“It’s going around, Moms and Dads,” you hear your child’s teacher exclaim as you pick him or her up from school. Oh no! Is that an ache? A chill? A sniffly nose? “Mommy, my belly hurts!” Do any of those lines sound familiar to you, as they do me? Well, I do not have any children of my own, yet, but I have interacted with plenty, or at least enough to know that colds, flus, and fevers, are an all too popular topic in their lives.
If you ask most people, their go-to remedy for an immune system boost is good old, vitamin C. Vitamin C, in many forms, is found everywhere, lining the walls of supermarkets, packaged up in little packets to take on the go, and probably in most of our home medicine cabinets. But did you know that not all vitamin C is created equal? Or even better, that vitamin C plays an complex role in so much more than just a simple immune system boost.
Today I want to explore vitamin C’s role in heavy metal detoxification, and overall body detoxification. Toxins are all around us – in the air we breath, the food we eat, the makeup we wear, and even other products we put on our bodies, such as deodorant, and body lotion. Hopefully, if you are reading this blog, and are already connected with Radiant Life, you have switched to more nourishing food, and natural body products, as I have. But even so, toxins cannot be completely escaped, and over time, if not ridded from the body, they can cause a host of chronic health issues.
I was recently talking to a friend, and she was completely unaware, and did not want to believe, that heavy metals could even make their way into the human body. I could not help but have pity, as I once went about my days thinking the same thing too. Obviously, if something was being sold to consumers, it had to have gone through many safety tests, right? And the little bits of metals that were showing up in the long lists of ingredients were deemed “safe levels”, after all. But after further investigation, I realized there were no “safe levels” of heavy metals, and in fact, many chronic illnesses such as Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue, Parkinson’s Disease, Migraines, Alzheimer’s, and even Cancer, may be traced back to some form of toxicity and exposure to heavy metals.
The good news is that vitamin C is a very easy and practical way to slowly pull these toxins from your body over time. The human body needs vitamin C for many different intricate reactions, but unfortunately C is not a vitamin that the body can make itself. Therefore it is essential to get it from foods, especially fruits and vegetables like oranges, bell peppers, broccoli, and even Brussels Sprouts, as well as through supplementation with a high quality vitamin C like this one. (1)
As I stated above, not every “Vitamin C” supplement is the same. Often times, the synthetic form of vitamin C, ascorbic acid, is what is found in different supplements and added to foods. The problem is that the body cannot always absorb the synthetic forms of vitamins well, and sometimes they can even do harm, rather than good! Whenever possible, it is important to get natural sources of vitamin C, like the one I linked above, and my family loves!
Vitamin C is a powerful water-soluble antioxidant that the body can use to detoxify itself. It helps to neutralize free radicals, which can damage and hurt healthy cells and DNA. (2) While vitamin C is mainly found in the skin, it is an essential antioxidant for the liver to process and eliminate accumulated toxins. When vitamin C is too low, the energy is not available for proper detoxification to take place. The liver becomes congested and unable to detoxify the body as it should. (3)
It is hard to say how much vitamin C you should take daily while detoxifying your body from heavy metals. Some sources say that the body can’t absorb more than 200 mg of vitamin C a day, while other sources say you should take upwards of 3,000 mg of vitamin C per day when on a detox. I will say, that the better quality the source of your vitamin C is, the less you need to take. (4) (5)
To close, I want to leave you with one of my favorite ways to consume vitamin C. This recipe was given to me years ago, by a dear friend of mine (and a mother of nine children, no less!), when I was first starting out on my nourishing health journey. With as many children as she has been blessed with, she has certainly had her fair share of noses to wipe and tummies to rub over the years!
Her instructions are to first get a bowl of applesauce (preferably homemade or from canned organic apples). Next chop up or mince two or three garlic cloves, fine enough so that you don’t have to chew them! And lastly, take a big, heaping spoonful of Vitamin C powder and mix it in!
This remedy has been tried and true in my family as well, to ward of all sorts of illness at the start of them coming on. Plus, the added bonus here with detoxification is the garlic her recipe includes is full of sulfur – another wonderful substance to pull toxins out of the body!
Do you have any other favorite ways to incorporate Vitamin C into your daily routine? I would love to hear your ideas in the comments below!