Is vitamin C so important to your body?
Maybe you've heard of it being this powerful antioxidant that could potentially help fight
off these harmful substances called free radicals that can damage your cells, DNA, and other
structures throughout your body.
Maybe you even heard of vitamin C being associated to that disease of pirates and other sailors
from way back in the day called Scurvy.
So, we'll definitely have to talk about how Captain Jack Sparrow avoided scurvy back in
the day and that'll even bring up a really cool topic about how vitamin C is essential
for building one of the most abundant and therefore, arguably one of the most important
proteins in your body and of course, we've gotta talk about vitamin C and its association
with the immune system.
Can it help prevent the common cold?
Can it help you get over the cold faster?
We've got a few questions to answer.
So, let's jump right into this.
Vitamins are essential nutrients in order for our bodies to function properly and obviously,
vitamin C falls into this category.
Vitamin C is also known by another name called Ascorbic Acid but I'll refer to it as vitamin
C throughout this video.
Now, most of us will get vitamin C through actually ingesting it.
You can get it intravenously through, say like an IV bag but again, most of us are going
to be putting it in our mouth in the form of say like, an orange, a grapefruit, or other
citrus fruits.
Even certain leafy greens like cabbage, brocco even peppers and tomatoes have vitamin C and
of course, we can always give vitamin C through supplementation.
Now, whatever we put into our mouth whatever fruit vegetable or supplement it is it will
eventually make it down into the stomach that you can see here on the tray and here's the
small intestine down here kind of coiled up in the center and even the large intestine
coming around there just to orient you but that vitamin C will actually pass through
the stomach and start moving through the small intestine and it gets absorbed in what we
refer to as the Distal small intestine.
Distal kind of refers to like distance or further from the point of origin and so, it's
going to be absorbed kind of towards the end of the small intestine and when we say "absorbed",
that means we've pulled it into the bloodstream and when we're talking about absorbing vitamins
into the body and into the bloodstream, it's important to have this discussion about fat
soluble vitamins versus water soluble vitamins.
Vitamin C being one of those water soluble vitamins.
Now, these water soluble vitamins are quickly absorbed into the body and can be transported
freely throughout the fluid environment of the body like the blood stream.
Hence, water soluble.
Whereas, if we compare that to fat soluble, kind of think of that analogy of the oil and
the water, they don't really like each other and so those fat soluble vitamins don't move
as freely throughout the fluid environment of the body and actually require a carrier
or a transporter to move them throughout the bloodstream into the target tissues.
But once those fat soluble vitamins have reached their target tissues and can perform their
functions, if there's any excess of the fat soluble vitamins or extra, that extra or excess
can be store in the liver and/or in the adipose tissue.
And so, think about that from this perspective - If I went extended periods of time without
ingesting a fat soluble vitamin, I could pull any of that or extra from those storage places
like the liver and the adipose.
Now, that's kind of a pro of the fat soluble vitamins.
You can kind of think of a con as well.
That means I could also store too much in there and so you are actually more likely
to get toxic or hit toxicity levels sooner with ingesting too much of the fat soluble
vitamins as compared to say like the water soluble vitamins because the water soluble
vitamins once they reach their target tissues and perform their functions, if there's any
extra, those water soluble vitamins like vitamin C will not be stored in the liver or the adipose.
Instead they'll move back into the bloodstream, eventually make it to the kidneys through
this artery called the renal artery here and this renal artery will branch into smaller
arteries that will eventually make it to the outside of the kidney called the renal cortex
and the tiny little arterials or little blood vessels that you can't see underneath the
probe will then have that vitamin C and it will move from the blood vessels into tiny
little urinary tubules and those urinary tubules will funnel into larger tubes that you can
see getting bigger and bigger and eventually out the urine and outside the body.
So, from a perspective of pros and cons, the water soluble vitamins are therefore more
important to ingest on a day-to-day basis, but you're much less likely to get tox or
hit toxicity levels on the water soluble vitamins because they won't get stored in these tissues
and instead will get excreted in the urine.
And speaking of the importance of consuming those water soluble vitamins on a day-to-day
basis and of course consistently consuming those fat soluble vitamins, I think many of
us can relate to the idea that it's sometimes tricky to get all the vitamins and nutrients
we need just through our diet, especially if we're really busy and on the go, sometimes
it's just very convenient to consume those through supplementation.
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So, finally, let's get to the nitty gritty of vitamin C. Yes we know how it's consumed,
how it can move throughout the body and even how it's excreted but what does it actually
do inside of you?
Well, one of the amazing functions of vitamin C is that it's known as a powerful antioxidant
but what is that word even mean?
"Antioxidant".
Well, antioxidants are amazing substances that can help combat or neutralize potentially
harmful compounds called free radicals or reactive oxygen species.
Now, we'll talk about exactly how vitamin C combats a free radical but how do we even
get free radicals inside of our bodies?
Well, you just breathing and utilizing oxygen creates free radicals.
So, when our cells utilize oxygen to create the energy source of our cells called ATP
or Adenosine Triphosphate, the majority of that oxygen that's utilized is actually reduced
to water.
So, essentially harmless.
But about 4 to 5% of that oxygen is not and becomes these free radicals or reactive oxygen
species and these are damaging to components of our cells.
It's known to create what's called Oxidative Stress or Oxidative Damage and so you're starting
to see this connection to antioxidant.
This is where the chemistry people get really excited and really involved because reactive
oxygen species or free radicals are unstable compounds and when you get into chemistry
when we talk about stable compounds in general, stable compounds have a proper number, a proper
pairing of electrons and free radicals do not and you can think of them as yearning
to steal and gain an electron because they're so reactive and what happens is, is think
of this on your cell.
Maybe a free radical comes in contact with your cell membrane and tries to take an electron
from a phospholipid of your cell membrane or maybe a protein in the cell or maybe even
the DNA and when it tries to steal that electron, it damages that component of the cell and
can even create a chain reaction of damaging of components and what these antioxidants
do is that they can donate an electron to that free radical to neutralize and stabilize
it so it won't go on and damage structures or components of your cells and that's what
vitamin C can do, it's pretty amazing and awesome to think about.
Vitamin C can also help with vitamin E. Vitamin E is a antioxidant but when vitamin E donates
its electron to try to neutralize a free radical, it kind of gets all wonky - because wonky
is a technical term - and on stable and vitamin C is like "I got you vitamin E", donates its
electron, stabilizes vitamin E and then vitamin E can go on its merry little way.
Now another amazing function of vitamin C is that it is essential in activating an enzyme
that is important in producing this protein called collagen.
Collagen is the most abundant protein in the human body and so, without vitamin C, you'll
have weak and effective collagen and collagen is known as this protein that provides amazing
tensile strength.
It's kind of this microscopic string-like protein.
Think of it as like a microscopic rope.
If you try to pull it apart, it would resist being pulled apart thereby again creating
tensile strength from the tissues that you find it in and again, I said, it's the most
abundant.
You find collagen in so many places.
You find it in tendons, ligaments, cartilage, your skin, blood vessels, and even in your
bones and we could make that list even longer.
The point is you can find it in so many different places but this is this link between vitamin
C and the disease scurvy because the symptoms of scurvy come from this weak and defective
collagen.
So, for example, people with scurvy will have poor wound healing.
When we get a cut, normally, the cells come in and they deposit new collagen and you heal
up but if you have weak and defective collagen, then, the wounds aren't going to heal very
well.
People with scurvy will also have easy bruising because remember, those blood vessels would
also have collagen in the wall.
If you have weak, defective collagens, those tiny little blood vessels will rupture, equals
easy bruising and yes of course, the collagen in the connective tissues in the structures
of the mouth.
Teeth can fall out causing poor dentition and yes, people with scurvy can also have
poor bone health.
And it's interesting to think about because what we've learned about vitamin C is that
we know that we can't store it.
So, say you go on this long voyage back in the day and you know, eat up all the fruits
and vegetables at the beginning of the voyage and then over the next month or two you don't
have any vitamin C, you can develop those symptoms of scurvy and in a way, it's a pretty
easy fix.
It's just we didn't know what was going on.
But some of these earlier explorers, one named Captain James Cook, he was a British explorer
started to figure out that if his crew was eating certain fresh vegetables and other
foods, they weren't developing scurvy.
He obviously didn't know the exact mechanism of what wasn't vitamin C, what was in those
vegetables or those foods that were preventing scurvy but he noticed that correlation there
and so, when we're talking about pirates like Captain Jack Sparrow and the other pirates
of the Pirates of the Caribbean, it would be wise when they're pirating and pillaging,
they would also pirate and pillage for things like fruits and vegetables to stop them from
getting scurvy and that would definitely help with a lot of those symptoms and prevent scurvy.
It's not the only thing that would, you know, prevent poor dentition because some of those
pirates would still have poor dentition.
So, you know, pirate and pillage for a toothbrush next time too.
And finally, the age-old question, can vitamin C help reduce your of say catching the common
cold and even if you do catch it, can it help reduce the time that you have it and even
the severity of the symptoms?
Well, we do know that vitamin C levels do decrease in the plasma and in the white blood
cells during an infection or an illness.
So, you might think, well, if I help boost that up through supplementation, would that
help?
Well, the most commonly quoted study is a study that is a meta-analysis that actually
looked at 30 other studies from 1966 to 2012 and what this did is it looked at all these
different studies around vitamin C and looked at people who are supplementing 200 milligrams
or more and what they found is that those that were supplementing 200 milligrams or
more did not actually have a reduction in the risk of actually catching the cold.
However, they did show a potential for a reduction in the time that they had the cold by about
8% and even a reduction in the severity of those cold symptoms and again, this wasn't
just you hurry and reach for the vitamin C out of nowhere when you got sick, this was
through consistent supplementation on a day-to-day basis.
And so, for the general population, supplementing over 200 milligrams of vitamin C is it going
to reduce your chances, not so much but could it help maybe reduce the time and the severity?
Yeah, it's possible but there was one subset of people or a group of people that did show
a reduction in the actual risk of catching the cold and that was people who are participating
in strenuous physical activity or kind of in strenuous circumstances.
Things like marathon runners, skiers.
They even included soldiers that were working in arctic conditions.
Those groups were found to have a little bit of a reduction in actually the risk of catching
a cold through consistent supplementation.
Now, is vitamin C the end all be all for your immune system?
No, your immune system is going to try to fight whatever it can but again, a potential
help for consistent supplementation.
As always, thank you for watching our crazy anatomy and physiology videos.
We really hope that you guys get something out of them and learn something new about
this amazing human body that we all get to walk around with every single day.
If you're interested in AG1 by Athletic Greens, go ahead and check out that link in the description
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We really do appreciate your guys' feedback and Geoffrey and I will see you in the next
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