Vitamin C, or ascorbic acid, is a water-soluble vitamin that’s essential for humans and is not stored in your body, so it must be consumed regularly to avoid low levels and deficiencies.
Vitamin C has many functions, including, in particular:
- It acts as a powerful antioxidant that dissolves in water and is essential for the immune system.
- It minimises and delays the ageing process.
- It plays a role in the absorption of iron by the gastrointestinal tract.
- Its benefits endothelial integrity, which is essential in carnitine, collagen and lipoprotein metabolism.
- It’s important for wound healing.
How it’s obtained
This vitamin can be obtained naturally or synthetically. The natural way is through food, especially fruit and vegetables, especially citrus fruits. It’s rapidly absorbed in the small intestine (duodenum) and any excess is excreted in urine.
Prolonged or inadequate storage and cooking of foods rich in this vitamin can reduce their vitamin content.
Vitamin C deficit
Vitamin C deficit is seen more in elderly people with limited food intake, macrobiotic diets, malabsorption syndrome, alcoholism, hypothyroidism, diabetes and cancer.
Most of the clinical manifestations of vitamin C deficiency are secondary to a defect in collagen formation. The most frequent symptoms include anorexia, joint pain, lethargy, anaemia, deficient wound healing, weight loss, angular stomatitis, glossitis, denuded (geographic) tongue, etc.
In its more advanced stages, it causes scurvy, characterised by coagulation disorders, purpura and haemorrhages, ecchymoses in extremities, loss of teeth, jaundice, oedema, fever and, in the final phase, death.
