Vitamin C is the physique’s main water-soluble antioxidant, and its free-radical-scavenging skills and anti inflammatory actions are an essential a part of the physique’s immune response throughout organ programs.*
For starters, the important vitamin helps defend the physique’s first line of protection—the pores and skin.* Vitamin C helps strengthen the epithelial barrier4, aka the pores and skin’s bodily barrier that helps defend the physique from the skin setting.* As a scavenger of reactive oxidative species (ROS), vitamin C maintains oxidative steadiness5 within the pores and skin and all through the remainder of the physique.*
On the subject of innate immunity (i.e., the pure protection mechanisms you’re born with), vitamin C helps regulate a number of points of white blood cell perform2.* It’s concerned within the manufacturing, regulation, and performance of several types of leukocytes, similar to neutrophils—white blood cells that patrol the physique to maintain it secure; in different phrases, you possibly can’t even create the immune cells (to combat for you) with out vitamin C.*
All in all, vitamin C is an undeniably essential micronutrient that straight helps the immune system from a number of angles, serving to to bolster the physique’s pure defenses and fight oxidative stress.*