How does Vitamin C help the improve the immune system?
Your mucous membranes in your nose, saliva, and gut wall lining are a part of your first line of defense to fight off any kind of illness (first string of the army – then the National Guard then the Navy Seals). Our nose and saliva can catch bacteria and viruses to stop them from entering your body and into your gut. Vitamin C is found to be helpful in strengthening this first line of defense as it helps you increase collagen production that makes up most of your mucous membrane tissue. If you do not have enough collagen then your immune system (army guards) are not going to be as strong to fight off the resistance of incoming threats/enemies.
Our “Standard American Diet” (SAD), leaves our bodies with many nutrient deficiencies, and even those individuals who eat a healthy, real food nutrient based diet are probably lacking the required nutrients we need to maintain a healthy immune system and gut health because of the soil our food comes from.
Each day, my inbox is filled with nutritional therapy blogs and reports on how we can fight the Covid-19 pandemic by improving our immune system. For ten years, I have been promoting healthy lifestyle habits, real food nutrition plan and proper exercise (not too much, not too little = “The Goldilocks Effect” for everything. Eight years ago, I created “The WHOLESTIC Method” program with eight elements that we need to improve in order to optimize health for fat loss, performance gains and longevity.
Nutrition is key…what we eat, when we eat, how we eat and WHY we eat. We do need to eat real food that balances our blood sugar but also focus on proper exercise, sleep, stress reduction and supplements as needed to add support to our system.
Micelle Liposomal Formula Vitamin C is the best type of supplement to ensure maximum absorption as Vitamin C, Methyl-B Complex and Glutathione. Many supplements for sale in the local stores are not always absorbing in your body and into your cells… you often have “expensive pee”! By taking liposomal supplements, as Vitamin C, it will be delivered into your cells and stored for when your “first line of defense army” is called into action to go to war and ready to attack with all of its armor.
There are many studies out there, especially now, on the effectiveness on supplementing with high doses (5g) of Vitamin C per day including articles from Dr. Myhill in the UK (podcast coming soon) and …
“A study was published in The Journal of Nutrients and it took a look at 28 individuals, broken into two separate groups. One group received 1000 milligrams of Vitamin C daily. The other group a placebo. What they found at the end of the study is that the group that ended up receiving the placebo had an 85 percent rate of contracting the common cold versus the vitamin C group which was at 47 percent.
They also found at the end of the study that the vitamin C group, on average, had a cold length that was 59 percent shorter in duration. Which demonstrates that not only does vitamin C actually boost your immune system, it shortens the life of a cold too.”
Click here to get on the waiting list for this absorbable source of liposomal Vitamin C from Pura Thrive.
VITAMIN C…
- A Powerful Antioxidant That May Reduce Free Radical Damage
- Unparalleled Bioavailability With Micelle Liposomal Delivery
- Supports Healthy Aging, Skin Elasticity, Hair & Nail Appearance
- Can Enhance & Support Healthy Immune Function
ANTIOXIDANTS HELP NEUTRALIZE FREE RADICALS, AND IT JUST SO HAPPENS THAT VITAMIN C IS ONE OF THE BEST IN THE BUSINESS.
The water soluble micronutrient often gets overshadowed in the nutrition world by newer, more exotic antioxidant compounds, but that doesn’t make it any less potent…
Not only does it help PROTECT THE IMMUNE SYSTEM, COMBAT OXIDATION AND REDUCE INFLAMMATION, Vitamin C can aid the body in REGENERATING GLUTATHIONE – another immensely powerful antioxidant.
THE KEY TAKEAWAY:
“Even in small amounts vitamin C can protect indispensable molecules in the body, such as proteins, lipids (fats), carbohydrates, and nucleic acids (DNA and RNA), from damage by free radicals and reactive oxygen species (ROS) that are generated during normal metabolism, by active immune cells, and through exposure to toxins and pollutants…”
Linus Pauling Institute[7]
Are you seeing a connection here …
We need to make sure our gut health is at optimal level if we are going to be able to fight the Covid-19 pandemic. Staying healthy is not just walking more outside during the day but it is also taking the right supplements to help your gut health and “army” be ready. It is the time in our lives to priority taking our individual internal “armies” to training camp and get them ready and primed for war! You will be around people eventually with Covid-19…so what can you do? You have choices.
The WHOLESTIC Method.
- Nutrition: eating real food, nutrient dense while avoiding the processed inflammatory foods as refined sugars, vegetable seed oils, GMO foods- corn, peanuts, soy, dairy and eggs (for many people!). Eat to balance your blood sugar, avoid insulin surges and fill full (and satiated) for hours! Intermittent fasting 16 hours.
- Exercise: not too much and not too little; cardio, strength and yoga
- Sleep: deep, quality and therapeutic 7-9 hours of sleep per night and asleep by 10pm. Avoid blue light at night and get the sunlight in the morning. Stop watching so much television and reading social media updates at night. Stop eating three hours before bed – so no eating after 7pm as you are to be sleeping by 10pm!
- Stress management: start cold thermogenesis, breathing exercises, outdoor nature walks, disconnect to connect, meditation, infrared sauna and light yoga practice.
- Movement: get your 10,000 steps per day outside. I keep telling people the new meaning of “Breakfast”, “lunch” and “dinner” means to go outside for a 10-20 minute walk! Eat when hungry.
- Digestion and Gut Health: remember 80% of your immune system is in your gut so proper nutrition, digestion, breakdown and absorption is key to improve immunity so make sure you are eating in the PNS “rest and digest” state, chewing your food, focused and taking your time. Supplementing with gut healing foods is essential!
- Hydration: drink clean filtered water throughout the day… half your bodyweight in ounces per day. Even add sea salt and lemon to your water. Try blending water, sea salt, celery and cucumber juice in the morning to hydrate as well for other options- electrolytes and minerals.
- Happiness: in order to reduce chronic stress, we need to find more ways to laugh, smile and be happy. I am writing in my “Gratitude Journal” every night right now plus going outside for walks with my husband to talk about life and making an effort to reach out to at least one friend who makes me smile and brings me joy per day on Facetime or Zoom.
What can you do today to start taking care of the WHOLE you from the inside out to improve your immune system?
We need to reduce external stressors… that includes environmental, emotional, over exercising and test for hidden internal stressors with functional lab tests (gut health, hormones, leaky gut, liver congestion…).
Dr. Tom O’bryan posted today…
Did you know that toxins commonly found in your home can overwhelm your immune system and force it to be “on call” 24/7? And this is NOT what your body was genetically designed to do. What happens when our bodies are overwhelmed? It’s the straw that broke the camel’s back. Your immune system becomes unable to fight off simple stuff, like viruses. It takes us longer to recover, and sometimes, some people don’t recover. Other conditions like autoimmunity may appear – or flare up – due to a weakened state. Toxicity is one thing you can reduce to help your body cope. How? There are nearly 250 pounds of chemicals produced or imported to the U.S. each day, per person. That’s right! That’s 250 lbs of toxic chemicals being dumped on you each day. The same goes for each of your loved ones. Let me illustrate this a bit more: We are surrounded by toxins, to the point that, upon the day of its birth, a newborn baby is born having over 180 toxic chemicals in their body.
https://thedr.com/blog/
Toxins can take many forms:
- Heavy Metals
- Air Pollution
- Foods
- Pesticides
- And more.
This is an area where you can lower your body burden and make an impact – reduce toxicity and SUPPORT your immune system – something we should ALL be doing during this crisis.
Stay connected on social media and my podcast… look for Debbie Potts and the “LOW CARB ATHLETE”,
Remember to take care of the WHOLE you…self care with “The WHOLESTIC Method” elements.
Debbie Potts
BONUS notes from Dr. Sarah Myhill in the UK…
How to take vitamin C to bowel tolerance
Do the PK diet – vitamin C is much better absorbed in the absence of sugar and starch. There is no point killing microbes with vitamin C if you are feeding them at the same time.
Take ascorbic acid at least twice daily (could be more often). It dissolves much better in warm water. Add fizzy water to produce a rather delicious drink! The ascorbic acid helps to sterilise the upper gut and prevents fermentation of food. Any microbes inadvertently consumed with foods are killed. Acid further helps digest proteins and also helps the absorption of essential minerals such as iron and zinc
Use ascorbic acid which is the cheapest and most effective form of vitamin C. If this is not tolerated, then use a neutral preparation such as sodium or magnesium ascorbate. Once you are PK and vitamin C adapted you should tolerate ascorbic acid well. The cheapest form of ascorbic acid is fermented from corn but the corn allergics may not tolerate this at all. Failing that one can get ascorbic acid from sago palm.
Start with 2 grams twice daily and increase at the rate of 1 gram every day. You will start to get foul smelling wind. This occurs initially as microbes in the upper gut are killed, swept downstream and are fermented by microbes in the lower gut. Later it occurs as you start to kill some of the friendlies in the lower gut. This is likely to need more than 10 grams of vitamin C. Keep increasing the dose until you get diarrhoea. Hold the dose at this level for 24 hours. At this point you should have a clean, digesting (non-fermenting) upper gut with low levels of microbes in the lower gut.
Adjust the daily dose in the longer term. The idea is to find a dose of vitamin C that kills the grams of unfriendly microbes in the upper gut but does not kill the kilograms of friendly microbes in the lower gut. This will depend on several variables that you will have to work out for yourself vis:
- A dose that allows you to pass a normal formed daily turd
- No smelly farting
- A dose that stops you getting coughs, colds and flu when all around are succumbing
- A dose that reduces, gets rid of or reverses any disease symptoms that you may be suffering from. These may be symptoms of the upper fermenting gut or the symptoms of chronic infection. As you can see from the Cathcart link below you have to get to 90% of bowel tolerance to reverse the symptoms of any disease process.
At the first hint of any infection such as a tickle in the throat, runny nose, sneeze, cough, feeling unwell, headache, cystitis………….well you know what from bitter experience………
Immediately take 10 grams of vitamin C. (half this dose for children, according to body weight) If this does not produce diarrhoea within one hour
Take another 10 grams. If this does not produce diarrhoea within one hour,
Take another 10 grams………….and so on. Some need 200grams to get a result. Whilst this may seem like a huge dose, compare this with sugar – 4 bars of milk chocolate would provide a similar dose of sugar – and vitamin C is legions safer than sugar!
Some people are appalled at the idea of vitamin C causing diarrhoea, but I have to say I would rather have a jolly good bowel emptying crap than suffer the miserable symptoms of flu or a cold for the next two weeks. Indeed, I have not suffered such for 35 years thanks to vitamin C. My father used to say – “you can’t beat a good shit, shave and shampoo”.
Adjust the frequency and timing of subsequent doses to maintain wellness. Remember the dose is critical. You cannot overdose, you can only under-dose. Just do it!
I am not alone in this advice:
Dr Robert Cathcart
Dr Cathcart was a similar advocate of high dose vitamin C. Some helpful clinical details can be seen at:
http://vitamincfoundation.org/www.orthomed.com/titrate.htm
Key points of the Vitamin C Foundation paper are:
- Everyone’s bowel tolerance dose is unique to them. It will vary through time with age, diet and infectious load. You have to work it out yourself and it will not remain constant!
- You must get to 80% of your bowel tolerance dose for vitamin C to relieve symptoms. This is another useful clinical tool as you can feel so much better so very quickly if you use vitamin C properly.
Cathcart details many diseases that are improved with vitamin C. Interestingly this includes many cases of arthritis. I suspect this illustrates one mechanism of arthritis which is that it is often driven by allergy to gut microbes. Correct this and the arthritis goes. For example, we know ankylosing spondylitis is an inflammation driven by klebsiella in the gut and rheumatoid arthritis is driven by proteus mirabilis.
Dr Paul Marik
From the Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, Virginia, Marik added intravenous vitamin C to his normal antibiotic protocol for treating patients diagnosed with advanced sepsis and septic shock in his intensive care unit. Before using vitamin C, the mortality was 40%. Mortality is now less than 1%. Had this been a novel antibiotic it would have made headline news!
Dr Marik offered the following observations:
“In the doses used, vitamin C is absolutely safe. No complications, side effects or precautions. Patients with cancer have safely been given doses up to 150 grams – one hundred times the dose we give. In the patients with renal impairment we have measured the oxalate levels; these have all been in the safe range. Every single patient who received the protocol had an improvement in renal function.”
(Please note anyone receiving intravenous vitamin C must be first checked for glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency. High dose vitamin C in these people may cause a haemolytic anaemia. I can find no evidence of this being an issue for oral vitamin C)
Ref: “Vitamin C and Sepsis – The genie is now out of the bottle”, Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, May 24, 2017
Lots more good science and practical detail at ‘AscorbateWeb’
http://seanet.com/~alexs/ascorbate/index.htm#Rev-Ed
And if nothing else, please do remember that vitamin C is Spanish for vitamin Yes!