Natural Vitamin C

Vitamin C is a very misunderstood vitamin since the government decided that you rate any vitamin C product according to the amount of ascorbic acid it contains. Ascorbic acid is an antioxidant. It is the preservative part of the vitamin C complex. To refine out or to synthesize the preservative portion is a mistake. The real vitamin C complex contains vitamin P factors such as bioflavonoids and rutin which maintain vascular integrity. These are deficient in people who bruise easily or who have "pink toothbrush." Their blood vessels break or rupture too easily and bleed. The P factors strengthen the vascular system. They make the vessels tougher and more durable. Vitamin K is another part of the C complex. It promotes prothrombin. That means it helps in coagulation. Bleeders do not have enough vitamin K. If you have plenty of vitamin K, it's used in the formation of protein which is then transported to the injured tissue. Another factor in the C complex is vitamin J. The J factor is that part of the C complex which increases the oxygen carrying capacity of the blood. If you have a cold, you want to get oxygen to your tissues where it oxidizes the toxins and carries them off with carbon dioxide. In addition to these, the C complex contains enzymes, the outstanding one being tyrosinase. That's organic copper, an adrenal activator. If you wanted to rate vitamin C according to one factor, it would be logical to rate the tyrosinase. Products containing the most tyrosinase often produce the best clinical results. But all components of vitamin C are important for results. In addition, the vitamin C complex contains ascorbic acid. To say that ascorbic acid is vitamin C is like looking at a car's steering wheel and saying that it is an automobile; it is just a small part of an automobile. There is a manufacturer who makes their natural whole food vitamin C by removing the water and fiber from raw whole foods including alfalfa and mushrooms, bone marrow and buckwheat leaf. This leaves a powder containing all the nutrients from these foods. This powder is then put into tablets. The label on their bottle says "3 tablets supply 17 milligrams of vitamin C." But in addition to the 17 milligrams of ascorbic acid, these 3 tablets contain over 480 milligrams of all the other C complex factors -- the P factors, vitamin K, vitamin J, enzymes and many unknown organic factors. It is the presence of all these synergistic factors that gives their product it's functional potency. What about all the high-potency vitamin C products? These are made by adding ascorbic acid to a food base, usually rose hips or ascerola berries. Manufacturers of these products know that the public demand is high for so-called "natural" or "organic" products so food is used as a base. But they also know that people feel that if a little is good for you, more is better. So a large amount of synthetic ascorbic acid is added to a food base in order to increase the data potency on the label. In such a product, you might have 500 milligrams of synthetic ascorbic acid -- the preservative -- and only 25 milligrams or less of the food base, which would contain the other C complex factors. These high potency mega-products usually have labels that say "natural" or "organic." This is because synthetic ascorbic acid, a derivative of petroleum, contains carbon and is therefore chemically organic and natural -- although it is hardly a food. In order to put 500 milligrams of naturally occurring ascorbic acid into a tablet, the tablet would have to be as big as a Ping-Pong ball! So there is a lot of confusion about vitamin C. It is important to remember all the other components of the C complex; vitamin C is more than just ascorbic acid.