Vitamin C’s Immune Benefits

Let’s talk about the immune benefits ofvitamin C, now vitamin C does a lot ofdifferent things but its influence onyour immune system is quite amazinglet’s talk about it now vitamin Cdeficiencies are actually very commonyou can have what’s called a subclinicalvitamin C deficiency where you’re notmajorly deficient but you’re justdeficient enough to cause a weaknesswithin the immune system I’m going totalk more about that vitamin C is awater-soluble nutrient so it has a lowstorage capacity so unless you’reconstantly getting vitamin C you can bedeficient within weeks vitamin C is avery powerful antioxidant so when youhave free radicals which are basicallymolecules with unpaired electrons soyou’re supposed to have two to balancewithout let’s say you just have one andit becomes a free radical so it candamage certain things in the bodyvitamin C comes in there and donates anelectron to stabilize the molecule so itcan actually help counter free radicaldamage all right as far as immunebenefits it can enhance antibodiesantibodies are proteins that fightpathogens microbes that shouldn’t be inyour body also it will increaseneutrophil motility neutrophils are atype of white blood cell it’s like aphagocyte that cleans things up itengulfs and kills certain microbes andit speeds up the motility of theselittle guys right here number three itenhances your B cells or B lymphocytesit’s a type of white blood cell whichthen increases antibodies we’ve alreadymentioned that right here, numberfour it enhances the t-cells anothertype of lymphocyte that helps you fightoff infection number five it canincrease interferon now interferon is ahormone that kills infected cells andtheir surrounding neighbors so it is avery powerful a new compound that ourbodies make so you can see one bigbenefit of vitamin Cis it helps fight infection now whenyour deficient in vitamin C if you’revery deficient you have scurvy but Ithink there’s different levels of scurvyso there could be subclinical versionsof this or major versionsyou’re not going to probably see afull-blown scurvy case but the point Iwant to bring up about vitamin Cdeficiencies especially scurvy which isthe major vitamin C deficiency is thatit makes you susceptible to certaininfections with scurvy it has theability to increase susceptibility tofatal infections like pneumonia scurvyis often followed by infectiousepidemics what does that mean it meansthat when you have an infection they canactually develop scurvy why is thatbecause infections increase the need forvitamin C your white blood cellsaccumulate vitamin C they need thevitamin C to function so if you’re usingyour immune system more you’re going todeplete your vitamin C reservesespecially if you’re not putting it backso this is another way that someonecould be deficient number one they’renot consuming enough in their dietnumber two to get infection it putsstress on the immune system and that’sanother way that you can be deficientminimally 200 milligrams per day a goodsource of vitamin C would be sauerkrautleafy greens bell peppers any of thespicy hot peppers jalapenos red peppersare really high in vitamin C now ifyou’re gonna take a supplement make surethat you take a whole food base complexvitamin C not a synthetic the syntheticversion of vitamin C is called ascorbic acid and one of the ways they makeit is they combine cornstarch andsulfuric acid so sometimes people tellyou that the synthetic version is thesame as a natural there’s no differencebut I have a hard time believing thatsulfuric acid and cornstarch is the sameis something from actual food and if youhaven’t seen my other video on vitamin CI put it up right here check it out