TREATMENT DATABASE

Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) is a water-soluble antioxidant found in most raw fruits and vegetables. It serves a number of vital functions in the body, including connective tissue repair (especially collagen), maintaining healthy teeth and bones, promoting the synthesis of anti-inflammatory hormones in the adrenal glands, helping to produce the neurotransmitters serotonin and norepinephrine, healing wounds, maintaining capillaries, healthy adrenal glands, and ovaries, absorbing iron into the bloodstream, promoting efficient white blood cells, and maintaining cholesterol balance. It is widely touted as a preventive for the common cold, perhaps because vitamin C increases the production of interferon, an antiviral cytokine. Vitamin C also functions as a natural antihistamine. In addition to its other beneficial properties, vitamin C is also a natural chelator, helping to remove heavy metals and toxins from the body.

Vitamin C is not stored in the body, as are fat-soluble vitamins, and thus must be constantly replenished. Smoking, drinking (alcohol), illness, and physical or emotional stress all cause rapid depletion of vitamin C.

USES IN ME/CFS. Vitamin C is the most widely used of all vitamins for ME/CFS patients, not just because of its role as an antioxidant and free radical scavenger, but also because of the numerous other vital functions it performs. Of particular relevance to patients with ME/CFS is the role of vitamin C in maintaining healthy capillaries. A number of researchers have remarked on the poor circulation in patients with ME/CFS, resulting in corollary illnesses such as Reynaud's phenomenon. Even more critical in ME/CFS is reduced blood flow to the brain, which is especially dependent on capillary action for its blood supply. This function alone helps to place vitamin C at the forefront of any vitamin therapy. However, its role in collagen formation and tissue repair, its importance in immune system function, and its place as an adrenal gland support do much to explain why it is one of the most frequently recommended ME/CFS nutritional treatments.

Treatment rating for Vitamin C