Nutrition. Vitamins. You.
Understanding Vitamin C Dr. Claire Arcidiacono, ND In my experience everyone has heard that Vitamin C is good for our health. In fact, it’s everywhere you look these days! But while you may have heard that using vitamin C is “good for the health of …
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Hosted by Jerry Hickey, Ph.
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InViteⓇ Health Podcast Intro: [00:00:04] Welcome to the InVite Health podcast, where our degreed health care professionals are excited to offer you the most important health and wellness information you need to make informed choices about your health. You can learn more about the products discussed in each of these episodes and all that Invite Health has to offer, at www.invitehealth.com/podcast. First time customers can use promo code podcast at checkout for an additional 15% off your first purchase. Let’s get started. † [00:00:34]
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Jerry Hickey, Ph: [00:00:40] Welcome to part two of my podcast episode Krill or Fish Oils. Pick one and take it. Now, I did say that I prefer Krill to fish oils. Either one is great, either supplement is fantastic. If you get a good quality Krill or good quality fish oil. I prefer Krill because there’s additional ingredients. In fact, in the first part of this episode, which was about 20 minutes, I explained that in Krill you have a combination of ingredients that work as a bulletproof vest for your brain cells later in life, and that’s extremely important. I explain that when we’re young, we have this powerful available pool of antioxidants that shields our brain from free radicals, and these antioxidants really start to decline in our fifties, and they’re pretty much gone by the summer, about 65. And that’s a problem, I mentioned at the brain is a super high energy organ. It uses oxygen and sugar for energy. And as a consequence of that, it leaks out a little bit of free radicals. Free radicals are very destructive. So, when you’re young, you have these antioxidants that are the antidote to free radicals, they snuff them out. When you’re older, you lack these antioxidants, you don’t have as much, and the free radicals tend to worsen in number. And the violence to the brain is not good and it contributes to true deterioration of brain function and even the onset in some people of dementias and other neurological diseases like movement disease, Parkinson’s disease, which can also be accompanied by Parkinson’s dementia, so it’s not good. So, Krill does have an antioxidant for the brain called astaxanthin, this pink antioxidant. Krill does have phosphatides and fish oils that also snuff out the inflammation created by free radicals. So, it’s not the direct antidote to free radicals, but it helps to mitigate the inflammation caused by the free radicals. But the Krill makes plasmalogens, and plasmalogens will kind of step up to the plate and act as a buffer against the free radicals that are occurring in your brain. They’re made out of the ingredients that you find in Krill, the phosphatides, there’s a whole range of phosphatides in Krill, probably the most important one is phosphatidylcholine, but there’s also phosphatidylethanolamine, phosphatidylinositol, phosphatidylserine, and others that are smaller in concentration. You also get the fish oils, and you get the choline, and together these create the plasmalogens that work as a shield for the brain cells. † [00:03:22]
[00:03:23] So phosphatidylcholine is abundant in Krill. You could get phosphatidylcholine in soy foods, and you could get phosphatidylcholine in beans. But phosphatidylcholine is abundant in high quality Krill products, so make sure you get a one of the Krills. There’s several on the market that have been used in a great deal of human clinical research. We know they work; we know they’re good, we know they’re fresh. The phosphatidylcholine creates the casing of your brain cell, it’s called a cellular membrane. And the Phosphatidylcholine opposes something called phosphatidylserine, which literally gives life to your nerve tissue, it literally is sort of the energy source, the battery source for your brain cells. But phosphatidylcholine also creates something called acetylcholine. It’s a rate limiting factor. A rate limiting factor means, if you lack it, something doesn’t occur. So, phosphatidylcholine is a rate limiting factor for creating acetylcholine. Acetylcholine is at the core of learning, acetylcholine is at the core of remembering, acetylcholine is at the core of a good mood, it’s at the core of of solving problems. It’s at the core of healing your brain, creating new memory cells, nerve function, so the phosphatidylcholine creates acetylcholine, and it creates brain cell membranes. It also creates myelin. Myelin is a covering on nerves that speeds up the reporting of the nerve to the brain. It makes the signals in your nerves travel to the brain. So, for instance, if you stick your finger in something hot, the myelin created by phosphatidylcholine and other ingredients speeds up that signal to the brain. So, you pull your finger out of that hot water or whatever it might be quicker. So, this phosphatidylcholine is really, it’s very, very important to our brain. It creates something called sphingomyelin, it creates plasmalogens, it helps create memory neurons, your brain cells that are involved with memory. There are different types of neurons in the brain. Phostidylcholine reduces inflammation in your brain, which once again helps mitigate the inflammation created by free radicals in the brain, and the consequence of using oxygen and sugar for energy. The oxygen and sugar are great for the brain. But there’s a little bit of leakage of free radicals. And these can kill brain cells or damage the workability of the brain, and phosphatidylcholine as an anti-inflammatory helps to mitigate that from happening faster. † [00:05:59]
[00:06:00] Phostidylcholine also lowers homocysteine, this is hitting the ball out of the ballpark in the ninth inning of the last game of the World Series. Okay, it’s a homerun and the last person up at bat in the World Series and the last game, last inning, this is hitting the ball out of the ballpark. Homocysteine is naturally made in our body, it’s a byproduct of protein utilization. And there’s normal levels that do not harm the body, they’re just there. But if it’s elevated in the brain, it kind of rots the brain. And in many, many, many studies, it’s been connected as a major risk factor for developing Alzheimer’s disease. So, Phosphatidylcholine helps lower homocysteine, which, what else does that? The form of folate that’s active methyltetrahydrafolate and also the methylcobalamin form of B12, they all help lower homocysteine levels. So, anything that’s helping to lower and control homocysteine in the brain is a good thing. Homocysteine in the heart is also not good if it’s accompanied by other risk factors for the heart. In other words, it in and of itself, in the heart might not be strong enough to damage the heart, it is strong enough to damage the brain, but maybe not strong enough to damage the heart. But if you add other risk factors that damage the heart, such as high blood pressure, elevated blood sugar, cholesterol, elevated triglycerides, etc., then homocysteine becomes dangerous and kind of adds on to the turmoil created by the other risk factors for the heart. Risk factors are things that are dangerous for the heart, and it just a consequence of that is, there’s an additive bad thing going on, one and one is bad, their bad. You know, when you have more than one risk factor for the heart, it gets worse and worse, the more risk factors you have. So, if you’re overweight, that’s bad for the heart or if your blood sugars high, that’s bad for the heart, or if your blood pressure’s high, that’s bad for the heart. But if you’re overweight and your blood sugar is up and so is your blood pressure, that’s all three of them. That’s really bad for the heart if you have all three. So, you know, you want to put down as many risk factors as you can. You want to reduce as many risk factors as you can, reducing homocysteine can only be a good thing for the heart. † [00:08:13]
[00:08:15] The phosphatidylcholine technically, it increases the density, the number of and the viability, the ability to survive of alpha-7-nicotinic acetylcholine receptor sites in your brain. This is really important because, these receptor sites are important for cognitive functions, including paying attention, including your working memory, all those executive functions they make you get your work done on time and helps you succeed. They also, these receptor sites, they improve cognitive function. So, this phosphatidylcholine is doing many good things for your brain and Krill is a great source of phosphatidylcholine. So that’s why I take three every morning with my breakfast, I want enough Phosphatidylcholine in my brain. There is about, Phosphatidylcholine works throughout the body, but it’s incredibly important for the brain. So, it’s a phosphatide and it’s a B vitamin called choline. And here’s the thing According to Research, American Research, 90% of Americans do not get sufficient amounts of Choline from their food. It’s not found in the healthiest foods. It’s in egg yolks, you know, one or two eggs a day is fine, but it’s also in liver and organ meats, etc. So, you want a better source of choline. And like I said, Krill is a great source of phosphatidylcholine that supplies Choline, it gets choline into the brain. A lot of multivitamins or b-complex vitamins add a little bit of choline, but they usually use things like choline citrate. These forms of Choline do not very successfully get into the brain. They might, they might be useful in the liver or your muscles or your heart a little bit. But they’re not getting into the brain and there’s not enough Choline in there to begin with. So, you want a steady source of Choline. So, let’s just review choline and phosphatidylcholine very quickly. This is part of the Kuopio Ischemic heart disease risk factor study, and it’s about 2500 men aged 42 to 60. Their brains are still healthy, and they were enrolled in this study that started in 1984 and four years after they started the study, after they weren’t enrolled in the study, they were given a battery of five cognitive tests and men with higher Choline intake had superior linguistic abilities and better functioning memory at this point. So then fast forward 22 years later and they found that 337 of the 2500 men originally in the study were diagnosed with dementia. So that’s approximately 14%. So, when they looked at the Choline intake as part of Phosphatidylcholine, I might add, the risk of dementia was reduced by 28%, if they got in a lot of choline as phosphatidylcholine. So almost 30% less risk of dementia just by getting this one thing. Even if you had a gene that the Apo E4 variant that increases your risk of the, excuse me, the ApoEE3 variant that increases your risk of Alzheimer’s disease. Now here’s a little bit of a different kind of study. † [00:11:48]
ICYMI:KRILL OIL, OR FISH OILS. PICK ONE AND TAKE IT. INVITE HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 624>>LISTEN NOW!
[00:11:49] Lutein and zeaxanthin are pigments in certain foods like zeaxanthin is named after corn, Zea mays, it’s yellow, it’s a bright yellow carotenoid pigment. Lutein is an orange, a reddish amber pigment. You find lutein in green leafy vegetables like spinach and broccoli and lettuce. You’ll find a little bit in egg yolks. You find lutein and zeaxanthin a little bit in egg yolk. You’ll find a little bit of lutein in pistachio nuts. Lutein and Zeaxanthin are very good for your vision and they’re very good for your brain and memory. So, this is the last study, and they combined a supplement of choline along with a supplement of lutein and zeaxanthin and 80 middle aged men who were obese. That’s University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, it’s in the Journal of Nutritional Neuroscience. And the combination of the three nutrients equaled faster brain performance, improved cognitive flexibility. You know, that’s important because overweight or obese, being overweight or obese with fat, we’re not talking muscle. Being overweight, with muscle is fine, but being overweight with fat increases your risk of of severe memory decline. And of course, obesity really is a risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease. Now, choline is found in krill as phosphatidylcholine. It’s very important for the liver. Choline affects genes that prevent fat from building up in your liver. It’s a methyl donor and donates basically a carbon with three hydrogens. And this is very good for the liver. So, here’s what happens, fat is transferred, transported out of the liver by VLDL cholesterol, very low-density cholesterol, and you need choline to make VLDL. And if you lack choline, you don’t make VLDL and the fats wind up trapped in the liver, too. And these are triglycerides, and the triglycerides become toxic to the liver, they inflame the liver and kill healthy liver cells, and you start to get fibrous scar tissue replacing the healthy cells. And initially you could just develop something called non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, NASH, which can become a fatty hepatitis. Fatty, hepatitis, hepatitis means inflammation of the liver. You don’t have to have a virus to get hepatitis. You can have plenty of fat in the liver and get hepatitis. So, you could develop fatty hepatitis, or you could develop liver failure, which is called cirrhosis, or you could develop primary liver cancer, which means the cancer exists primarily in the liver. So, here’s the journal Current Opinions and Clinical Nutrition and Metabolic Care, its University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and it’s University of North Carolina Gillings School of Medicine, so it’s their medical school. And I said, much of your choline metabolism occurs in your liver, and after consuming choline, it starts to accumulate in your liver very early on. So, when you get a Krill oil capsule or you eat another source of choline like, egg yolk, that choline is going into the liver and very rapidly it’s starting to do good things for the liver. So, they said, so they’re backing up what I said, when you consume too little choline, one of the earliest consequences is fat accumulation in your liver. So, they said fatty liver occurs in 90% of people who are morbidly obese, 65% of overweight people, half of all diabetics and 20% of everybody living on the planet. So, you put ten people in a room and two of them probably have some level of fatty liver. But if they’re morbidly obese or they’re diabetic or they’re overweight with fat, it’s pretty sure that they’re going to, if you put ten people in a room that are very overweight, with fat, 9/10 have fatty liver. If you put ten diabetics in a room, at least five of them have fatty liver. If you put ten people who like to drink beer and they have a beer belly in a room, seven of them have fatty liver. So that that’s not good. So, a simple answer to this is just to take two or three. I take three, I want enough choline in my life, take two or three Krill oil, high quality Krill oil capsules with your breakfast every day and you’re getting phosphatidylcholine, but you’re also getting fish oils well absorbed fish oils, Krill oils are smaller than fish oils, they are easier to swallow, you don’t get the fish burps. They’re usually very fresh, if you get a good one. So simple solution take two or three fish or two or three Krill Oil capsules with your breakfast. † [00:16:54]
[00:16:56] So I want to thank you for listening today. This is part two of the episode. You know, pick Krill or fish oils and take it. Krill or fish oils. Pick one and take it. That’s the title of this part two of the podcast. I’m going to have to do a third part, so I’m going to cut this short at this point. Thanks for listening. You can find all of the Invite podcasts wherever you listen to podcasts for free or just go to invitehealth.com/podcast. You can also find Invite on† [00:16:56]
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Subscribe Today! Please see below for a complete transcript of this episode. ZINC IS KEY TO MORE THAN IMMUNE HEALTH, INVITEⓇ HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 609 Hosted by Amanda Williams, MD, MPH *Intro Music* InViteⓇ Health Podcast Intro:[00:00:04] Welcome to the InViteⓇ Health Podcast, where our …
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Please see below for a complete transcript of this episode.
Hosted by Jerry Hickey, Ph.
*Intro Music*
InViteⓇ Health Podcast Intro: [00:00:04] Welcome to the InViteⓇ Health Podcast, where our degreed health care professionals are excited to offer you the most important health and wellness information you need to make informed choices about your health. You can learn more about the products discussed in each of these episodes and all that InVite Health has to offer at, www.invitehealth.com/podcast. First time customers can use promo code podcast at checkout for an additional 15% off your first purchase. Let’s get started.† [00:00:34]
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Jerry Hickey, Ph: [00:00:41] Vitamin C is such a key nutrient to a well-functioning immune system. It’s been shown to lower the incidence of all types of infections fungal infections, viral infections, bacterial infections. It’s so key to good immune system function. I really think besides a good diet where you’re getting sufficient vitamin C, it’s probably a good idea to take a low dose vitamin C tablet every day, 250 milligrams a day should be enough for prevention for most people. And we’ll get into that. Hi, my name is Jerry Hickey, I’m a nutritional pharmacist, I’m also the scientific director over here at Invite Health. Welcome to my episode. An update on Vitamin C and the immune system. You can find all of the inside podcasts wherever you listen to podcasts for free or just go to, invitehealth.com/podcast and please subscribe and leave a review. You can also find and fight on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.† [00:01:41]
[00:01:43] So vitamin C, before I read any studies on it, it’s very important for infections. It’s a water soluble vitamin, it’s essential. You need to get it every day. That’s an antioxidant that protects the brain, the eyes, the kidneys, the liver, the heart, tissues all over the body. And that’s recyclable. It keeps on going. You could find it in citrus fruits and tomatoes and berries and bell peppers and broccoli and green tea. But I really think during the winter, certain vitamins, certain minerals, you should get a little bit more of. I happen to take these all year round. Now, what else does vitamin C, do in the body besides help with the immune system? You need it for collagen synthesis, below 11 micro moles per liter, and you have scurvy. You’re not making collagen, collagen is the second most common ingredient in the human body. Number one is water, number two is collagen, you literally melt. You literally fall apart. You need vitamin C for catecholamine synthesis. You know, those things don’t make the brain work properly in the muscles, work properly in the body, work properly in the digestive tract, work properly, things like dopamine. You need vitamin C to create carnitine. Carnitine is sort of an amino acid. It’s very important for energy production and metabolism. And like I said, you need vitamin C for immunity. Now, nutrients in the year 2017 is a good journalism, dependable journal with a vitamin C deficiency. It’s a problem because you can’t store much vitamin C, you have a very low capacity for storing vitamin C, so you need to get it every day. You absolutely need it to absorb from your small intestine. Who would need more? Well, I mean, anybody who’s under a great deal of stress, whether it’s mental or physical or biological diabetics, need more because they very poorly utilize vitamin C, smokers need more because cigarette smoke uses up your vitamin C pollution. If you’re inhaling pollution, it drops your vitamin C levels and during an infection, your vitamin C level drops. So in the Journal of Nutrients with a vitamin C deficiency just three months, what a decreased intake of vitamin C, you develop gingivitis, bleeding gums and same gums. You bruise, you’re fatigued. You have increased risk of infections, especially pneumonia and respiratory tract infections, impaired wound healing. It takes longer to heal a wound. You have just a problem with healing and you have a real problem with your immune system. You have a real serious problem with your immune system. So now let’s go into that.† [00:04:41]
[00:04:45] Again, Nutrients 2017, you need vitamin C for the innate immune system. That’s pretty much the immune system you’re born with practically. And you need vitamin C for the adaptive immune system. Think of your your antibodies that are specific for particular infections. Well, vitamin C is present in very high concentrations. And your immune cells and your neutrophils, these are the most common immune cells and your monocytes and your lymphocytes, your educated immune cells and vitamin C levels drop during an infection. I’ll explain why later. But one of the reasons is that your immune cells need to battle for you. They need to fight for you. And your immune cells, like your neutrophils, have 50 to 100 fold higher concentrations of vitamin C than the surrounding tissues, the surrounding serum. Vitamin C improves chemotaxis, chemotaxis, which is the ability of immune cells to move to the side of an infection. Vitamin C improves phagocytosis. The ability to consume an infection. Vitamin C is needed for the function of B cells and T cells. You know, your lymphocytes that are very smart, they’re like smart missiles that zeroed in on infection, specific infections. You need vitamin C to create your B cells, to create your antibodies, to create your T cells. You need them to increase in number for them to mature and for them to function.† [00:06:13]
[00:06:15] So here is a recent study in the journal Nutrients December 7th, 2020 at the University of Otago in New Zealand, Swansea University in England. The Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine Eastern Virginia Medical School. That’s a Norfolk, Virginia and Oxford University in England, one of the best universities in the world. And here’s what they found. Vitamin C helps prevent and helps treat COVID 19 infections. That state went through all the data. Vitamin C helps prevent and helps treat COVID infections. So not just preventing, but if you get sick, it helps treat it. Vitamin C helps prevent the common cold. Now, that’s important. There’s hundreds of viruses that cause the common cold. So you never have complete resistance. If you have sufficient vitamin C, you have fewer common cold. A typical healthy adult might have 2 to 4 common colds a year, a typical child 6 to 8. So it’s good to have some vitamin C hanging around in your body. Vitamin C helps prevent pneumonia. Well, that’s pretty good. Vitamin C helps prevent sepsis. That’s when an infection enters your bloodstream. It’s incredibly dangerous, incredibly life threatening. Swallowing Vitamin C, we call that oral. Oral Vitamin C by mouth, 2000 milligrams to 8000 milligrams a day helps reduce the incidence of respiratory tract infections. Now, vitamin C, the higher the dosage, the shorter the time that sticks around the body and the less that’s absorbed all at once. So spread the vitamin C out. So if you’re going to take 2000 milligrams a day, you know, I’ll take 500 milligrams with breakfast, 500 milligrams with lunch and maybe a thousand milligrams with dinner or something like that, spread it out.† [00:08:04]
VITAMIN C REDUCES INCIDENCE OF RESPIRATORY TRACT INFECTIONS
[00:08:06] Vitamin C helps reduce the incidence of respiratory tract infections, but it also, if you have a respiratory tract infection, the vitamin C shortens the length of these infections. Now, this is including most infections, the common cold, the flu, COVID infections, pneumonia, any respiratory tract infection. Now, here’s interesting, something interesting. There’s a limit to how much vitamin C you can get into the bloodstream. So if they want to get a lot of vitamin C into the bloodstream, they give it by intravenous, directly injected into the bloodstream. Intravenous vitamin C reduces mortality and intensive care patients in general and reduces the length of hospital stays. It reduces their duration and people with infections. Intravenous vitamin C reduces the time on a ventilator. That’s really good information for people with COVID or in critical care. And guess what? Vitamin C is safe and it’s not expensive. Just make sure you’re getting a good brand. Now, why does vitamin C help? How much do you need to consume from your food to help with the infection or prevent an infection? How much should you take? I’m going to cover all these points. So let’s keep on going, there’s a lot to say.† [00:09:25]
[00:09:25] This is British medical journal Global Health. It’s January 6th, 2021. It’s Harvard School of Public Health. So here’s what Harvard found, vitamin C reduces the risk of acute respiratory tract infections. You know, you want more evidence than one source. So again and again, there’s all these different, very high quality academic research institutions saying vitamin C has a real impact on infections. So Harvard, Vitamin C reduces the risk of acute respiratory tract infections. These are the severe infections, but it also shortened their duration. It shortened how long a person was sick with a severe infection. So once again, we’re talking prevention and also treating. Now, you’d also want to get some vitamin D and Zinc. Zinc helps cut infection time in half. Vitamin D is a mild preventative, but it has a treatment effect. But vitamin D is very good for protecting your lungs from infections and the consequences of infections like an overly stirred up immune system, so that with Covid. So vitamin C deficiency results with poor immune system function, you get more infections and they’re increasingly more dangerous and they last longer. So is this controversial? It’s only controversial if you don’t read the science thoroughly. Vitamin C’s effect on the immune system. Its effects are real. Its effects are important. But vitamin C’s effects on the immune system are wonderfully, wonderfully complex. Very complex. So now I’m going to go into bit by bit, what vitamin C exactly does specifically does an immune system. So first, let’s discuss neutrophils. Neutrophils are cells we develop early on in life. They’re part of our innate immune system. You’re pretty much born with neutrophils. And approximately 60% of the immune cells that we make in our bone marrow are neutrophils and they’re a first line of protection against infections. Neutrophils are important for preventing and fighting viruses and bacteria and fungal infections so they don’t get out of hand and don’t get dangerous. Neutrophils help fight some cancers also, they release antitumor cytokines. We’ll have to do a separate show on anti-tumor cytokines help kill cancer cells.† [00:12:04]
ICYMI:AN UPDATE ON VITAMIN D AND COVID-19 – INVITE HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 497>>LISTEN NOW!
[00:12:06] Now here’s the issue. Neutrophils are our most common, our most plentiful immune cells. They’re all over the body like they’re in the throat and they’re in the urinary tract and they’re in the digestive tract, etc. They’re by the lungs, but they only last a day or less. But it’s not to worry. Our body produces approximately 100 billion new neutrophils every day, and that’s one reason why you want to make sure you get sufficient vitamin C, because you need vitamin C to make neutrophils. So vitamin C helps neutrophils also get to the infection. So if the neutrophil is somewhere else, like in your underarm and you’re developing an infection in your throat or your urinary tract, the neutrophil has to get there to fight the infection. That’s called chemotaxis. That’s called Chemotaxis. The ability of the immune cell to travel to the infection is called Chemotaxis. So here’s how this kind of works. Make believe the infection is in your mouth. The infection damages local cells in your mouth. The infection is damaging cells because it causes inflammation. This damage causes the release of immune system messengers. These are called chemokines and the chemokines call out to the neutrophils. They attract neutrophils to the area, getting to the site of the infection is called Chemotaxis and you need enough vitamin C for Chemotaxis to take place because these immune cells soak up the local vitamin C. Like I said, they’re 50 to 200 times richer in vitamin C, they need the vitamin C to travel to the infection. So when you get the infection and the immune cells are gobbling up too local vitamin C, your vitamin C levels plummet. It’s getting used up, takes them. So now the second question is we know how neutrophils get to the infection chemotaxis. Now how do neutrophils kill the infection? It’s a process called respiratory burst. First neutrophils literally gobble up a virus or bacteria, they literally eat it, it’s called phagocytosis, but they also absorb microbes. This is called pinocytosis, so you could picture it like this. The cell eating the bacteria or virus is called phagocytosis and a cell drinking the bacteria or virus that’s called Pinocytosis, both of these are forms of endocytosis or bringing the infection into the inside of your immune cells. So now the immune cells have traveled to the infection chemotaxis, that requires vitamin C, and then they gobbled up the infection or absorbed the infection. They brought the infection inside the cell. That also requires vitamin C. So now once the neutrophils once the neutrophils absorb the infection, it has to kill the infection. It does this via a process called respiratory burst, neutrophils convert oxygen into singlet oxygen. Oxygen is usually two oxygen molecules join together, which is stable, singlet oxygen is unbelievably unstable. It’s a very powerful, free radical, it’s a solvent, so it could destroy your tissues, too. We’ll get to how vitamin C prevents that. But the, the singlet oxygen literally strips the microbe bare, it’s dissolving the microbe, neutrophils also convert hydrogen, hydrogen and oxygen excuse me. Neutrophils also convert hydrogen and oxygen into hydrogen peroxide. These dissolve the microbe, now vitamin C is needed for a well-functioning respiratory burst. That whole thing absorbing the infection and destroying the infection is called respiratory burst. But guess what? You need to clear out the neutrophils once this is finished. Otherwise the neutrophils start killing healthy cells. You need vitamin C now to clear up the used neutrophils or you’re going to get very inflamed. You have to clear them out of the area once they’re used up.† [00:16:24]
[00:16:25] But now what? See, the cells are releasing these vicious solvents, these vicious free radicals to kill the infection. Otherwise, the infection can kill you. You don’t want these solvents hurting the body. Vitamin C helps prevent this and protects the tissues from the respiratory burst, from the singlet oxygen and from a hydrogen peroxide released by the immune cells. Because it’s a recyclable and powerful antioxidant, it’s used up quickly, blood levels of vitamin C plummet during an infection. You want to take some vitamin C. Now that’s not all, vitamin C also creates barriers. Epithelial barriers, they protect us. They keep infections outside of our organs, outside of our tissues, outside of our bloodstream. So you need vitamin C to create the collagen, to create these cells like your skin, to keep viruses and bacteria on the outside. Now let’s talk about the specialized cells. Vitamin C is needed for these cells to specialize, to differentiate and to proliferate like B cells. B cells are, are, are where we carry our antibodies that are specific for a specific flu or specific coronavirus or a specific bacteria. So vitamin C is needed for these cells to proliferate, you know, to grow a number, to mature, to function. But you also need vitamin C for your T cells, for your T cells to proliferate, to make more of the T cells, for them to differentiate, because the T cells really control the immune system. But they’re it’s a super powerful part of the immune system, there’s killer T cells that kill viruses and bacteria and these T cells can kill cancer cells. And then there’s a controlling T cells and helper T cells, very complex. Vitamin C is needed for all of these to specialize, to be created, to grow in number to really conquer an infection.† [00:18:24]
ICYMI:IS IT A COLD? INVITEⓇ HEALTH PODCAST, EPISODE 605>>LISTEN NOW!
HOW MUCH VITAMIN C IS NEEDED?
[00:18:26] So vitamin C helps prevent and treat both respiratory tract infections and systemic infections. So how much, a prophylactic dosage? Prophylactic means preventative 200 milligrams, to 250 milligrams a day. So I don’t muckle around. I do eat my oranges and my apples and my broccoli and I do my green tea, but I still take 250 milligrams a day just to make sure I’m getting sufficient vitamin C, people who are obese need more because they are inflamed. People who are diabetic need more because they don’t utilize vitamin C properly. I would give any diabetic 500 milligram to a thousand milligrams of vitamin C three times a day, all year round. People exposed to a lot of air pollution need more vitamin C, smokers need more vitamin C. People under extreme physical or mental stress need more vitamin C because vitamin C will be used up inappropriately. Now, if you have an infection, 500 milligrams to 1000 milligrams three times a day with food, does it matter if the vitamin C is natural or not? No, actually it doesn’t. You just have to get it from a good quality company. The vitamin C, the crystalline structure of vitamin C is very easy to replicate by vitamin company manufacturers. Just make sure it’s a nice, clean products. You’re actually getting a vitamin C. In any event, thanks for listening to today’s program. You can find all the invited podcasts wherever you listen to podcasts or for free or just go to, Invitehealth.com/podcast and please subscribe and review, that’s helpful. You can also find Invite on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at InVite Health. I want to thank you so much for listening today. I hope to see you next time on another episode of InViteⓇ Health Podcast and this is Jerry Hickey signing off. Have a great day.† [00:18:26]
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