Vitamin C: Get Some Every Day
by Linda Polansky

There is a lot of information out there these days about different vitamins and minerals. You may wonder what is most important and you may be afraid of using supplements and getting too much of some vitamins. Vitamin C is one of the less complicated vitamins both in terms of what it does and how to get it.
Vitamin C is water soluble. This means that your body doesn’t store it for later. That’s why sailors in the old days used to get scurvy, a disease caused by vitamin C deficiency. The best sources of vitamin C are types of produce like citrus and berries that don’t travel well and weren’t part of a regular diet at sea. Sailors didn’t have vitamin C supplements then, either, so their bodies would run out of vitamin C quickly and they would develop scurvy, marked by things like dry hair and skin, bleeding gums, and frequent nosebleeds. Scurvy is pretty rare these days, especially in the United States, but it is still important to make sure you get enough vitamin C every day. Because it is water soluble, your body gets rid of whatever you don’t need that day when you urinate, so that also means it’s very difficult to get too much, and if you do, it isn’t toxic, but it will give you a stomach ache or diarrhea.
What does vitamin C do for you? For starters, it is an antioxidant, which have been in the news a lot recently. When our bodies break down food and convert it to energy, they produce free radicals, which cause minor damage and are a large cause of the effects of aging on the body. Antioxidants help minimize this damage and therefore, slow down the aging process. Vitamin C helps keep our skin, teeth, and bones healthy, as well as helping us recover from wounds. It can also help us resist the negative effects of chemicals and pollutants.
In addition to vitamin C supplements, vitamin C can be found in some amount in all fruits and vegetables. Along with the citrus and berries mentioned earlier, green peppers, broccoli and leafy greens are also excellent sources of high amounts of vitamin C.
The US Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) of vitamin C for men (over 18) is 90 mg per day, while for women it is 75 mg per day. The recommended allowances for children start at 30 mg and increase with age; ask your pediatrician for guidance.
Linda Polansky writes about Vitamin C,Best health vitamins
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