Mood Support, Hormone Balance & 5 Other Surprising Vitamin C Perks*

Vitamin C is known for its vastly important immune support and positive impact on your skin health, but the truth is that there's a lot more to this water-soluble vitamin.* Vitamin C plays a role in everything from how well your joints move to your overall mood, making this a nutrient you don't want to skimp on (it is nutritionally essential, after all).*

Unfortunately, 46% of U.S. adults1 aren't getting enough vitamin C daily from their diet alone. In other words, there's a 50/50 chance you're missing out on the whole-body benefits that vitamin C has to offer.

Making sure you get the right levels of vitamin C through diet and supplementation can make a big impact not just on skin elasticity and the function of your immune system, but on your overall well-being as well.*

Vitamin C plays a critical role in the synthesis of collagen, the "primary protein in joint tissue," says Amanda Holtzer, M.S., R.D., a dietitian at Culina Health. Collagen is crucial for optimizing joint mobility, which means maintaining sufficient levels of vitamin C keeps your joints healthy and moving with ease.*

As mbg's vice president of scientific affairs Ashley Jordan Ferira, Ph.D., RDN, shared, "While we might start thinking about eye health later in life, the fact is, the earlier we nutritionally nurture these precious organs, the better." She continues, "in fact, we know from nationally representative research that younger vs. older adults are more likely to have worse vitamin C status2 (i.e., blood levels of serum ascorbic acid), so paying attention to your eyes and this essential micronutrient earlier in life is especially important."*

Why? As it turns out, your eyes are constantly breaking down, synthesizing, and forming new cells, and that can allow free radicals to thrive if left unchecked. "Therefore, the eyes need extra antioxidant protection from free radicals and reactive oxygen species," Holtzer says. "Vitamin C can provide that antioxidant protection."*

According to Scott Keatley, R.D., of Keatley Medical Nutrition Therapy, vitamin C also helps keep the eye's natural lens clear3 and maintain vision health as we age, thanks to its antioxidant actions.*

An Ophthalmology 4study4 with 5,638 participants over the age of 60 in India found that vitamin C status was inversely associated with eye-health concerns.* In other words, the more vitamin C people had, the more likely they were to maintain healthy vision.* 

Vitamin C is "​very important in keeping iron in a form that can be absorbed into the blood and better utilized in the support of healthy metabolism,"* says clinical biochemist Jeffrey Bland, Ph.D.

Iron is notoriously difficult to absorb, but vitamin C works to enhance the bioavailability5 of nonheme iron, a form of the mineral that comes from plants and animals (and is not as easily absorbed as heme iron, which comes from animal food sources).* Vitamin C also optimizes the uptake of iron from transferrin (the protein that transports iron through the blood), which helps distribute the nutrient well for its whole-body use by our cells.

"When you find a high level of a particular micronutrient in an organ or type of cell, there's a good chance it's working real hard to promote health there in a targeted way," explains Ferira. Case in point: Vitamin C is found in high concentrations in the brain6, and your neurons (aka nerve cells) and glia (a network of cells that supports your nervous system) rely on the absorption and transfer of vitamin C to work properly.* 

Vitamin C is essential for the production of certain neurotransmitters that influence your mood—like dopamine and norepinephrine, Cording explains.*

Vitamin C has a vital role in adrenal health and HPA axis homeostasis—i.e., your body's ability to regulate the stress hormone cortisol8.* According to Holtzer, the adrenal glands (small glands attached to your kidneys that make hormones that help control heart rate, blood pressure, and other important body functions) have one of the highest concentrations of vitamin C of all your organs. 

Scientific research has also linked vitamin C sufficiency with healthy blood pressure levels.* A large, robust meta-analysis of 29 clinical trials published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition9 found that, over a period of about eight weeks, people who regularly took a vitamin C supplement experienced useful reductions in their systolic and diastolic blood pressures.* 

Vitamin C plays a role in a truly wide range of physiological systems throughout the body. If you're looking to harness the powers of this essential vitamin, try a high-quality daily vitamin C supplement like mbg's vitamin C potency+ that leverages the power of a high-potency vitamin C, plus lipids and citrus bioflavonoids, for superior cellular absorption and ability to combat oxidative stress.*