Home | Alphabetical Index | Conditions & Cures | Anti-Aging | Articles | Forums | Where to Buy

Ascorbate

Although most animals can make vitamin C from scratch, humans have lost the ability over the course of evolution. We must get it from food, chiefly fresh fruits and vegetables. One of this vitamin's main functions is helping the body manufacture collagen, a key protein in our connective tissues, cartilage, and tendons.

From ancient times through the early nineteenth century, sailors and others deprived of fresh fruits and vegetables developed a disease called scurvy. Scurvy involves so-called scorbutic symptoms, which include nonhealing wounds, bleeding gums, bruising, and overall weakness. Now we know that scurvy is nothing more than vitamin C deficiency.

Scurvy was successfully treated with citrus fruit during the mid-1700s. In 1928, when Albert Szent-Gyorgyi isolated the active ingredient, he called it the "anti-scorbutic principle," or ascorbic acid. This, of course, is vitamin C.

Vitamin C is a powerful antioxidant that protects against damaging natural substances called free radicals. It works in water, both inside and outside of cells. Vitamin C complements another antioxidant vitamin, vitamin E, which works in lipid (fatty) parts of the body.

Vitamin C is the single most popular vitamin supplement in the United States, and perhaps the most controversial as well. In the 1960s, two-time Nobel Prize winner Dr. Linus Pauling claimed that vitamin C could effectively treat both cancer and the common cold. Subsequent research has mostly discounted these claims, but hasn't dampened enthusiasm for this essential nutrient. The vitamin C movement has led to hundreds of clinical studies testing the vitamin on dozens of illnesses; at present, however, no dramatic benefits have been discerned.

Feature Article

The Fountain of Youth?

What if I told you that it may be possible for you to live to age 100 or even longer, in better health than you are in right now? And, if you are already experiencing the ill effects of aging, what if I told you that it may be possible for you to look and feel 20 years younger and stay that way beyond the age of 100.

Aside from the fact that you'd probably call me crazy, I have to tell you that we have never been as close as we are today to actually being able to extend human life!

Read More