Vitamin C (Ascorbic Acid)

00:00 The final water soluble vitamin that we will cover is vitamin C or ascorbic acid.

00:09 Much more simple.

00:10 You can take a breath.

00:11 It has an important role in collagen formation as well as immune system function.

00:18 You probably were well aware of that.

00:20 And then collagen you are probably also aware that it is involved in many, many tissues.

00:27 It's part of most connective tissues.

00:30 So anywhere that we see a high prevalence of connective tissues and vitamin C deficiency, we can see some issues.

00:39 So ascorbic acid or C deficiency results in all of these sorts of symptoms.

00:44 Poor wound healing.

00:46 We'll see gum abnormalities.

00:49 We can see bruising or subcutaneous like point hemorrhaging as looks like petechia and loss or missing teeth.

01:00 As well as significant joint pain.

01:02 So again anything that has a lot of collagen in connective tissue.

01:09 And the issue is in binding these collagen monomers together.

01:14 So the cross linking vitamin C is involved in the cross linking of those two monomers in order to form the matrix that we see in our connective tissues.

01:26 So on that note, I think we've wrapped up the coverage of all of our water soluble vitamins.

01:33 And I look forward to seeing you when we talk about the fat soluble vitamins.