Vitamin C and Longevity
Summary
- Vitamin C is more than just an antioxidant.
- Vitamin C has beneficial epigenetic effects.
- The epigenome determines which genes are active or not. One reason why we age is because the epigenome becomes dysregulated.
- Vitamin C can improve the epigenome, for example by improving methylation or stem cell function.
- Vitamin C closely works together with alpha-ketoglutarate to improve the function of important epigenetic enzymes (like TET).
- Vitamin C can also improve mitochondrial function.
- Vitamin C induces autophagy, which is the breakdown of proteins and cellular waste that otherwise accumulates during aging.
Vitamin C Impacts Aging Via
The Role of Vitamin C in Aging and Longevity
Many people know vitamin C as an antioxidant.
However, vitamin C is much more than that.
Vitamin C has many other interesting functions, especially in the light of aging. For example, vitamin C can improve the epigenome.
The epigenetic effects of vitamin C
The epigenome is the intricate molecular machinery that surrounds our DNA. The epigenome determines which genes are switched on or off. It’s a hugely complex system, making sure that only liver genes are active in liver cells, and not in skin or brain cells for example (all our cells have the same DNA).
When we get older, the epigenome becomes more dysregulated.
Genes that should be switched on are switched off, like housekeeping genes, while some genes are switched on that should be switched off, like cancer-promoting genes or pro-inflammatory genes.
Substances like vitamin C can improve the epigenome. For example, vitamin C closely works together with alpha-ketoglutarate (another ingredient in NOVOS Core) to help to maintain the epigenome.
More specifically, vitamin C and alpha-ketoglutarate improve the functioning of TET enzymes which are important modulators of the epigenome, impacting stemness of cells, and methylation in general.
Vitamin C also helps alpha-ketoglutarate-dependent dioxygenases to regulate metabolism and DNA repair.
Additionally, vitamin C can help to reprogram differentiated cells (e.g. skin cells or liver cells) into stem cells, and this by its epigenetic effects.
Other effects of vitamin C
But vitamin C has many other effects besides impacting the epigenome.
For example, vitamin C can improve mitochondrial function.
Vitamin C can also stimulate autophagy, which is the breakdown of proteins and other waste materials that accumulate in our cells. This accumulation of proteins and other waste plays an important role in aging.
In other words, vitamin C is much more than just an antioxidant.
In fact, given that studies have shown that antioxidants don’t extend lifespan, likely the health benefits of vitamin C are exerted via other mechanisms than antioxidant function, such as epigenetic, mitochondrial and autophagy mechanisms.
The main reason why NOVOS Core contains vitamin C is for the synergistic effect of vitamin C with alpha-ketoglutarate on the epigenome.
NOVOS CORE & vitamin C
Vitamin C is one of the 12 ingredients in NOVOS Core.
1 sachet of NOVOS Core contains 100 mg of vitamin C (ascorbic acid).
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