12 Potent Anti-Aging Vitamin C Foods
Vitamin C is one of the most popular and widely used vitamins in the world. Also known as ascorbic acid, vitamin C is the most readily available vitamin and there are good reasons it is the most widely purchased supplement worldwide.
This citrus vitamin has numerous health benefits.
It has been shown to reduce the severity and duration of the common cold in several studies. It does this by acting as a natural antihistamine as well as providing the immune system with a crucial nutrient for the healing process. These properties make it a great choice for controlling allergies.
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This Popular Vitamin is Crucial to Anti-Aging
As you’ve already learned, collagen is the main structural protein found in connective tissues such as tendons, ligaments, skin, cartilage, bones, blood vessels, and intervertebral discs.
Vitamin C plays a role in the formation and repair of collagen. Due to this important function, vitamin C is useful for healing wounds. Cuts, broken bones, and burns heal faster and better with oral supplementation of it.
Vitamin C rich foods prevent the aging of skin by rebuilding collagen. Healthy collagen keeps skin tissue strong and firm. The antioxidant properties help your skin recover from sun and weather damage – making it softer, healthier, and younger looking.
This readily available vitamin aids proper function of the circulatory system by repairing the collagen in blood vessels. Your heart will thank you for preventing arterial wall damage and oxidation of cholesterol in the blood stream – the first steps towards heart disease.
If you know antioxidants – then you know vitamin C is one of the best.
Antioxidants protect the body from free radicals. Free radicals damage cells and the DNA within them, which increases risk of cancer and other diseases. These nasty little terrors also accelerate the aging of body tissues. Which can cause a chain reaction, producing more free radicals within the body. These free radicals accumulate within cells and cause death to tissues.
As you get older, your body is more susceptible to free radical damage. Antioxidants such as vitamin C prevent the oxidant process and protect cells from free radical damage.
Vitamin C rich foods keep your body feeling younger, stronger, and renew your body from the inside out. Your body can process some supplements but they don’t always provide the boost you can get from nature’s pharmacy.
Benefits of Sufficient Vitamin C
- Can boost overall function of your cardiovascular system
- Improve brain function and help prevent of neurodegeneration
- Enhance your immune system to fight against daily illness
- Fight the outward signs of aging
Vitamin C in particular keeps your joints limber, regulates cholesterol and sugar levels, keeps your arteries functioning smoothly, lowers inflammation, improves lung function, and boosts immunity.
Having enough vitamin C directly affects collagen production.
Having enough vitamin C directly affects collagen production. #VitaminC #AntiAgingCLICK TO TWEET
The issue with vitamin supplements is that your body isn’t always able to process and absorb them. As a water-soluble vitamin, vitamin C doesn’t penetrate your fat-soluble cells effectively.
This lowers your absorption – to approximately 20% – and makes it less useful. The rest settles in the colon and leads to digestive issues such as diarrhea because it attracts too much water.
Thus the benefit of liposomal vitamin C. A hematologist in the UK with Babraham Institute Cambridge, Dr. Alec Banham, discovered this fascinating nanotechnology.
Think of liposomes as a (lipid) fat-soluble delivery truck that mimics the cell membranes of your body. It packs up all the vitamins you need, drives through the fat-soluble cellular walls, and unloads the water-soluble nutrients where they’re needed most.
This method of delivery increases overall absorption to almost 90%!
Additionally, when delivered in such a way, it allows liposomal vitamin C to aid in the production of hydrogen-peroxide. This makes this essential nutrient an anti-oxidant (fighting free radicals) as well as a pro-oxidant (a natural cancer fighter that leaves healthy tissue unharmed).
Added benefits of liposomal vitamin C is that less is needed for much greater results.
Since vitamin C increases your absorption of iron, you should use caution if you have high iron levels. Consider donating blood, lowering consumption of iron-rich foods, and wait to eat foods loaded with iron (such as red meat and spinach) for a couple of hours after taking liposomal vitamin C.
Choose Food Sources of Vitamin C
If you want the most complete benefits of vitamin C, look no further than your grocery store. These vitamin C rich foods make supplementing your diet easy and delicious. Regardless of how you eat it, vitamin C is a beneficial addition to any healthy diet.
Naturally, the first choice should always be food. Your body loves “food vitamins” and you can get great “doses” of [it] from your daily diet.
Top 12 Vitamin C-Rich Foods
- Camu camu
- Yellow bell pepper
- Kale
- Broccoli
- Strawberries
- Oranges
- Tomatoes
- Papaya
- Artichokes
- Pineapple
- Cantaloupe
- Kakadu plum extract
If you find yourself getting sick more frequently than you’re used to and you are not consuming enough antioxidant-rich foods in your daily eating plan – liposomal vitamin C may be your best alternative.
Your body requires both water-soluble and fat-soluble antioxidants because they target different areas of your system and work together to protect your entire body. Water-soluble vitamins protect your “liquid” body parts such as blood and cellular fluid. Fat-soluble vitamins are what make up your cell membranes.
Human beings no longer have the ability to produce [it] – we must get it from outside sources. Experts estimate that the population is 35% marginally deficient while 20% are severely deficient – in a vitamin we require to live.
Smoking, alcohol, high blood pressure, and some cancers can result in moderate to severe vitamin C deficiency. This is one vitamin your skin needs to make collagen and maintain that youthful elasticity.
Do what you can to preserve your existing nutrient levels and get what you need from your diet. If all else fails, consider a liposomal supplement.
This article appeared first at Daily Superfood Love and appears here with permission.Â
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Any statements or claims about the possible health benefits conferred by any foods or supplements have not been evaluated by the Food & Drug Administration and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease
