This nutrient rebuilds collagen
July 9, 2009 by Yafa Sakkejha
Filed under Anti Aging Articles, Featured, Uncategorized
If you’re like me, you’re spending every spare moment outside soaking up the rare Canadian sunshine.
The dilemma is that I want gorgeous, tanned skin, but I have to grapple with the fact that the sun contributes to premature wrinkles and breaks down collagen in our skin’s cellular matrix.
Although this happens, our bodies do regenerate new collagen. Lifestyle choices dictate how much collagen is made and how much is destroyed.
Vitamin C is vital to the production of new collagen. You can help your body rebuild what was destroyed over the weekend by consuming the vitamin in the form of whole, raw foods.
How vitamin C helps produce collagen
When the body produces collagen, a complex series of events takes place both inside and outside of cells.
Dr Jerry Gordon, a national dean’s list scholar in undergraduate biology at Rutgers, explains that Vitamin C is active inside of cells, where it hydroxylates, or adds hydrogen and oxygen to lysine and proline, which are amino acids.
“This helps form procollagen, a precursor molecule, which is then made into collagen outside of the cell. Without vitamin C, collagen formation is disrupted.”
Dr Gordon also cautions that “vitamin C is easily damaged during the food preparation stage, such as during chopping, exposure to air, cooking, boiling, and being submerged in water.”
To maximize your intake of vitamin C, always try to eat whole, raw foods as much as possible.
You can’t eat too much vitamin C – if it’s from whole foods
The recommended dietary allowance (RDA) of vitamin C is 60 to 90 milligrams per day, depending on age and gender. The average person consumes 72 mg (about 1 orange), but there’s nothing wrong with getting more.
It’s only possible to get vitamin C toxicity from consuming too much of the vitamin through supplements or fortified foods. Through whole food sources, it’s not possible to obtain toxicity because our bodies are able to cope by storing unused vitamins.
Disclaimer
This is not a license to go outside and bake, unprotected. Getting vitamin D is healthy, but either go inside or cover up when you feel yourself starting to burn.
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