What is your ideal Vitamin C requirement?

Basics: you know vitamins are important.  There are the fat-soluble vitamins- Vitamins A,D, E and K while there are your water-soluble vitamins Vtamins B and C.  Fat soluble vitamins are those that are absorbed by your fat before they are released into the blood stream while the water soluble vitamins are eliminated by urine and depleted continuously.


So back to the question posed by this article, does the government really know your Vitamin C requirement? Did the Philippine government ever conduct any real studies on the right dosage that you need to take on a daily basis?  As much as they can't deliver the basics of daily living, you can probably have the instant answer in your head right now.

If Vitamin C is such an important vitamin in overcoming inflammation, prevention of scurvy- (A disease caused by deficiency of vitamin C, characterized by spongy and bleeding gums, bleeding under the skin, and extreme weakness). It also plays a role in the maintenance of a health immune system.  Researcher Mark Moyad, MD, MPH, of the University of Michigan commented "The more we study vitamin C, the better our understanding of how diverse it is in protecting our health, from cardiovascular, cancer, stroke, eye health [and] immunity to living longer."

Among Filipinos where high cholesterol is rampant, Vitamin C has anti-oxidizing properties which can help lower down those nasty bad cholesterol.  This will really help in any lipid reducing therapy that your doctor has initiated.

Irritation can be trouble in taking high dosage forms of more than 500mg of Vitamin C.  If you wish to try out a higher dosage of Vitamin C then you need to contemplate on using Buffered Vitamin C.  There are lots of brands in the market but I would suggest that you purchase a powdered form.

The only way you would know your upper limit is by testing the Vitamin on yourself by gradually increasing your intake until you experience loose stools.  The same experience you have when you have a flu and chill and after taking all those medicines, you finally are able to loosen bowels and then you feel better.

Personally, I choose to take at least 2,000mg but I go not do it on a daily basis, I skip days at a time and when I feel body malaise, I increase the intake to aroud 5,000 to 10,000mg which relieves me of the sluggishness that I feel.

Please do this with caution and listen to your body and observe how the vitamin helps you.  Also be careful with the brands you use, they also affect the absorption.  Recommended brands include Kirkman, USANA and other US certified companies, which are laboratory tested and are not that expensive.