Vitamin C And Your Adrenal Glands

his article is about how your Adrenal Glands are functioning and how imporant the other members of your gland faimly are.

The adrenals themselves have a very high content of ascorbic acid (vitamin C). Since we know that vitamin C is used in large doses to help combat infections, the conclusion now is that this vitamin helps stimulate the adrenal glands into producing more cortin, the hormone that fights off disease. Because this pair of glands was designed by nature to pour forth adrenalin in times of physical danger, or emotional crisis, continued mental or emotional tension overworks your 'emergency glands' to the point where your nerves and vital organs are constantly kept keyed-up to fever pitch owing to too many fake 'emergency' messages from the brain, thereby sending the powerful adrenalin hormone shooting into your bloodstream when it isn't actually needed. In times of stress, the adrenal glands also release into your bloodstream a substance called cholesterol (the waxy substance now blamed for causing hardening of the arteries. See Chapter 9). For this reason, many doctors believe that arteriosclerosis, and other 'diseases of age' such as coronary thrombosis and cerebral hemorrhage, may develop as a result of this constant overstimulation of the adrenal glands by high-tension living, and day-in-day-out mental or emotional strain. This emergency function of the adrenals to act as a powerful stimulant upon the organs of the body is a holdover from the days when man needed instantaneous physical and mental reserves to save himself from animal or human enemies. But today, when most of our emergencies are chiefly emotional or mental, this continued outpouring of the high-powered adrenalin into your bloodstream causes the heart and blood vessels to take a fearful beating. And because adrenalin is continually being squirted into the blood under the stress and strain of our highly emotional civilization, cortin is likewise constantly needed in big doses to get the body machine slowed down to normal again. Since we know that the adrenal glands use vitamin C to manufacture the cortical hormone, it's not difficult to understand that continued high-tension living (either physical, mental or emotional) uses up a lot of vitamin C and releases a lot of cholesterol into the bloodstream. The result is depleted vitamin C reserves, unless special attention is given to replacing this vitamin through the diet; an increased tendency to infection (witness how easily an epidemic of influenza knocks over its victims during times of a local or national crisis); and high blood pressure and hardening of the arteries-that surplus amount of cholesterol from the overstimulated adrenals has to land some place, and where more convenient than on the walls of your arteries where it clogs the free flowing of the blood, causing the arteries to 'harden'? If you want to feel and look younger than you are, you'd better stop setting off those mental and emotional 'false alarms' that keep your body wound up as tight as a main spring. The old proverb that 'worry kills more people than cannons' was unconsciously aimed right at the adrenal glands, since the unwise use of their powerful hormone by an emotionally unstable mind is equivalent to killing off your youth-yourself as well-by inches. A final word of advice on the care of your adrenal glands: Feed them plenty of high-grade protein; provide them with ample vitamin C (best sources are citrus fruits, melons, apricots, strawberries, green vegetables, and particularly tomatoes); make sure that foods rich in Vitamins A and B-com-plex are eaten at least twice a day; and provide them with the minerals magnesium and silicon (richest sources are citrus and other fruits, green and leafy vegetables, yellow vegetables, walnuts and egg yolk).