The Wonders Of Vitamin C

by Franny Holden
(Naples, Florida, USA)

It's a scurvy trick to deprive yourself of Vitamin C. The word for it is ascorbic acid, "scorbutus" being an ancient term for the disease we know as scurvy.

Like most vitamins, if you are on a diet, you need to make sure you have a good daily intake of vitamin C. If you don`t want to eat lots of fruit and vegetables, make sure you at least take vitamin C in tablet form

Like a brick house, the billions of tiny cells that compose your body require mortar to hold them together inside and out. Viscous, cement-like materials that support your cells are called intercellular substances. In the absence of Vitamin C, this stuff becomes thin and watery and all sorts of unhappy results ensue.

Like the pectin that causes fruit juices to jell, Vitamin C thickens your intercellular materials—rather, keeps them at the proper consistency for health. And as fresh as your morning paper is the news that Vitamin C is essential for sex appeal, too!

If, through lack of Vitamin C, your gums swell and bleed, your teeth fall out, and dangerous haemorrhages occur, you have a bad case of scurvy. Extreme symptoms of this nature are very rare in America, but milder ones are common enough.

Painful stiff joints, mistaken for ' rheumatism, are common springtime complaints in many regions. Often the "rheumatism" is caused by a deficiency of fresh fruits and vegetables in winter diets, and the pains arise from minute haemorrhages in the joints caused by insufficient Vitamin C to hold the blood in its proper channels.

Fragility of blood vessels, sallow complexion, weakness, fleeting pains, loss of energy, restlessness, irritability, and general run-down feeling are common complaints attributable to Vitamin C deficiency.

Do these symptoms sound like those produced by lack of other vitamins? They are, for the functions and effects of the various vitamins overlap, and rarely does one suffer from lack of one vitamin alone.

The teeth arc among the first organs to be endangered by lack of ascorbic acid, and there is considerable evidence that the vitamin helps prevent dental decay, bleeding gums, and some types of pyorrhea.

Vitamin C helps to speed up the growth of scar tissue, aiding wounds to heal, and is frequently used for that purpose in cases of surgery. Since stomach ulcers are really wounds, the vitamin is commonly prescribed in such cases.

It is hard to feel sorry for the average person if he suffers from Vitamin C deficiency, since a single portion of any one of several common foods will furnish more than enough ascorbic acid for the day's needs.

Oranges, grapefruit, and tomatoes are packed with the vitamin; a glass of the juice of any of these gives you all you need for one day. Cabbage, strawberries and potatoes are important sources.

Most fresh fruits and vegetables are well provided with Vitamin C; modern canning processes preserve most of the vitamin, and commercially canned goods often furnish more ascorbic acid than "fresh" products that have been allowed to wilt through careless handling and storage.

The vitamin occurs most liberally in the rapidly growing parts of plants—green leaves and shoots. A convenient way to serve these is in salads, particularly since Vitamin C is easily destroyed by cooking and at least one raw serving of fruit or vegetable should be taken every day.

Foods which preserve their Vitamin C well in spite of cooking are tomatoes, berries, asparagus tips, potatoes, liver.

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The Wonders Of Vitamin C

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