Top 10 Vitamin C Foods You Must Eat

hello health champions today I'm going to talk  about how incredibly important it is to have a  

strong immune system if you should cross paths  with the corona virus that covid-19 and we want  

to talk about the role of vitamin C and supporting  that immune system then we're going to talk about  

what vitamin C actually is and what are the top  10 foods where you can get it coming right up hey  

I'm dr. Ekberg I'm a holistic doctor and a former  Olympic decathlete and if you want to truly master  

health by understanding how the body really works  make sure you subscribe and hit that notification  

bell so you don't miss anything the corona virus  is a terrible thing it is a pandemic but the media  

make it out to sound as if we're all gonna die  and that's simply not true so let's talk about  

what is the difference between those people who  make it and those who don't so they're starting  

to see some patterns with the corona virus and one  thing they're seeing is that there seems to be a  

slow phase about one week and then after them one  week where it's kind of progressing slowly then  

either the person gets better and they recover  or the patient rather quickly gets worse and it  

turns into an emergency or a crisis and someone  described it as if it seems like it takes one  

week for the body to figure out if it's gonna beat  this thing or not so if it wins you recover and if  

it fails then you go to the hospital and become a  critical case but the difference between those two  

scenarios is how strong is your body how strong  is your immune system let's talk about a few  

key factors with immunity one of them is stress  because the more stress you have the more your  

immune system shuts down probably everyone can  relate to how they're more likely to get a cold  

or flu if they're stressed if they're in a high  time of stress and the same thing holds true for  

the coronavirus sugar is one of the worst things  that you can eat because it wreaks havoc with  

virtually every function in your body including  your immune system and what they're finding now  

with the corona virus is that people with insulin  resistance that a is a hugely complicating factor  

that the death rate of people with insulin  resistance meaning diabetes or high blood pressure  

or cardiovascular disease the death rate as many  many times higher degeneration is another factor  

and that's why the elderly are having such a hard  time the longer you live the more you degenerate  

to some degree there are exceptions and that's why  the death rate is so high among the elderly and  

then it's your overall nutritional status and it  is something that you build over time but you can  

also have some immediate deficiencies and two of  the most important ones are vitamin D and vitamin  

C so in this video we're gonna focus on vitamin C  and talk about what it really is and what it does  

and where to get it so the research on vitamin  C is a bit conflicting as some people say that  

oh it does all these wonderful things but then  there are other studies that say well we studied  

the symptoms but we didn't find any benefit  whatsoever well we're not really interested  

in symptoms we're interested in what are the  effects on the immune system and those are pretty  

well documented that it is an immune activator it  initiates the activity of antibodies and also the  

white blood cells your B lymphocytes and your T  your killer T cells and your WBC's that's your  

white blood cells those are your immune cells  that that your body makes it that they can go  

out and gobble up foreign invaders like virus and  bacteria vitamin C also improves the function of  

interferon which is an incredibly powerful immune  chemical and there is an herb called echinacea  

that only really works together with vitamin  C but then when it does it has been shown to  

have pretty strong immune boosting benefits so  these are just some of the effects but we don't  

want to get too much into the details we want to  talk more about what vitamin C is and where to  

get it it's widely believed that we don't really  have vitamin C deficiencies anymore most doctors  

will say that Oh vitamin C deficient they don't  really exist and that's because scurvy is really  

rare and they think a vitamin C deficiency only as  scurvy if you don't have scurvy you're not vitamin  

C deficient well scurvy is an extreme deficiency  that's when you have so little you can't keep up  

even basic manufacture of collagen and collagen  is a structural protein if you don't make enough  

of it then you can't create the connective  tissue in the body and one of the first places  

to suffer are your gums so after a few months  of scurvy your teeth start falling out and you  

start having internal bleeding and so forth it's  a terrible thing but there are different degrees  

of vitamin C deficiency and in my opinion when  you have lesser degrees of collagen weaknesses  

such as micro vessel disease and spider veins I  believe that those are signs of a milder form of  

vitamin C deficiency so it's severe deficiency  leading to scurvy is defined as less than 46  

milligrams of vitamin C or ascorbic acid per day  and we're going to talk about what the difference  

is that they're not really the same thing even  though they're defined as the same thing a mild  

deficiency would be somewhere between 46 and 60  milligrams because the previous recommendation for  

vitamin C daily intake was set at 60 milligrams  recently they've raised to about 75 milligrams  

for women and 90 milligrams for men and that is  what we today consider a sufficiency but we're  

not really only interested in sufficiency we want  to look at what might be optimal because during  

types of stress and during times of infection  your body requires more so let's just kind of  

double it and say that optimal is probably  somewhere between 150 to 200 especially when  

your body has an increased need but when they  make those recommendations of vitamin C the RDA  

the recommended daily allowance and they say it  should be 75 to 90 milligrams what is it that  

they're recommending it's 90 milligrams of what is  it the vitamin C or is it ascorbic acid and I know  

that you did your research you looked it up and  the dictionary says they're the same thing well  

we're going to take it a little bit further and  we're going to show you that they're not the same  

thing and this is a huge part of the problem and  the confusion vitamin C does have ascorbic acid  

but it is not just ascorbic acid vitamin C is a  complex it's a functional unit and it consists  

of several different components it has something  called a score Bachan and bio flavonoid complexes  

and they have multiple coordinating roles in the  overall function and coordination of the vitamin  

c complex then we have something called tyrosinase  which is an enzyme and this is a form of organic  

copper it has a role of trace mineral activator  and it is the thing that actually stimulates and  

makes the white blood cells get going so that is  the the immune system portion of this then we have  

something called p factors k factors and j factors  the p factors are also known as Rutten which is  

portion responsible for the vessel strength and  the collagen formation the K factors are involved  

in the clotting mechanism of the blood and the  J factors enhanced the ability of the red blood  

cells to carry oxygen so all of these are vitally  important and they all have different roles and  

they are what provides the ability of vitamin C to  promote and enhance and support the immune system  

so what about ascorbic acid ascorbic acid is sort  of like the packaging it is an antioxidant and  

antioxidants are preservatives that's why ascorbic  acid is often added to food as a safe preservative  

it keeps things vegetables from turning brown  for example and it's the wrapper it packages it  

protects the vitamin C complex so it's a good  thing and it needs to be there and it plays a  

part and the overall function of the complex but  ascorbic acid is not vitamin C and ascorbic acid  

by itself does not provide these functions that we  talked about so a vitamin complex is a functional  

machine if you want to call it we can think of  it as a biochemical machine much like a clock  

is a mechanical machine so if you open up an old  clock and you look in the back and you see it has  

all these different moving parts it doesn't take  a genius to understand that all those parts work  

together it would make absolutely no sense to open  up that clock and look and ask yourself I wonder  

which part tells time it's not one part that  provides the function it's the pieces together  

so just like one part can't tell time one portion  one piece of the vitamin C complex can't do all  

the things that vitamin C is supposed to do so  they're all important including the ascorbic acid  

but it's the biochemical machine is the complex  that does the work together so oftentimes when we  

hear about the therapeutic benefits of vitamin  C or ascorbic acid they're talking about mega  

doses they're talking about five or ten or twenty  thousand milligrams of ascorbic acid and what does  

that do well it is an antioxidant so it's kind  of like a safe drug it's in large doses it's  

potent enough to have drug like effects it can  come in like a bulldozer and shift physiology  

it can squash some of the body's own functions  and in that sense it's a short-term drug and  

it's safer than most drugs because it doesn't  have a lot of toxic effects short-term however  

long-term it creates more imbalance it creates  more problems than it helps with and the reason  

is that ascorbic acid is a synthetic isolate  it's made from corn starch or sugar primarily  

and it doesn't have all these different pieces so  when you put a lot of the ascorbic acid in it's  

gonna go into the body and start combining it's  going to start acting together with the amount  

of the other components that your body already  has so what that does if you have a little bit  

of something and then you add a ton of something  then and they go together the ton of something is  

going to start pulling the smaller resources from  the body so in the long run you're leaching those  

nutrients from your body and you're creating a  bigger imbalance now when you get it from food  

that's a different story because now you're  always getting the whole complex nature always  

packages the complex together that's the beauty  of it but we want to keep in mind that when they  

measure it they give us the number based on how  much ascorbic acid is in that food so in reality  

the number of vitamin C activity the amount of  vitamin C complex activity that you're getting  

may be ten times as much as what it looks like on  paper based on how much ascorbic acid it contains  

so I don't know the exact number but based on my  experience whole food complex vitamin C goes a  

lot further and we probably don't even need as  much as the recommended daily allowance if you  

get the real thing however in times of infection  and stress it never hurts to have a little extra  

the top five sources of whole food vitamin C are  actually disqualified and why do you ask because  

these foods the Kakadu plums acerola cherries rose  hips chili peppers and parsley they're either not  

available in a lot of places or you're kind of  limited to how much you can eat I've never seen  

Kody plums or acerola cherries or rose hips in  my local grocery store or farmers market and  

you can't eat a whole lot of chili peppers I love  parsley but even if I make some tabbouleh I'll end  

up eating on a pretty big serving I end up eating  about half an ounce about 15 20 grams of parsley  

so it doesn't go very far it's not a bulk food  so if you have access to Kakadu plums or these  

things then by all means eat them but we're gonna  focus on the staple foods that most people have  

access to every day here's our top 10 list top of  the list is bell pepper red and yellow it has 128  

milligrams of whole food vitamin C per 100 gram of  food so we're going to go through the whole list  

but we're not just gonna talk about the top 10  we're going to talk about why I ranked them this  

way and we're also going to talk about the sugar  content because we don't want to eat vitamin C  

which is a good thing and then load up on a bunch  of sugar which is a bad thing and counteract the  

benefits number 2 guava it's a tropical fruit it  is very high it's 228 milligrams of vitamin C per  

hundred grams of fruit broccoli has 89 Brussels  sprouts 85 cauliflower has 46 kale is a hundred  

and twenty and I'll talk about why they're not in  order in a moment cabbage has 37 strawberries have  

59 then we have Kiwi with 93 and orange with 53  so these are absolutely awesome foods that from  

the top you can eat basically unlimited amounts  and toward the bottom you want to limit it a  

little bit so I know this is not a fair comparison  because this is not how we eat in real life but  

we're going to look at how much would it take  to eat from each of these foods to get a very  

high at 200 milligrams of vitamin C per day so if  you wanted to get your entire 200 milligrams from  

bell pepper either red or yellow you would  have to eat a hundred and fifty six grams  

of that food that's about five six ounces can  you do that absolutely that's about that's less  

than one bell pepper and by the way green bell  pepper would have been number two but I didn't  

want to make a separate item green bell pepper  has a little bit less vitamin C and a little  

bit less sugar so just eat a little bit of both  guava you would have to eat only 88 grams about  

three ounces broccoli you would have to eat half  a pound 224 grams Brussels sprouts another half a  

pound cauliflower you'd have to eat almost a pound  430 grams can it be done yeah I mean it's pretty  

easy to eat cauliflower kale 167 grams so that's  not a big number but 167 grams of kale that's a  

big one that's like probably four or five or six  salads worth of kale cabbage 540 grams that's over  

a pound that might be a little hard strawberries  339 grams that could be done Kiwi 216 and orange  

376 so at the top of the list you could easily  eat get all of your 200 milligrams from one food  

and obviously you're not just gonna eat one food  you're gonna eat several different ones so it just  

shows you that it wouldn't be too hard to get  200 milligrams or even more but now let's look  

at the downside because if it has a lot of sugar  then we don't want to eat too much of that food  

first if your insulin resistant and you're trying  to reverse that but also sugar does dampen your  

immune system and create all kinds of problems in  the body and these foods being non starchy means  

that virtually all of the carbs are in the form  of sugar meaning not necessarily sucrose by itself  

but it's going to be pretty much even between  glucose and fructose in the end so you can get  

your whole daily 200 milligrams from bell peppers  and only eat 6 grams of carbs that would easily  

fit into even a ketogenic diet with guava it's a  sweet fruit but you only eat a little bit so seven  

point eight grams of carbs broccoli you would  get 9 grams Brussels sprouts 12.2 cauliflower  

12.9 kale 8.7 so again the reasoning kale is not  in my opinion either third or fourth places just  

because it's tough to eat that much kale number  seven cabbage would give you 18 grams strawberries  

would give you sixteen point nine Kiwi 25 point  nine and if you eat about four oranges or so it  

gives you 33 point eight grams of sugar so this  might be most of these are going to be told okay  

even on a low-carb diet but once you get into the  fruits now that sugar is going to spite much much  

faster because in the vegetables there's a lot of  fiber to buffer the blood sugar uptake but with  

the fruits that sugar is going to go pretty much  in the bloodstream quickly so even though all of  

these foods would be okay in my opinion I would  focus on the top half and try to get most of the  

bulk from there and then get some of the snacks  and eat more sparingly on the bottom half so just  

for fun I created a little index basically this  divided how many milligrams of vitamin C do you  

get per gram of carbs so how much good do you  get with a bad and the bad isn't too terribly  

bad unless your insulin resistance so if your  insulin sensitive and healthy then you don't have  

to worry about eating a couple of fruits every  day so based on that index the top food would be  

red or yellow bell peppers with 32 milligrams of  vitamin C per gram of carbs or sugar in that food  

closely followed by guava at twenty five point  seven broccoli at twenty two point three brussel  

sprouts sixteen point three cauliflower fifteen  point five and kale twenty three point one so  

if you really really love kale if you're able to  eat half of one of those huge packages every day  

then you can move this up to third place on your  list this is just my opinion number seven cabbage  

11.1 strawberries eleven point eight Kiwi seven  point seven an orange five point nine so when it  

comes to coronavirus it is a nasty critter so I'm  not trying to say that there's a quick fix that  

you can just eat a bunch of vitamin C and you'll  be okay but it's one component that can support  

your body right you still want to do all of the  usual things that they tell you they're super  

super important follow all of the guidelines from  the CDC and the world health organization and the  

authority because we have to contain this thing  and the key is to not spread it so make sure you  

wash your hands and you make sure don't touch  your face start putting some ink on your hands  

maybe and see where it ends up on your face do  as best you can to stay at home unless you just  

have to go out make a habit of social distancing  avoid big crowds avoid social gatherings don't  

meet more people than you have to so those are  all the things that are part of the general  

recommendations and absolutely do those but then  do a few more things that no one talks about okay  

cut the sugar that's the number one thing if you  have ever thought about cutting sugar and you sort  

of need a reason then this is the reason do it now  and if you have some extra time on your hands pick  

up a uplifting book find an uplifting tape or a  message or a program of some sort because worried  

feeling bad fear diminishes your immune system  it weakens your body's ability to defend itself  

when you have some hope when you start feeling  a little better your immune system strengthens  

also go for a walk both to get some fresh air and  some circulation and get your mind off of things  

just don't walk where there's a lot of crowds go  for a walk in the woods or on a trail somewhere  

practice some relaxation do some meditation  and some yoga and some breathing exercises and  

finally realize that the best thing that you can  do apart from not getting it and not spreading it  

is to build your immunity over time and that's  what every video on this channel is about it's  

about holistic health it's about understanding how  the body works it's about building immunity and  

building stamina and building vitality and that's  what immunity is if you enjoyed this video make  

sure you check out that one thank you so much  for watching and I'll see you in the next video