What Is Vitamin C?

Vitamin C, or ascorbic acid, gets lots of consideration, and perhaps rightly so. It is likely one of the extra readily out there vitamins for most individuals around the globe, and between news reviews of its advantages and recommendation from buddies and family, its no surprise this explicit citrus vitamin is at all times at the highest of our complement listing. If you hear the word vitamin C, chances are you'll instinctively think of the common chilly. For you can thank Linus Pauling and his 1970 e-book, BloodVitals SPO2 Vitamin C and the Common Cold. In it, Pauling really useful megadoses of vitamin C to scale back the frequency and severity of colds. The ebook triggered a sales increase for vitamin C that remains to be going robust. It also prompted nutritionists to begin a sequence of carefully designed studies of the vitamin and its features. Researchers have found little proof of its effectiveness against catching the widespread chilly, but there's evidence to recommend it may reduce the severity and length of a cold.



The story of vitamin C started centuries in the past with accounts of a disease referred to as scurvy. The ailment causes muscle weakness, lethargy, poor wound healing, and bleeding from the gums and under the skin. Scurvy was rampant all over the world for centuries, and documents courting back before the time of Christ describe the illness. Ships' logs inform of its widespread occurrence amongst sailors within the 16th century. History books report that scurvy was a standard drawback among the troops in the course of the American Civil War. Almost as old as reviews of the disease are studies of successful ways to deal with it: green salads, fruits, vegetables, pickled cabbage, small onions, and an ale made from such things as wormwood, horseradish, and mustard seed. In the 1530s, French explorer Jacques Cartier told how the natives of Newfoundland cured the mysterious disease by giving his males an extract ready from the inexperienced shoots of an evergreen tree, BloodVitals health which the men then called the "arbor vitae" or tree of life .



However, the illness was nonetheless the "scourge of the navy" 200 years later, when the British physician James Lind singled out a cure for scurvy. Believing that acidic materials relieved signs of the sickness, BloodVitals SPO2 Lind tried six completely different substances on six teams of scurvy-stricken men. He gave them all the usual shipboard food regimen, but to at least one pair of males in every of the six teams he gave a distinct test substance. One pair obtained a solution of sulfuric acid each day; another, cider; and a 3rd, sea water. The fourth pair acquired vinegar, and BloodVitals health the fifth took a each day mixture of garlic, mustard seed, balsam of Peru, and gum myrrh. The sixth pair in the experiment received two oranges and a lemon every day-lucky them. Lind discovered that the males who ate citrus fruit improved rapidly; one returned to responsibility after solely six days. The sailors who drank the cider confirmed slight enchancment after two weeks, however none of the others improved.