Can Vitamin C Relieve Anxiety

Aside from using vitamin C for colds, Vitamin C helps to relieve anxiety and help you feel happier a study finds.

Vitamin C is everyone’s favorite nutritional supplement, controversially though, for fighting the common cold and cancer.

In a recent study by German researchers of 120 people, they used math problems and public speaking as the stressor. People who were given 1,000 mg of Vitamin C reported less stress and even had lower cortisol (stress hormone) and lower blood pressure. The ones who didn’t take the vitamin C all had elevated levels of cortisol and higher blood pressure.

Cortisol is our bodies natural stress hormone that allows us to be more alert to danger and take action. We all need cortisol to live our lives, but some people have higher levels of stress hormone and suffer from anxiety. Frequently having stress and high levels of the stress hormone can exhaust the body, make you depressed, and impair your learning and memory abilities.

Vitamin C has been shown in some earlier studies in animals that it stopped cortisol secretion who were subjected to stress.

Cortisol is released by the adrenal gland when you undergo stress. When it gets into the bloodstream, it lets the rest of your body and mind know what’s happening.

Another study found high school students had lowered anxiety levels and increased mood by taking Vitamin C.

Vitamin C can be found in orange juice, strawberries, tomatoes, Brussel sprouts, papayas, cantaloupes, parsley, and asparagus. It can be found in many citrus fruits, peppers and many uncooked fruits an vegetables.

Vitamin C is destroyed by cooking and exposing the vitamin to light.

More research is needed, but I do suggest eating plenty of fruits and vegetables. If you take a natural supplement, try not to exceed the upper limit of 2,000 milligrams.

If you’d like to learn about more about natural supplements that combat anxiety, please read my post about Natural Supplements For Anxiety. I take a few of these natural supplements, and my anxiety levels have gone down, I hope you can begin to live your life stress-free too.