Video

Transcript

Let’s talk about the immune benefits of vitamin C, now vitamin C does a lot of

different things but its influence on your immune system is quite amazing

let’s talk about it now vitamin C deficiencies are actually very common

you can have what’s called a subclinical vitamin C deficiency where you’re not

majorly deficient but you’re just deficient enough to cause a weakness

within the immune system I’m going to talk more about that vitamin C is a

water-soluble nutrient so it has a low storage capacity so unless you’re

constantly getting vitamin C you can be deficient within weeks vitamin C is a

very powerful antioxidant so when you have free radicals which are basically

molecules with unpaired electrons so you’re supposed to have two to balance

without let’s say you just have one and it becomes a free radical so it can

damage certain things in the body vitamin C comes in there and donates an

electron to stabilize the molecule so it can actually help counter free radical

damage all right as far as immune benefits it can enhance antibodies

antibodies are proteins that fight pathogens microbes that shouldn’t be in

your body also it will increase neutrophil motility neutrophils are a

type of white blood cell it’s like a phagocyte that cleans things up it

engulfs and kills certain microbes and it speeds up the motility of these

little guys right here number three it enhances your B cells or B lymphocytes

it’s a type of white blood cell which then increases antibodies we’ve already

mentioned that right here, number four it enhances the t-cells another

type of lymphocyte that helps you fight off infection number five it can

increase interferon now interferon is a hormone that kills infected cells and

their surrounding neighbors so it is a very powerful a new compound that our

bodies make so you can see one big benefit of vitamin C

is it helps fight infection now when your deficient in vitamin C if you’re

very deficient you have scurvy but I think there’s different levels of scurvy

so there could be subclinical versions of this or major versions

you’re not going to probably see a full-blown scurvy case but the point I

want to bring up about vitamin C deficiencies especially scurvy which is

the major vitamin C deficiency is that it makes you susceptible to certain

infections with scurvy it has the ability to increase susceptibility to

fatal infections like pneumonia scurvy is often followed by infectious

epidemics what does that mean it means that when you have an infection they can

actually develop scurvy why is that because infections increase the need for

vitamin C your white blood cells accumulate vitamin C they need the

vitamin C to function so if you’re using your immune system more you’re going to

deplete your vitamin C reserves especially if you’re not putting it back

so this is another way that someone could be deficient number one they’re

not consuming enough in their diet number two to get infection it puts

stress on the immune system and that’s another way that you can be deficient

minimally 200 milligrams per day a good source of vitamin C would be sauerkraut

leafy greens bell peppers any of the spicy hot peppers jalapenos red peppers

are really high in vitamin C now if you’re gonna take a supplement make sure

that you take a whole food base complex vitamin C not a synthetic the synthetic

version of vitamin C is called ascorbic acid and one of the ways they make

it is they combine cornstarch and sulfuric acid so sometimes people tell

you that the synthetic version is the same as a natural there’s no difference

but I have a hard time believing that sulfuric acid and cornstarch is the same

is something from actual food and if you haven’t seen my other video on vitamin C

I put it up right here check it out