A boost of Vitamin C

Vitamin C is it the lifesaver they say it is? The first tips showing up on the internet as soon as a killing coronavirus was mentioned were lemons. Lemons because of their vitamin C. Lemon juice would do the trick and keep you healthy. It's 18 months later and I wonder how many of you used lemons and are still as healthy as one could be. I wonder how many took care of their body for real. Before the WHO announced a fake pandemic and at this very right moment. With healthy I mean taking care of your health by not smoking, not drinking, not gaining weight, losing weight if you were overweighted... I don't think many did. If it comes to the minority of humans the fact is they easily forget once they are over the (first) shock. They adopt whatever came over them and no matter if they like it or not they give in. This means they accept it, do not fight it and their health is no longer important. Instead of watching over it and taking care of body and soul (a healthy soul is important for a healthy body) they stick to the old habits and see no reason to change. Doing nothing, soothing yourself, being bored, watching films, loneliness, anger and sadness is all fought with food! All types of food except lemon.

What makes lemons so interesting?
Indeed this fruit contains vitamin C but guess what? So do oranges, tangerines and nearly every fruit we know. Next to fruits vegetables contain vitamin C too and that's why (at least in the Western world) we stopped cooking vegetables into snot and more and more vegetables are eaten raw. In the past 40 years, cooking habits have changed. Not only salad is called salad today but so are carrots, cucumbers, onions, tomatoes, cabbages, and every other vegetable that can be cut into small pieces or slices.

What happens if...
If you cook you lose vitamins and minerals. The longer you cook it the fewer are left.
If you make juice out of fruits the same happens. So fresh lemon or orange juice you better drink immediately or the vitamins are gone. Buying fresh cooled orange juice in the shop is not healthier than the package of juice made out of a concentrate. If it still contains vitamins it is added to it together with a lot of sugar. Some shops over here have an orange juice machine. You can make juice out of the oranges in the machine. Real juice with which you can fill a bottle. It's fascinating to see how it works but the vitamin C? It is most likely gone at the time you are back home.

Lemon juice, orange juice... you should drink it immediately to get one of the most important vitamins in our body and guess what? One apple a day doesn't keep the doctor away either does one lemon. You need at least two apples with a weight of around 100 grams to have that 70 - 75 mg and one lemon doesn't do the trick either.

Most people have a lack of vitamin C.
This lack you doesn't fill overnight buy doing the lemon trick or?
Perhaps it is possible if you eat lemons every hour till you run to the bathroom. A side-effect of vitamin C is... stomach and intestines issues. Or if your intestines always let you down your side-effects can be headaches or sleeplessness. If you come to that point you know your body has had enough vitamin C. These kinds of vitamin C treatments are great if you feel a bit chilly, caught a cold or you feel your body is on the way to catch the next seasonable flu (influenza or coronavirus) but lemons alone don't do the trick. If you would only use lemons every hour your teeth will be seriously harmed (no problem if you have no teeth).

What is vitamin C good for?
In short, it is the vitamin that helps your immune system but this vitamin doesn't do this job alone. There are more vitamins and minerals you need to keep your body and mind healthy. Vitamine C helps with that. So if you have a lack of vitamin C you most likely have a lack of other essential vitamins and minerals too. Under normal circumstances, a healthy body should run on 75-80 mg of Vitamine C a day. Still, we see all kinds of (multi) vitamins for sale and they contain a lot of more than 75 mg. The average vitamin C pill today is 500 if not 1000 mg and the maximum intake for adults is 2000 mg a day! So what is going on? If 75-80 mg is enough why take 2000 mg of this vitamin?
The answer is clear. These vitamin supplements... are meant to give that extra boost. If you feel you have that cold, if you don't feel too well, if you might have influenza (mark: influenza is not a cold people!) at that moment, or if you recover from something else you can take those extra high milligrams of vitamin C pills (I even saw them of 2000+ at certain shops). These vitamin C supplements are what they are. Supplements and they should be used like that. They are supplements for special occasions. Those occasions are what we always called 'winter is coming up' or 'the R is in the month'.

If the 'R' is in the month vitamin supplements were given to children and taken by adults. A spoon of liver cod oil in the old days (my granny) and 'Davitomon 10' by my parents (an interesting fact is that Davitomin 10 changed its name into Davitomon 30). Extra vitamins were given to get us through the winter. A winter meant: lack of vitamins. There are no fruits or fresh vegetables. Even the potatoes (indeed they contain vitamin C) are old. So during September, October, November, December, January, February, March and April it was advised to take extra vitamins. So eight months a year vitamins were advised next to our meals to survive the winter. As a child, I took two: Davitomon 10 and vitamin C. That small yellow vitamin C tablet out of my childhood might have contained 20-25 mg of vitamin C. You read it right 20 milligrams, not 2000.

Those days we ran out of apples, pears and potatoes are gone. Like most countries, we import what we need or like. This means there are oranges and tangerines and there are even more fruits and vegetables available than in my childhood. Although there is more variety for sale on the market eating habits have changed. Housewives are rare, cooking housewives even more and so it cooking a healthy, decent meal. We reach out to packages and fast-food restaurants. People reward themselves with burgers, pizza and candies. Food that should be reserved for special days and not be the standard. If fruits or vegetables can be found at all in those meals it will add nothing to your daily necessary vitamin C intake.

Vitamin C and vitamin C is not the same.
What a pill contains isn't as good as what you find in your food. Pills only contain a part of the entire vitamin. This means they are not as good and indeed there are side effects! After all, this is made in a factory. This vitamin is not real. An overdose of these pills can be dangerous while an overdose of real vitamin C, those out of fruits and vegetables, never is or will be dangerous.
This means that lemon or orange is a way better option but it's not the best.

You need at least 200 grams if not 300 of lemon juice to provide your body in its need of vitamin C. A way better option are vegetables. The red bell pepper for example. One hundred grams of red pepper beats the lemon. It tastes better too. And what do you think of brussels sprouts? About 50-60 grams of this vegetable is enough to get your daily dose and this was a vegetable I ate in my childhood during winters while rosehips were available in Autumn.

It is questionable if it's necessary to use vitamins 8 months a year as I did during my childhood. If you eat healthily and are aware of what you eat there is not. This R in the month most likely started with a commercial from what we know today as Big Pharma. Supplements are meant for that bit extra in cases of need. Not to use daily. It's a waste of money if you eat your vegetables and or fruits every day. Vitamins that come from mother nature cannot be found in a bottle or jar besides if you stress out 24/7 and don't take care of your soul all those vitamins taken are even more money thrown out of the window.

Health starts with a healthy lifestyle and doesn't come with a pot of pills. Enough sleep (10 hours), drinking water (minerals), ventilating, paying attention to how you breathe, avoiding stress and a balanced diet (no sugar, low carbs, vitamins) is all you need to boost your immune system and get you through any winter. And if you really want to give your body a reset and activate your immune system consider ketosis (keto diet with one meal a day to activate your stem cells).

#kittywu #health #vitaminC