Vitamin C is the physique’s main water-soluble antioxidant, and its free-radical-scavenging skills and anti inflammatory actions are an vital a part of the physique’s immune response throughout organ methods.*
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 surface atmosphere.* 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.*
In the case of innate immunity (i.e., the pure protection mechanisms you might be born with), vitamin C helps regulate a number of features of white blood cell perform2.* It’s concerned within the manufacturing, regulation, and performance of various kinds of leukocytes, equivalent to neutrophils—white blood cells that patrol the physique to maintain it protected; 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 vital 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.*