Vitamin C is not naturally manufactured by your body, but it is a vitamin your body needs. Vitamin C helps your tissues grow and stay healthy. It helps break down free radicals that enter your system, helps fetuses develop and protects against the deficiency disease scurvy. Vitamin C is easy to get. It is in most fruits and vegetables, including oranges, strawberries, broccoli and peppers. Vitamin C supplements are also available.
Tissue Health
Vitamin C is critical in helping your tissues grow and stay strong. It has the ability to form a protein that can renew skin cells, tendons, blood vessels and ligaments. You can also enlist Vitamin C to help wounds heal and form important scar tissue. Vitamin C can also help repair cartilage and keep teeth and bones healthy, according to the National Institutes of Health.
Antioxidant
Free radicals are atoms or molecules that can be created during metabolism or enter your system through radiation or pollutants. They can cause certain types of cancers or degenerative diseases. Vitamin C acts as an antioxidant, which means it can help protect molecules in your body from being damaged by free radicals. Researchers at the Linus Pauling Institute say Vitamin C might also help regenerate other antioxidants in your system to help protect against free radicals.
Scurvy Prevention
Vitamin C helps prevent the disease scurvy. If you have a deficiency of Vitamin C in your body, you might be at risk for developing scurvy, which is uncommon in society today, but still found in malnourished populations, women who are pregnant or breastfeeding, and infants whose sole food source is breast milk. Scurvy is characterized by symptoms including, but not limited to, loss of appetite, diarrhea, weight loss or difficulty gaining weight, rapid breathing, irritability and fever. If you think you might be at risk for scurvy, consult your physician.
Vitamin C and Pregnancy
Vitamin C is critical to growing babies in that it helps their bodies produce collagen, a structural protein essential in the growth of bones, skin, tendons and cartilage in fetuses and infants. Physicians advise pregnant women to get a minimum of 85 milligrams of Vitamin C every day. Breastfeeding women should aim for 120 mg of the vitamin daily. If you are pregnant, talk to your physician before taking Vitamin C supplements. They might be dangerous to the developing fetus. It's best to get Vitamin C from fruits and vegetables.
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