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Vitamin C more or less started the whole current wave of alternative health more than 50 years ago when Linus Pauling, a Nobel Prize winner, first told the world this vitamin could help the common cold. It’s easy to forget about vitamin C when looking for a brain supplement. Everyone knows about it (or so people think), and surely we're all taking enough already.
What could possibly be new about this well-known nutrient?
Quite a lot, it turns out.
Evidence of vitamin C’s importance to the brain can be seen in the fact that brain cells latch onto vitamin C as their lives depend on it – and they do!
That’s why the concentration of vitamin C in the brain’s neurons is 200 times higher than the concentration of vitamin C in your blood.1
Researchers believe that if you’re missing out on vitamin C, then oxidative stress – an excess of free radicals -- makes you much more liable to fall victim to Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative conditions. As the number of free radicals increases, oxidative stress can kill neurons or cause them to malfunction.
Aging Brains More Likely to Lose Their C
Getting vitamin C to the brain is no simple task. While most animals can make their own vitamin C, our bodies can’t. We, humans, have to eat it in food or take supplements, and then vitamin C has to be absorbed from the digestive tract and delivered to the brain and other organs.Part of the process of getting this nutrient to brain cells involves molecular carriers that transport vitamin C into the cerebrospinal fluid that flows into the brain. Another route works with transporters that carry vitamin C in the blood and move it to the blood-brain barrier, where it is escorted into brain tissue.
The blood-brain barrier is supposed to be a one-way street for vitamin C, keeping most of it from leaving the brain once it gets in. But researchers believe that as we age, the barrier’s ability to retain the vitamin in brain tissue begins to falter, allowing it to seep out and the brain’s vitamin C levels to drop.
Don’t Wait Till You’ve Got Dementia to Increase Your C
While vitamin C is crucial for keeping the fats in neurons and brain cell membranes from being oxidized, using vitamin C to fight conditions like Alzheimer’s disease is not a straightforward process.When researchers have given vitamin C to people who already have Alzheimer’s disease, they haven’t found any benefit.
But when they look at people who consume vitamin C as they age – before memory problems have started – they have uncovered evidence that it may be a preventive that lowers the risk for Alzheimer’s.
For example, a six-year study in the Netherlands examined the brain health of more than 5,000 people aged 55 or older. The researchers found that folks who consumed vitamin C supplements (as well as vitamin E) ran a much lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease during the research.
In this study, the protective effect of vitamin C supplements was particularly evident among smokers.2
The research into vitamin C’s brain health benefits makes it clear – the sooner you start eating plenty of fruits and vegetables and taking vitamin C supplements, the better off your memory will be. A study at Vanderbilt University concludes, “There is overwhelming evidence that a lifetime of good nutrition, thus avoiding sub-clinical deficiency in vitamin C and other antioxidants, is necessary to restrict the accumulation of damage.”3
So don’t wait. Put vitamin C to work for your brain today.
Meet
The Expert:
The Expert:
Carl Lowe has decades of experience writing about health and nutrition for many publications, including Prevention Magazine and Self Magazine (where he served as the food and nutrition editor). He has authored and edited over 10 books about natural health, nutrition, and other subjects. He edited The Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons Complete Home Medical Guide and was the nutrition editor for a Time-Life book series on health and nutrition. As a musician, he played viola with the Yale Symphony and bass with the Tommy Dorsey Band, and he has appeared on national TV.