If you know what cortisol is, you know that it’s the stress hormone and can contribute to body fat and other stress hormones cascading throughout your body making you feel more stressed out and out of whack.
What if I told you that one of the best ways to combat cortisol levels is with simple vitamin C? A lot of studies are starting to find that Vitamin C could be the link to modulating our cortisol levels.
Wait, what is cortisol?
Cortisol is a steroid hormone produced by the body as a response to stress. It’s what triggers the fight or flight response in the body. If your cortisol levels remain elevated for too long, your body will go into starvation mode, start storing fat, and everything just becomes a mess.
Let’s take a look at some science on why vitamin C could be the key to reducing belly fat and reducing cortisol levels…
First, this is what the rats determined…
A study presented at the American Chemical Society Conference back in 1990 in New Orleans has been kept pretty quiet, despite some pretty interesting finding. The study looked at two groups of rats; the first took a placebo, and the other took 200 mgs of vitamin C daily. That’s over 3x the daily recommended amount for rats.
Both groups were exposed to one hour of stress a day for three weeks. At the end of the 3 weeks, they found that the vitamin C group had significantly less stress response and plasma cortisol levels compared to the placebo group. This means that when vitamin C was in the equation, they were able to modulate stress better.
As an added bonus, they also found that the vitamin C group had elevated levels of immunoglobulin G (IGG). IGG is an antibody that floats around in the body and helps prevent illness, like a defense mechanism. So, not only can vitamin C reduce cortisol levels, but it can also enhance the immune system.
That’s not the only study on the subject
A study was published in 2002 by Psychopharmacology that took a look at 60 healthy adults; half took a placebo, and the other were given 3000 mgs of vitamin C daily. Again, they measured a number of things after exposure to stress over the course of two weeks.
At the end of the two weeks, the vitamin C group had significantly lower levels of systolic and diastolic blood pressure, and a multitude of other metabolic functions. But, they had a much faster cortisol recovery time – which is how long it takes your body to actually bounce back from stress.
Despite the studies, we don’t have the whole story
It’s difficult to explain how vitamin C and Cortisol work together, we don’t have the whole picture yet. But, we do know the metabolic response and pathway that vitamin C is involved in.
When we do get stressed out, we produce something known as adrenocorticotropic hormone. This adrenocorticotropic hormone signals the adrenals to produce stress hormones – like cortisol.
We’ve also found that when this adrenocorticotropic hormone is released, and the adrenals release more stress hormones, the adrenals also lose their Vitamin C levels. So, we know that when we get stressed out, our adrenal glands get depleted of Vitamin C.
So the moral of the story is?
That’s why it’s extremely important that you take as much vitamin C as you can. The problem is, when you take water soluble supplement (in capsule form), it goes into your body and then right back out through the urine stream.
You want to make sure you get your Vitamin C in a Micelle Liposomal form that can actually be absorbed and utilized by the body in a fat soluble form, not a water soluble form.
So what do we recommend?
That’s where PuraThrive comes in—their Micelle Liposomal vitamin C is a powerful antioxidant that can reduce free radical damage, using unparalleled bioavailability. Check them out here!
Yes. Vitamin C is extremely valuable and we, as a society, have been grossly misled regarding the importance of it AND the proper amounts (both in maintenance/everyday use AND theraputic. Actually, most people are completly unaware of using vitamin C theraputically).
Andrew W. Saul, an expert on orthomolecular medicine who was inducted into the Orthomolecular Medicine Hall of Fame in 2013, who has over 40 years of experience in natural health education, who has a world famous, free-access educational website (www.DoctorYourself.com)—which is peer reviewed and the largest non-commercial natural health resource on the internet—and who is the author and co-author of many books, tells all about vitamin C and high-dose vitamin C (mega-dose vitamin C/vitamin C therapy) for combating various health issues including viral pneumonia, ebola, and other serious to minor illnesses including cancer (you can find more about him in the section “about Andrew Saul” on his website (mentioned above).
Not only do our bodies NEED vitamin C on a regular basis, but if combatting illness, vitamin C therapy acts as a antiviral, antibiotic, antihistamine, antitoxin, and antipyretic (lowers fever). Most people don’t realize this.
According to Dr. F. R. Klenner (the originator of successful high-dose vitamin C and someone greatly studied by Andrew Saul), depending on a person’s weight, just for maintenance (everyday use), adults are to take, in DIVIDED doses of 1,000 mg, anywhere from 3,000 mg-6,000 mg (children less obviously) (and choosing whichever form of vitamin C works best for you as there are many). A chart is provided for theraputic purposes here: http://www.doctoryourself.com/klenner_table.html
When you’re sick, you’re body needs much more. If you’re sick, the more often you take vitamin C, the better you absorb it. Frequency = as often as you can. Dose = as much as it takes to get well (“take enough vitamin C to be symptom free whatever the amount might be.”). Andrew Saul states, “The body is going to tend to excrete vitamin C all the time since it’s a water soluable vitamin—excreting it through urine—it’s not what you excrete out, it’s what you retain. When you’re excreting some, it means you have some to waste.”
He goes on to say, “urine is what our bodies purify out of blood. If it was in our urine it had to be in our blood first. If it’s in our blood, we absorbed it. Vitamin C circulating in our blood is good. The higher the saturation (the higher the amount of vitamin C) in our blood, the more powerful it is.” Hence why it is so powerful against so many illness (again, including cancer). You can go to Andrew Saul’s website to learn much more and you can also find many videos on YouTube of Andrew Saul discussing vitamin C/high-dose vitamin C. Cheers. 🙂
Wow $40 a bottle for 15 day supply?! Yikes. I would try it if it was a little more reasonable.
YES, this is the very BEST Vitamin C EVER!!
Under a LOT of stress due to my mom and husband being in nursing homes. Thank you for making such a GREAT product!!
What do you think about airborne or Emergen-C as a Vitamin C suppliment?