Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C) - Alka Chandra

These deformed teeth and bleeding gums are unhealthy and unattractive!

So make sure to get enough vitamin C daily

Ascorbic acid or Vitamin C helps to heal wounds and aids in proper bone formation. People need to take vitamin C now, because we have lost the ability to make it and our bodies do not store it, since vitamin C is water soluble and gets excreted through urine. Our ancestors had lots of fruits and vegetable available to them, which was rich in vitamin C.  Therefore, their bodies did not need to make vitamin C, finally through evolution people lost the ability to make vitamin C in their bodies (Gluckman, Beedle, & Hanson, 2009).

Scurvy is a disease that causes people’s teeth to fall, bleeding gums, bruising, and slow healing of wounds, perhaps that is why pirates looked the way they did. Vitamin C is needed in our bodies to make collagen, which is a type of fiber that is required for proper bone formation and healing wounds (Ross, & Pawlina, 2011). Pirates or people, who were at sea for long periods of time, were more likely to get scurvy because they did not have fruits and vegetables available all the time. Fruits and vegetables do not last very long without being frozen especially in long trips and pirates did not have refrigerators, thus due to the lack of vitamin C they developed scurvy.

However, people now have fresh fruits and vegetables available to them all the time without going long distances. Also, people now have refrigerators to keep things fresh for a longer period of time. In addition to fruits and vegetables, people now have vitamin C supplements in many flavors, thus people should be continually taking vitamin C.           

References

Ross, M. H., & Pawlina, W. (2011). Histology a text and atlas with correlated cell and molecular biology (6^th ed.). Philadelphia, PA: Wolters Kluwer/Lippincott Williams & Wilkins Health.

Gluckman, P., Beedle, A., & Hanson, M. (2009). Principles of evolutionary medicine. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

Johnson, N. (n.d.). Scurvy Awareness Program. Retrieved April 03, 2012, from http://www.bigdeadplace.com/scurvyawareness.html