All the vitamins, including Vitamin-C, are very essential for your health, and more so for bodybuilding. Young bodybuilders, who plan their diet too thoroughly, often miss out on the essential vitamins as they think that the Best Pre-Workout For Women 2021 will help cover it up for them. They mostly focus only on the macros, that is on protein, carbohydrates, and fats, and completely missed out on the vitamins. Unaware of the importance of vitamins, they make themselves prone to many fatal conditions that are caused by their deficiency.
Vitamin C is one such vitamin. It is widely present in many fruits and vegetables, and someone who eats a good natural diet will never suffer from its deficiency. On average, a person needs at least 10 mg of vitamin C daily to avoid any severe deficiency. However, if you want to reap all the benefits of this vitamin, you should take at least 80 mg of it on a daily basis.
Benefits of vitamin C
Antioxidant: Vitamin C is a great antioxidant. It slows the aging process and protects the body from the effects of toxic chemicals like the ones present in cigarette smoke. Body maintenance: Vitamin-C is the major component of proteins such as collagen. It is essential for the growth and maintenance of all the tissues in the body, especially the ones present in bones, cartilage, and teeth. Wound healing and Immunity: Vitamin-C is extremely helpful in fending off diseases like high blood pressure and cancer. It is required during all the stages of wound healing, and an ample amount of it in the body accelerates the wound healing process and ensures a speedy recovery. Anti-Depressant: Vitamin-C is considered as a safe and inexpensive way of treating depression. It helps in the production of the feel-good hormones serotonin. Though it doesn’t completely cure the disease, it certainly brings much-needed relief from stress.
How important is vitamin C for bodybuilding?
Of all the vitamins, vitamin-C, in particular, is most crucial for bodybuilding. It is essential for the growth and maintenance of all the tissues in our body.
Moreover, by lowering the ratio of cortisol to testosterone, vitamin-C provides a good testosterone booster that every ambitious bodybuilder is always looking for.
Due to its healing properties, it also proves to be helpful while one is recovering from a particularly intense workout.
How to get sufficient Vitamin-C?
Remember, if your diet consists of too many artificial things like packaged products and diet supplements, you should pay special attention to getting the necessary vitamin-C.Though taking multivitamins is always an option, but if you can get it through fruits and vegetables, that would be much better. Apart from vitamins, fruits and vegetables also contain myriad other essential nutrients which, in one way or the other, ultimately improve our overall fitness and conditioning.
For your reference, here’s a list of some of the fruit and vegetables that contain a good deal of vitamin C.
Fruits and vegetables rich in vitamin C
Indian Gooseberry or Amla:
Indian gooseberry is highly rich in vitamin C. 100 gm of its juice contains up to 1000 mg of vitamin C. It’s more than enough to overcome any deficiency. Spinach: Apart from being a decent source of iron, spinach is also quite rich in vitamin C. 100 gm of spinach contains 130 mg of vitamin C. Broccoli: No matter how weird it tastes, broccoli is rich in many vital nutrients. 100 g of it contains approximately 93 mg of vitamin C. Kiwi: Kiwi is extremely rich in vitamin C. 100 g of it has about 100 mg of vitamin C. A salad of kiwi with some other vitamin C-rich fruits like papaya and strawberry are good enough to replace any vitamin C supplement. Orange and lemon: Famous for their high vitamin C content, both orange and lemon contain nearly 52 mg of vitamin C per 100g. A cup of lemonade or orange juice can act as an instant vitamin C booster.
Conclusion
You don’t have to worry too much about an overdose of vitamin C. Our body can tolerate up to 1000 mg of regular intake of vitamin C. It is a water-soluble vitamin, and any excess of it leaves our body through urine. Almost every fruit and vegetable has some amount of vitamin C, and if you include them in your daily diet, then that’s more than enough for all your needs.
