Fast Facts About Vitamin C

Make sure you’re clued on all things vitamin C and find out more about how it can benefit your everyday life, by checking out our fast facts below.

Fights off signs of ageing

Not only is vitamin C an antioxidant, protecting your skin

cells from free radicals caused by exposure to UV light, but it also promotes collagen production, keeping your skin fresh and younger-looking. Harness the amazing benefits of Vitamin C for your skin by combining it with other antioxidants like Vitamin E and ferulic acid.

It’s the enemy of smoking

Multiple studies have found that smokers (or those regularly exposed to second-hand smoke), don’t absorb vitamin C as effectively as non-smokers. As vitamin C helps with the absorption of other vitamins, this can leave you susceptible to a whole variety of health problems.

It’s believed that smokers need as much as 35mg more vitamin C than the average non-smoker. If you’re a smoker and you’re not yet ready to quit, turn to a supplement to make sure you’re getting your daily intake of this essential vitamin.

Some mammals can’t make vitamin C

Some mammals (including us humans), can’t make their own supplies of vitamin C – alas, somewhere along the path through evolution, we lost one of the vital enzymes required to do so. Other mammals with the same problem include fruit bats, guinea pigs and primates.

Find vitamin C in a whole host of tasty foods

Vitamin C is easy to incorporate into your diet. It can be found in the following foods, all of which are vegetarian and vegan-friendly:

• Oranges
• Kale
• Sprouts
• Broccoli
• Strawberries
• Grapefruit
• Papaya
• Peppers
• Potatoes

It has regenerative qualities

As well as being great for skin health, vitamin C also helps to repair injuries and wounds. In fact, before the invention of antibiotics, vitamin C was used by doctors to help treat conditions like chickenpox, mumps, measles and tetanus.

It has a 24-hour lifespan in the body

Vitamin C’s water solubility means it’s extremely hard to overload your body with it, as you will just pass it through urination or through sweating. With this in mind, it’s important to take vitamin C daily, to really benefit from its effects as within 24 hours, it will have left your body.

Helps to beat the under-eye bags

A healthy balanced diet with a multitude of vitamins is essential in helping to keep fatigue at bay. Vitamin C has a particularly important role in energy metabolism and is essential in regulating the stress response in the body, something that can affect our energy levels when it is not controlled.

Vitamin C and the ‘limeys’

Back in the 1500s, British sailors often died of scurvy on long journeys and it was discovered (albeit without definitive proof at this time) that small amounts of citrus fruits (containing vitamin C) would prevent ending the lives of many of these sailors. It’s for this reason that British soldiers came to be known as ‘limeys’!