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Vitamin C – You’re Just Not Getting Enough

by Guest blogger, Melissa Makris, How to Boost Your Immune System

Vitamin C is a powerful nutrient that serves many important functions.  Proper amounts detoxify the body, combat stress, support the good bacteria in your gut, neutralize harmful toxins and free radicals, remove heavy metals, boost your immune system, and more.  Yet most of us are not getting near enough to realize these health benefits.

Why?  Because the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) of 90 mg for vitamin C is set much too low.  This leads people to believe that they are getting enough of the vitamin for good health.  And it also makes us wary of taking much more than that (those so-called megadoses).

But the fact is that the RDA for vitamin C is not enough for good health.  Not even close – unless you’re just looking to prevent scurvy (but I think I can safely assume that no pirates are reading this).  So if we seek this vitamin’s ability to protect us from stress, infections, and pollution, we require a much higher dose.

How do we know this?  Trauma, stress, illness, and injury all use up large quantities of vitamin C in animals, including humans.  Since we cannot make the vitamin ourselves, we have to get it from our diet.  Other related species sharing the same inability to produce vitamin C consume 20 to 80 times the RDA suggested amount.  The great apes, our closest living relatives, demonstrate this (they also lack the enzyme needed to change glucose into vitamin C).  They need between 2-6 grams (2,000 – 6,000 mg) of Vitamin C per day under normal healthy conditions.

Practically all other animals are able to manufacture vitamin C in their bodies, increasing the amount as needed in times of stress, illness, etc.  A typical example of an animal that makes its own vitamin C is the goat.  It averages about 13 grams (13,000 mg) per day under normal circumstances.  When needed, it can make many times more than that per day.   Most animals can make up to 10 times their daily amount when their health requires it.

So how much vitamin C do we humans need?  It depends on many things such as diet, age, stress level, overall health, amount of exposure to pollutants, etc.  A generic amount is around 1-4 grams per day for a very healthy individual.

The good news is that you can tailor your dosage to your specific needs by doing a vitamin C flush (info on how can be found here: http://www.how-to-boost-your-immune-system.com/benefits-of-vitamin-c.html ).  This basically tells you the amount you need to saturate your body with this nutrient.  Taking half that amount split up over the course of a day is recommended to reap all the wonderful benefits of this potent antioxidant.

And keep in mind that it is impossible to overdose on vitamin C.  Your body will tell you when you’ve taken too much by giving you diarrhea.  Back off the dose and the loose bowels will quickly remedy themselves.

There are no side effects with these large doses either – except better health and a strong immune system.  For more tips on how to naturally boost your immune system and overall health, please feel free to visit my website at the link above.

Melissa Makris

Melissa Makris is a scientist with a technical background in immunology and is passionate about holistic and alternative methods of healing.  Her website How to Boost Your Immune System shares information on how to boost immune system health using simple, natural methods.

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This post is part of the Natural Cures Tuesday blog carnival. You can join our carnival! Submit your related blog posts by email to kim.hartke at gmail.com. Or, put your immune boosting strategies/Vitamin C success stories in the comments below!

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