14 DAY TRIAL // Researcher at the Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) discovered in their latest study that vitamin C is necessary for the correct functioning of nerve cells in the human retina. The finding is very important because it hints at the fact that the chemical may be required elsewhere in the brain too.
This discovery baffled the research team, whose members were not expecting such a result. The work is detailed in a recent issue of the esteemed medical Journal of Neuroscience, Science Blog reports.
Lack of vitamin C acts directly on a set of very specialized structures in the human brain called GABA-type receptors. These formation are responsible for modulating the rapid exchange of communications that flow between neurons in the brain.
They basically act as an inhibitory brake being applied on excitatory neurons. This is a very important role, and one that is also influenced by the amount of L-ascorbic acid (vitamin C) available in the body.
Whenever the chemical was removed from the body entirely – or only minute amounts remained – the GABA-type receptors inside neurons of the retina ceased to function entirely. This correlation between vitamin C and retinal neurons has never even been hinted at before.
“We found that cells in the retina need to be ‘bathed’ in relatively high doses of vitamin C, inside and out, to function properly,” explained OHSU senior research scientist Henrique von Gersdorff, PhD, who is a coauthor of the new paper.
“Because the retina is part of the central nervous system, this suggests there’s likely an important role for vitamin C throughout our brains, to a degree we had not realized before,” he goes on to say.
Interestingly, it takes discoveries such as this for experts to remember that the role and action patterns that vitamin C takes in the human brain are still only understood superficially. What past studies did learn was that the brain tends to hog as much of the chemical as it can.
In people with very low levels of L-ascorbic acid, most of the stuff is redirected towards the brain. Even when all traces of the chemical disappear from the body, some final reserves can still be found in the brain. Why this happens is still unknown.
Given its role as a major natural antioxidant, vitamin C may in fact be playing a tremendously important role in preventing the premature breakdown or degradation of receptors and cells in critical areas of the body.
“Perhaps the brain is the last place you want to lose vitamin C,” von Gersdorff says. It could be that depression is caused by loss of ascorbic acid from the brain. Understanding glaucoma and epilepsy may also be influenced by the new finding.
“For example, maybe a vitamin C-rich diet could be neuroprotective for the retina — for people who are especially prone to glaucoma. This is speculative and there is much to learn,” the expert adds.
“But this research provides some important insights and will lead to the generation of new hypotheses and potential treatment strategies,” von Gerdorff concludes.