Vitamin P: Vitamin C's Best Friend
Vitamin P: Vitamin C's Best Friend
Vitamin P is also called bioflavanoids or flavones because of the vitamin’s impact on the permeability of capillaries. Vitamin P is not strictly a vitamin, but for ease of classification it has been widely considered as such.
Vitamin P’s composition is complicated relative to the composition of other vitamins. It is actually a group of water-soluble substances, which comprise a number of factors some of which are herpseridin, myrecetin, nobiletin, rutin, tangeritin and quercetin.
You don’t need a microscope to find out how Vitamin P looks. Basically, it is the white part of citrus fruits or the flavanoids responsible for making the yellow and orange colors we see in the citrus family. This vitamin is absorbed in the intestinal tract.
If Vitamin C is unstable enough, easily destroyed with cooking, Vitamin P is even more sensitive, destroyed easily by exposure to air or by boiling.
Vitamin P’s Best Sources
Excellent food sources of Vitamin P are buckwheat, apricots, cherries, cantaloupe melon, papaya and the skin and piths of citrus fruit. Just like selenium’s role in Vitamin E, Vitamin P works as a catalyst to Vitamin C, making the latter much more potent with its presence.
Vitamin P is needed by the body to strengthen the blood vessels and to fortify resistance to infection.
Taking drugs such as aspirin, non-steroidal anti-inflammatories, oral contraceptives, and diuretics (beer is one of them) all call for increased intake of Vitamin P. The Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) is 500 mg per day for supplementation purposes.
While most vitamins are better working with the rest of the “team “(for example, vitamins in the B complex spectrum generally work well with A and E), studies show that Vitamin P has no known “best friend” except Vitamin C, making it a very solitary vitamin, indeed!