Vitamin C

Enjoy Vitamin C

L-ascorbic acid
ascorbate
rose hips

A lack of vitamin C can cause the disease called scurvy. Szent-Györgyi discovered vitamin C in 1937. This doctor wanted to treat his patients with scurvy. He then gave people with scurvy the just isolated ascorbic acid and found it didn't alleviate all of the symptoms.

With all his research he could never cure scurvy with the isolated ascorbic acid itself. His patients' recovery was not the same as when he gave his patients a food concentrate he made. Szent-Györgyi discovered that other factors had to be at work in order for vitamin C activity to take place. So he returned to the laboratory and eventually made the discovery of another member of the vitamin C complex, rutin, co-factors which together sparked the interface needed for Vitamin C absorption.

Szent-Györgyi became friends with Linus Pauling and continued his work to see if Vitamin C could prevent cancer. To this day no studies have shown this.

We humans are in a small minority of animals that can't make Vitamin C. Although we have the needed enzyme, L-gulonolactone oxidase, it is deactivated. There are two major branches of primates. The more primitive branch, the Strepsirrhini (wet-nosed primates) can make Vitamin C. We Haplorrhini (dry-nosed primates)—man, apes and tarsiers, cannot.

Few would argue against the notion that a balanced, fruit and vegetable-rich diet is the best way to obtain vitamins and maintain health. One reason to try to take an all natural vitamin C made with a food source like rose hips vitamin C. Caution with PKD Polycystic Kidney Disease, Vitamin C can form crystals in the urine which can lead to kidney stones. Unfortunately the discoverer of Vitamin C died of kidney disease.