Latest / Common Sense Health / Vitamin C: The Truth
Transcript
- Stephen Thomas BSc. Hons: Hello? Today I want to start with bit of linguistic detective work about the posh name for vitamin C, ascorbic acid. The name ascorbic acid tells you everything you need to know about this nutrient, apparently. The word comes from the Latin scurbitus, meaning scurvy, with the prefix a meaning without. So ascorbic acid literally means anti-scurvy acid, a nutrient that prevents scurvy. And for decades, the entire conversation about vitamin C has been framed around this one deficiency disease as if avoiding scurvy is the sole purpose of Vitamin C. But here's the thing, whilst we've been obsessing over ascorbic acid from oranges and even from supplements, we've completely overlooked the form of this nutrient that humans actually evolved to use. So picture this, you've been told since childhood that Vitamin C is absolutely essential and that you must consume it daily from fruits and from vegetables. And without it, well, you'll be shuffling around like a 17th century sailor waiting for your teeth to fall out and your gums to start bleeding. Well, what if I told you that vitamin C, as we commonly know it, was never actually part of this natural human diet? In fact, the plant form of ascorbic acid can't even be properly used by the body without first being converted. Meanwhile, the form that really matters, dehydroascorbic acid or DHAA is readily available in fresh meat and absorbs better than even glucose. The sailors didn't get scurvy from the lack of oranges, they got it from a lack of fresh meat. Is it the name then, ascorbic acid, that has anchored us to the flawed understanding of this wonderful vitamin? Now, before you think I've completely lost the plot, I advise you to stick with me because this is going to require some proper joined-up thinking, by the end you'll understand why losing the GULO gene millions of years ago might have been one of evolution's cleverest moves and not a biological cock-up. I will explain that later. And you'll see why the roots of the word ascorbic, defining a nutrient solely by the disease it prevents, has led us astray for over a century. Now, most people have absolutely no idea that DHAA even exists. So this DHAA D-hydroascorbic acid not to be confused with the omega-3 fatty acid DHA that's a totally different thing DHA is the oxidized form of ascorbic acid essentially vitamin C that's been through a bit of oxidative stress itself and here's the kicker It's approximately 1,000 times more absorbable by the body than glucose It's not just more absorbable than the plant form of vitamin C, but even more absorbable than glucose itself So this remarkable fact... used to be very well known. was sitting there in plain sight, then mysteriously at some point it disappeared. But thankfully I've seen it years ago in textbooks and in studies and also doing my blood work. So we're going to move on to a little bit of science here. So unlike the 4,000 plus species of mammals manufacturing their own vitamin C, us humans and a select few other species lost the ability to produce vitamin C because of natural selection pressures. They turned off the GULO gene basically, but rather than being a genetic disaster, this has turned out to be rather clever. The body is pretty smart. Our red blood cells are specially equipped to hoover up the oxidized form of dehydroascorbic acid. And once inside our blood cells, that DHAA is immediately transformed back into a scorbic acid and can be effectively carried through the bloodstream to wherever it's needed. Now this recycling mechanism, well, it's blood brilliant basically. The body continuously converts DHAA back into ascorbic acid allowing it to recycle this vital antioxidant over and over again. This is why we simply don't need massive daily uptakes or intakes. We're designed to be efficient with what we've got. This recycling process is a testament to human evolutionary adaptation ensuring that essential nutrients are effectively and efficiently transported and utilized within the body. Now research confirms that that dehydroascorbic acid is transported via glucose transporters. And Glute 1, the most widely distributed cell glucose transporter, has an affinity for DHAA that's approximately, as I said, a thousandfold higher than for glucose. So DHAA is immediately reduced intracellularly, like I say, to ascorbic acid, effectively trapping it inside the cell. Now perhaps Glute 4, or Glute 1, shouldn't be called that, but rather DHAA. a transporters because that does seem to be a big purpose. here's another detail for you. D H double A is the only form of scurvic acid that can pass through the blood brain barrier, penetrate cell membranes and into the mitochondria. The plant form is simply cannot do these things effectively. This makes D H double A particularly crucial for neurological health and for brain function. Now let's dig into what D H double A actually does in the body. It plays a critical role in combating reactive oxygen species, I'll call it ROS from now on. Now, those harmful byproducts of metabolism, they lead to oxidative stress. A key antioxidant, mZyne, such as superoxide, ⁓ dimutase and plutothione peroxidase work alongside DHAA to neutralize ROS and mitigate cellular damage. But here's where it gets what I think is really interesting. Research suggests that DHAA doesn't just mop up free radicals, it also influences cellular signaling pathways impacting various metabolic processes within the body. And understanding how DHAA participates in these pathways could lead to new strategies for enhancing antioxidant defenses particularly in diseases associated with oxidative stress. Now under conditions of oxidative stress the body increases the conversion of DHAA back into ascorbic acid highlighting its essential role in maintaining overall antioxidant capacity. This adaptive response is absolutely crucial it means your body can ramp up its antioxidant defense precisely when needed providing you have given it the right building blocks. And as you know ⁓ I'm quite good talking about blood so I'm going to talk about the actual concentrations here because this is where things get a little bit more fascinating. Now the average plasma concentrations of l-ascorbic acid typically range from 40 to 80 micromoles per litre. Now in blood plasma the ratio of ascorbic acid to DHAA is approximately 98 to 2. Now you might think well that's not much DHAA then is it? But hold on. This ratio varies across different tissues. In various organs, such as the heart and the lungs, DHA levels can constitute 30 to 55 percent of the total vitamin C present. And that's enormous. This suggests that certain organs actively prioritise DHA for critical functions, particularly those organs under higher oxidative stress. Your heart and your lungs are working hard, generating more ROS and they need more DHA to cope with it. So obviously this isn't a bug in the system. It's a feature the body knows what it's doing It's shunting dh double a to where it's needed most and where does dh double a come from? animal products fresh meat not Orange juice now you might be thinking well hold on steven surely the nutritional tables Tell us exactly how much vitamin C is in our food Well, here's where things get a little bit dodgy. Should we say most of the nutritional values were buy-on for foods come from initial tests conducted in the 1930s or even earlier. Now at that time all food was pretty much organic but without the label, grown in natural conditions with good soil. One carrot grown then contained vastly more nutrients than one grown today. So modern agriculture has decimated soil quality. The same patch of soil that once grew one nutrient-dense carrot can now be used to grow a hundred carrots. And worse still, fruits like blueberries are often grown in plastic mulch. I mean they're not even in proper dirt. They're subjected to totally unnatural lighting conditions and pumped with chemical fertilizers to make them grow but... They only get the bare minimum of the proper nutrients. Well, that was not factored into these tables. So even if you buy organic, unless you're growing it at home yourself, you're probably getting more nutrients from a single homegrown carrot than from an entire bag purchased weekly at your local supermarket. And remember, even those outdated nutritional databases don't even account for DHAA in meat because the tests available at the time couldn't even detect it. So for centuries, sailors on long voyages fell victim to scurvy and it was blame. The blame was purely on vitamin C from plants being lacking. The historical record seems clear. British naval ships randomly assigned various food rations until they found that limes addressed the problem. Hence the English being called lime is. I don't hear it that much, but the Australians definitely did cause that. Now, this single observation has propagated the myth that humans must have vitamin C from plants. But let's apply some proper critical thinking here. There was virtually no citrus in England historically, and in fact very little growing here contained significant amounts of ascorbic acid, even long after the discovery of agriculture. To be blunt, no one in the northern climate had a significant dietary intake of plant-based ascorbic acid, let alone during the endless eons before agriculture, when our ancestors were eating very close to 100 % meat, along with organic skin and bones. So what were these sailors actually eating? Were their rations consisted of what was called hardtack, double baked crackers essentially, ⁓ which could last forever if they were kept dry, and salted pork. Now here's the crucial detail, there's absolutely no ascorbic acid in hardtack because it's made from dried ground wheat. The only source of ascorbic acid for these men was the pork in the form of DHAA. And so the real problem wasn't a lack of plant foods, it was the quality and quantity of the meat. Now, salted pork has a very limited shelf life, especially without being able to be canned. So it often went rancid, sometimes even before the ship left the port, depending on the time of the year and the honesty of the merchants. But on very long voyages, it would run out entirely, leaving the sailors reliant solely on grain, which we know is a highly deficient food source. but grains like wheat you'll die very quickly so this is why modern flour is heavily fortified and conditions like berry berry are common for those eating large amounts of rice and white flour because they deplete your B vitamins but even with whole grains you'll still have nutritional problems and scurvy by the way will kill you the quickest of all of those things now since the napoleonic times it's been known that fresh meat could cure scurvy but what they didn't know was that meat was full of DHAA So the real issue was the lack of fresh meat, not the absence of citrus fruits. And this historical misrepresentation has shaped nutritional dogma for over 200 years. Now here's something that... Might surprise you, can actually recycle, like I say, their ascorbic acid. Something only humans and pigs can do. And this is why we simply don't need much. Just a few milligrams per day for collagen synthesis. And we can reuse it over and over again. We don't need it on a daily basis. Hope you got that point because that's vitally important. Now I've heard some low carb gurus say we don't need as much vitamin C for a different reason on a low carb diet because it doesn't have to conform with glucose for the Glut4 transporter and while there's some sort of truth in the competition issue the reality is even more straightforward. The amount of plant-based ascorbic acid we need in the diet is essentially zero. DHAA from animal products is not only more absorbable than vitamin C, it's also more absorbable, like I say, from glucose. We also need much less vitamin C because if we eat animal products, then we are consuming heme iron. And when we obtain iron from plant sources, that is non-heme iron. And plant-based non-heme iron needs vitamin C to power the vitamin C ferro reductase enzyme to convert it to be bioavailable. Now here's the rub. What about vitamin C supplements? you can definitely have too much. Vitamin C is not a stable antioxidant. If you take mega doses, you can actually cause oxidative damage through over-reducing chemical substances, which is just as bad as not having enough antioxidants in your system. Ascorbic acid simply isn't a significant part of our ancestral diet, and it shouldn't be a significant part of yours either, at least not in a mega dose supplement form. ⁓ from meat on the other hand provides what you actually need in the form that your body prefers without the risks associated with high dose supplementation and You might be thinking what does your body actually use as its primary? Antioxidant defense well, that's glutathione this along with super rocks a super oxide ⁓ Dismutase is the human body's main antioxidant system. These are very stable antioxidants, which is crucial because instability leads to the same problems as over supplementing and megadosing with vitamin C supplements. So here's where the carnivore and ketogenic way of eating really does come into its own because people on a low carb diet have been shown to have double the glutathione levels of people on a standard American diet. Well why would that be? Well because methionine, which is abundant in meat but lacking in the standard diet and almost absent in vegan diets is what's required. to produce glutathione. The ketogenic diet greatly increases glutathione production, which the body makes using methionine, and it also greatly reduces the need for antioxidants because fat burning produces fewer reactive oxygen species, ROS, much fewer than glucose metabolism. So during periods of high glucose concentrations, the polyol pathway and advanced glycation end products produce PKC and hexosamine pathways. become major sources of ROS. Now studies on diabetic kidney disease show that ROS are usually counterbalanced by antioxidant enzymes, we say, glutathione peroxidase and ⁓ superoxide dismutase and catalase and free radical scavenging systems. Now during hyperglycemia, this balance tips in favor of the ROS production and reduced CoA. Now that's an indicator of mitochondrial redox status and lipoic ⁓ which is a ⁓ thiol antioxidant are significantly increased in the hippocampus of ketogenic diet fed rats, demonstrating enhanced mitochondrial antioxidant status. I need to take a tangent to explain that thiol antioxidant, that's T-H-I-O-L. That's simply an antioxidant that contains sulfur. The sulfur is what makes it particularly good at neutralizing free radicals. Think of glutathione and alpha lipoic acid and NAC. These are all thiol antioxidants. They're much more stable than vitamin C and they can be recycled by the body which makes them far more efficient. So this is why eating meat, which is obviously rich in sulfur containing amino acids like methionine and cysteine, gives you the building blocks for these superior antioxidants. And it's another reason why a carnivore diet provides excellent antioxidant protection without needing handfuls of vitamin C tablets. Sorry for the little tangent. on another note, the visible aging effects are largely caused by glycation. So when glucose, especially fructose, become bonded to proteins like elastin and collagen and damages them, that's why you look like you're aging. Now, the main antioxidant, glutathione, is vital for cleaning up this damage and even helps reduce wrinkles. I mean, look at me. I'm 197. Anyway, 62 actually. But anyway, if you're wanting to boost your antioxidant status even further. You could consider supplementing with glycine and lysine or better yet NAC. Now these provide the building blocks for glutathione production. Now importantly your body will never over produce glutathione. It's only made as needed and it's very stable so it won't go rampaging through your system causing damage. Now recently some influencers have claimed that you can have too much glutathione. Now this is categorically false and it can only occur if you inject it directly, which no one is suggesting you do, so please don't do that. Now, anyway, the benefits of DHAA extend well beyond simply mopping up free radicals. Research indicates that DHAA can enhance your immune function, primarily due to its role in supporting antioxidant defences, as we've just discussed. Now, also remember those tissue concentrations that I mentioned earlier, the fact that the heart and lung tissues maintain about 30 to 55 % of their total vitamin It underscores its importance for optimal organ function. Furthermore, DHA may have significant implications for neurological health influencing brain function and development. And studies suggest that maintaining high levels of DHA can be linked to improved cognitive function and a reduced risk of degenerative diseases by minimizing the oxidative damage to cells. So the brain being under constant metabolic stress, particularly benefits from DHAA's ability to cross the blood-brain barrier, something that plant-based ascorbic acid struggles with. additionally, DHAA's role in collagen synthesis cannot be overstated. While only small amounts of ascorbic acid are required for the enzymes involved in collagen production, that ascorbic acid must obviously come from somewhere. On a meat-based diet, comes from DHAA, which your body efficiently converts As needed as we say demand driven now since we're on the topic Let me address another bit of nonsense that's been doing the rounds the idea that Eating collagen means you don't need a scurvy gassy daily while this might seem logical on the surface Collagen cannot be absorbed by the gut until it's broken down into its Constituent amino acids and then the body reassembles them into new collagen now this process requires a scurvy gassy which you're body can produce from the DHAA. And collagen is quite hard for the body to break down. So simply taking a collagen supplement for some people might not be the best solution. Now, for transparency, my wife has had great results from collagen supplementation, but I don't recommend collagen supplements to everyone as sourcing good versions can be tricky. And a lot of collagen is contaminated with glyphosate, even organic sources. mean, glyphosate is basically in the water supply in many places. So when looking for low to no levels of contamination, it seems that the beef is better than pork, by the way, or chicken. But even organic grass-fed beef can be contaminated in some extreme cases. a good solution for those people wanting to produce more collagen is to take glycine, which is also needed to create glutathione. And it does a far better job at creating collagen, while simultaneously helping you produce glutathione as well and performing many other beneficial functions in the body. I still think getting everything from food is the best thing by the way. Now due to soil depletion and modern growing practices such as selling you unripe fruit, the meat you eat probably does contain more bioavailable ascorbic acid as I say as DHAA than the apples you buy at the corner shop. I animal meat of all kinds is simply full of DHAA and it's the only form of ascorbic acid the body can properly absorb and easily use. So we're back to where we started. Was losing the G-U-L-O gene a mistake? Absolutely not. When you consider the following things. Our ancestors ate almost exclusively meat for millions of years. DHAA from meat is a thousand times more absorbable than glucose. We can recycle ascorbic acid efficiently, something only humans and pigs can do. We have superior glutathione systems when eating properly. Modern plant foods are nutritionally depleted. Our tissues actively concentrate DHAA when it's needed and where it's needed most like 30 to 55 percent in critical organs. DHAA can cross the blood brain barrier whilst plant vitamin C cannot. So we look at all that it becomes clear that humans evolved to obtain ascorbic acid from animal products in the form of DHAA not from plants and the loss of the GULO gene wasn't a deficiency it was a sensible adaptation to our actual diet. Why waste biological resources manufacturing something, you're getting abundantly from your food and in a superior form. So vitamin C is promoted to us heavily, but we don't really need it. At least not in the form or the quantities we've been told. While there's a long list of purported benefits for vitamin C, in reality these are just the benefits of antioxidants in general. Vitamin C is an antioxidant, but it's a very poor one, very hard to absorb and too reactive, which means it can actually damage your body. doesn't sound great does it? Whereas DHAA in meat is far more absorbable and there's more than enough in even small cuts of meat to prevent scurvy. In fact meat is probably a better source of bioavailable scurvic acid than fruits grown using modern methods in depleted soil. I've never met a carnivore as got scurvy by the way. the real way to improve your antioxidant status is through consuming animal products full of methionine. This is why those on a low carb diet have twice the glutathione as those on a standard American diet. And that's been one of the studies. It's all linked in the description. If you've ever wondered why people don't die on a carnivore diet, this is precisely why. Like fasting, not only does eating meat not kill you, but it has some amazing health benefits for your body. And when you're interpreting blood results, and this is crucial, remember that context is everything, especially in the context of the way you're eating. If it's carnivore or low-carb or keto, you're not going to be in those normal ranges for some of the readings. And we live in a world not only of carefully crafted lies and manipulation, but also of shocking apathy, lack of curiosity, and a stunning lack of educational rigor. So the next time someone raises an eyebrow about your lack of oranges, you can confidently explain that you're following a millions of years old evolutionary adaptation, making the most of your spectacular absorbable D H double A. You can tell them your organs are actively concentrating D H double A at levels of 30 to 55 percent of total vitamin C. Your brain is getting the only form that can cross the blood brain barrier and your body is recycling efficiently, something most mammals can't do. And that, my friends, is proper joined up thinking. And if you're worried about scurvy, on a carnival diet, remember sailors only got scurvy when their meat ran out and they were stuck eating nothing but grains. You're not a 17th century sailor, eat your steak and you'll be absolutely fine. There are links to all the references in the description. So anyway, I hope you enjoyed that one and if you did, then please consider liking, sharing and subscribing and if you got to the end and you didn't enjoy it, well I'll try to do better on the next video. Thanks very much. for listening and giving me your time.