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Many benefits of vitamin C have been identified since the consumption of citrus fruit was first recognised as the immediately effective cure and preventative for the scurvy which so dreadfully afflicted the long distance sailors of a few centuries ago. Numerous studies have recognised the vitamin as a possible protector against coronary heart disease, stroke, atherosclerosis, hypertension and cancer, to name but a few, and it is possible that all of these effects stem ultimately from vitamin C’s acknowledged role as a powerful anti-oxidant, active in preventing the free radical damage which is a known cause of premature ageing and many chronic degenerative diseases.
So the absence of acute deficiency diseases such as scurvy in modern affluent societies should not be taken as implying that the typical Western diet contains an adequate intake of vitamin C for optimum long-term health. The United States Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for vitamin C is 90 mg per day for a healthy, non-smoking man and 75 mg for a woman. But these suggested requirements are increased to 125mg and 110 mg respectively in the case of smokers, a tacit acknowledgement of the increased requirement for this vitamin which increased toxic stress places on the body. But these RDAs nevertheless appear to be set at a level sufficient only to avoid outright deficiency disease.
To be sure of obtaining all the
optimum benefits of vitamin C, the authoritative Linus Pauling
Institute has recommended a daily minimum intake of at least 400
mg. This amount has been shown to achieve saturation levels
of the vitamin within the body’s tissues in healthy young
adults who are non-smokers. To get this in perspective,
even the consumption of the recommended five daily servings of
fruits and vegetables may provide just 200 mg of vitamin C,
whilst even commercial multi-vitamin supplements typically
provide only around 60 mg.
But the real story’s actually
even worse than this, not only because all too few people
actually manage to consume the recommended quantities of fruit
and vegetables, but because the nutritional quality of those that
we do consume is poor, and getting worse.
As long ago as 1936, Senate Document 264 noted that the poor
quality of American farm soils was leading to widespread
nutritional deficiencies, and the 1992 Earth Summit reported that
mineral concentrations in US farm soils were 85% lower than those
of a hundred years ago.
Nor does the problem lie just in the soil. The modern
Western diet’s preference for highly refined grains, and the
treatment of fruits and vegetables with preservatives, dyes,
pesticides and even radiation is a proven disaster for vitamin
and mineral retention, as well as a significant toxic assault on
the body.
Indeed, the problem for us in the twenty-first century is that
our environment seems as though it might have been
expressly designed for ill-health. Daily we’re exposed
to a kind of toxic soup of pollutants such as industrial
emissions, car exhausts, pesticides, herbicides, dyes and all
kinds of everyday household chemicals. But as the liver
works ever harder in an increasingly desperate struggle to
detoxify the body, an unwelcome side effect is that it produces
enormous quantities of the free radicals which are amongst the
chief contributors to premature ageing and degenerative disease.
In these adverse circumstances it can only make sense to
ensure that the body is as lavishly provided as possible with the
top quality anti-oxidants of which vitamin C is certainly one of
the most important.
Fortunately, high dosages of vitamin C are readily available
as supplements and fortunately, too, it seems that the
manufactured kind of l-ascorbic acid (vitamin C) is chemically
identical to that obtained naturally. This is not in any
way to deny the importance of healthy eating, or to suggest that
it doesn’t make sense to try and eat the recommended five
daily servings of fruit and vegetables, because these contain a
myriad of trace nutrients which operate synergistically within
the body, and which all need to be present for optimum health.
It does suggest, however, that to rely on diet alone, however apparently healthy, may well be to risk missing out on the vital anti-oxidant properties of vitamin C which may in time be reflected in chronic, degenerative, if not acute, disease. It should be noted as well, that as a water-soluble compound, any excess vitamin C is harmlessly excreted by the body. So with all the health benefits of vitamin C at stake, it surely makes sense to err on the side of taking in too much rather than too little.
Steve Smith