Did your mother urge you to take your vitamin C when you were younger? You might not have experienced many benefits from that pill form of the vitamin, yet your mother was ultimately right: vitamin C is a crucial nutrient. The key to getting the benefits is absorbing the nutrient properly, and at Knox Wellness Experience in Knoxville, TN, we offer vitamin C infusions so you can enjoy all the amazing benefits of this powerful nutrient.
We all need certain essential vitamins and minerals to grow, function, and thrive. Some of these nutrients we’re able to actually make ourselves. Vitamin D, for example, is made in our skin when it’s exposed to sunlight. Other nutrients we can only get from our diet, and vitamin C is one of those.
Vitamins that we ingest through food or beverages can also be divided into two other categories: fat-soluble and water-soluble. The fat-soluble ones we store in our fat when we eat more than we need. Later, we can just retrieve these vitamins from the fat cells if we don’t get enough in our diet. Our levels of these vitamins tend to remain relatively stable outside of famine situations.
The water-soluble vitamins are different. If we eat more than we need, we tend to excrete a lot of the rest in our urine. Vitamin C is this type of vitamin. A bit of it can be stored in our liver and in our adrenal glands, but during periods of high stress or fatigue, those stores are very quickly depleted. Since modern life is practically defined by constant stress, most of us are running through our vitamin C stores very quickly.
All animals need vitamin C because it’s key to our body’s ability to produce collagen, and this might be vitamin C’s most important and far-reaching benefit. Collagen is the most abundant fiber tissue in our body, connecting everything in our blood vessels, skin, organs, teeth, bones, and more. Because vitamin C is so important in this role, our bodies quite literally start to fall apart when we are chronically deprived of it.
Before humans understood the value of this nutrient, vitamin C deficiency was called scurvy, and it was a disease common among sailors and explorers deprived of fresh food for long periods. It was a dreaded and painful malady that fortunately is very rare today.
Vitamin C also protects other key vitamins from oxidation, allowing us to get the full benefit from them. Vitamin C is crucial for our immune system to operate properly. Vitamin C helps our body process iron so we don’t experience iron-deficiency anemia. And what amounts of vitamin C our bodies do store functions to protect us from the effects of the stress hormone cortisol, which is why chronic stress depletes us of this nutrient.
While the modern diet almost always provides enough vitamin C to avoid scurvy, it doesn’t provide enough during times of high stress for our immune system to function optimally or to battle fatigue and adrenal exhaustion.
Why take vitamin C through an infusion rather than by tablet or simply from the diet? It all comes down to bioavailability.
A simple Google search is usually enough to tell you how much of any nutrient a given food contains within itself. The problem is, those numbers don’t indicate how much of that nutrient our bodies are actually able to absorb. The process of digestion is complicated and affected by many things. Bioavailability simply refers to how much of nutrient is available to a biological organism (us). How much of that number we Googled will our bodies actually absorb?
In the case of vitamin C, we know certain foods are very rich in this key nutrient, but unfortunately, we’re only able to absorb approximately 18% of what we ingest through food sources. The same is true when we take vitamin C pills: we don’t absorb nearly as much as the amount we appear to be taking.
When you take any nutrients via IV infusion, everything changes. Instead of sending the nutrition through the digestive system, all the nutrients in the IV go straight into the bloodstream and are 100% bioavailable, every time. When you take vitamin C by IV infusion, you may be shocked at how good it can make you feel. You didn’t feel deficient, perhaps, but once your body has all the vitamin C it needs, it’s free to get to work in some amazing ways.
We all know that antioxidants are important. We’re always being encouraged to eat and drinks things that are rich in them, like blueberries and green tea. Different anti-oxidants have more or less potent effects, and one of the strongest of all is vitamin C. As an antioxidant, it protects all the cell structures in our body, and hence our DNA, especially during times of high stress, infection, or illness.
Vitamin C is a potent antioxidant. That means it battles free radicals and reactive oxygen species in the body, but it also battles viruses and bacteria in a similar way. In fact, this is one of the most well-known benefits of vitamin C. Studies have repeatedly shown that getting plenty of vitamin C can help to delay the onset of cold and flu symptoms and reduce their intensity if you do get sick.
If you read anything about cosmetic treatments, you’ve probably heard about how important collagen is. A drop in collagen production happens naturally as we age, and it’s implicated in a lot of our skin aging issues. In fact, you may have noticed your local pharmacy filling up with over-the-counter creams, moisturizers, and cosmetics that boast lots of vitamin C.
You can better minimize the effects of this collagen depletion by getting plenty of vitamin C directly through IV infusions. Vitamin C can protect the skin from sun damage and help to reverse some of the damage you’re already seeing. When you are getting plenty of vitamin C, you can see it in your healthy, strong, skin.
Vitamin C protects your heart at more than one level. First, since collagen is essential to the strength and flexibility of blood vessel walls, boosting and strengthening collagen with plenty of vitamin C is one way of keeping blood vessels in good shape. This is good for your heart, but it’s also protective against issues like glaucoma.
Beyond this effect, however, studies have shown that getting plenty of vitamin C can significantly reduce levels of LDL cholesterol and triglycerides, which protect you from hypertension and may help lower blood pressure.
Anemia occurs when you don’t have enough healthy red blood cells. This causes fatigue and weakness, and it’s a fairly common condition that can have many causes. The two most common causes, however, are a deficiency in vitamin B12 or iron. Since these two nutrients are most bioavailable in meat and meat products, anemia is especially a danger for those following vegetarian or vegan diets.
Non-meat sources of iron, in particular, are very hard for the body to absorb, so even if you’re eating plenty of spinach and fortified grains, you might not be getting the iron you need. You can help this by ensuring you have plenty of vitamin C. Vitamin C makes your body 67% better at absorbing iron in food.
You need vitamin C to break down fat so you can use it for energy. Ideally, we all want to be using our own fat for energy whenever possible! Vitamin C helps because it’s used by the body to create carnitine, which is a molecule that transports the fat from our cells’ mitochondria so it can be metabolized.
This effect is so powerful that a study done in 2011 found that even low-dose IV infusions of vitamin C given to office workers reduced their fatigue significantly within two hours. Even better, they stayed more energetic than normal for the next 24 hours.
Inflammation has a lot of negative effects. It’s what’s behind arthritis, for example, and it’s even implicated in season allergies, auto-immune disorders, and heart disease. Vitamin C has a potent effect on lowering inflammation through various mechanisms as an antioxidant, immune system booster, and collagen stimulant.
If you’re suffering from diabetes, vitamin C infusions can help. Even if you’re not, vitamin C can help! People who have plenty of vitamin C in their blood are at 62% lower risk for diabetes than others. And for those who already have the disease, vitamin C helps you push back in three key ways:
High blood sugar causes damage throughout the body because of the free radicals this generates. Vitamin C prevents this damage.
The blood vessels suffer severe endothelial damage when blood sugar is high. Even after blood sugar is under control, something called “cell memory” can cause this damage to continue. Vitamin C erases this cell memory and stops the damage.
If you’re diabetic, you’re already under a lot of oxidative stress. You don’t want to add adrenal stress and anxiety to that mix because it damages neurotransmitters, but it’s hard not to stress when you have a chronic disease. Vitamin C fights back by protecting you from the effects of cortisol.
There is still debate about how effective vitamin C infusions are in this role, but there are many studies ongoing, and the evidence is promising. In the lab, high doses of vitamin C have been found to slow the growth of all kinds of cancer cells, including cancer of the liver, pancreas, colon, prostate, and skin.
Other lab studies have shown that combining vitamin C with chemotherapy seems to make the latter more effective. Vitamin C infusions aren’t a guaranteed prevention for this or any other disease, but it’s possible they can help.
You may be aware that it’s possible to overdose on certain vitamins and minerals and experience toxicity. Thankfully, with vitamin C that’s nearly impossible. Since very high-dose C infusions are being given regularly to cancer patients now, we have clear evidence that even at very high doses, vitamin C is entirely safe and non-toxic.
The best and surest way to know you’re getting all the vitamin C you need, straight to your bloodstream and doing good for your body, is with IV infusions. Come visit us at Knox Wellness Experience in Knoxville, TN and experience what IV infusions of this potent nutrient can do for your wellness.
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