you're tired you may develop sore
arms or legs you might brush your teeth and notice
there's blood on there bleeding gums why because the connective tissue in our
collagen around the vascular part of your gums also you can experience bone
pain you can also see this with a vitamin D deficiency bruising like we
just talked about the vascular system and then there were these red and purple
spots a lot of times you'll see them in the lower legs especially in a diabetic
I wonder why because sugar competes for vitamin C and they have high levels of
sugar also because vitamin C is necessary to strengthen collagen tendons
ligaments you may find that your teeth are loose here's some good foods that
have higher levels of vitamin C citrus like lemon juice but it has to be raw
because heat destroys it peppers red peppers green peppers sauerkraut
probably has the most vitamin C if you have a good sauerkraut you're talking
like 700 milligrams of vitamin C per cup I mean our RDA is for vitamin C it's
about 90 so you're consuming a tremendous amount of vitamin C when you
do sauerkraut the leafy greens salads Brussels sprouts broccoli all have
vitamin C parsley is loaded with vitamin C and so is cabbage which well that's
how you make the sauerkraut right so there you have it if you want more
information about vitamin C I put the video up right here that you need to
watch next