How Does Scurvy Work?

of their fictional counterparts. The pirates of your had a healthy fear of scurvy caused by a prolonged lack of vitamin C in one's diet. Scurvy has been affecting people since time immemorial. Symptoms include tooth loss, slow healing wounds, and arrested bone growth, and if left unchecked, it can ultimately result in death from internal bleeding. So, in other words, this ailment is far more danger than you may realize, and scurvy remains at large today, with those living in

poverty being especially prone to the disorder. Many animals, including over four thousand kinds of our fellow mammals, never get scurvy because they produce their own vitamin C, but a handful of creatures are unable to manufacture it. These unlucky beasts include fruit bats, guinea pigs, and primates. Like us, Scientists don't know why our ancestors lost the ability to make vitamin C. Other species use a specific gene to

create an enzyme that's needed for the vitamin's production process. However, in the human body, that gene isn't functional. We thus have no choice but to acquire vitamin C by ingesting it. Lemons, oranges, and other citrus fruits are loaded with the stuff, as are fresh green veggies like broccoli and spinach. You can also find it in potatoes, tomatoes, and red peppers, among other things that actually might help explain humankind's gene problem.

Our distant ancestors lived in lush tropical areas and got plenty of vitamin C in their fruit heavy diets, so if a random mutation prevented some individuals from manufacturing the vitamin, it wouldn't have hurt their odds of survival because fruits and vegetables were widely available. Since the mutation was harmless, natural selection didn't weed it out, and over time the

genetic quirk spread. Unfortunately, by the dawn of human civilization, Homo sapiens had settled in places where vitamin C rich foods weren't always easy to find. But okay, why do we need vitamin C and what happens when we don't get it? Vitamin C plays a critical role in the synthesis of collagen. Collagen is a type of protein that your body uses to add structure, strength, and flexibility to all kinds of different tissues. Tendons and bones derive much

of their support opacity from collagen fibers. A Collagen also makes your skin tough but elastic, and helps blood clot and cuts to heal when injured. It also lends a hand in reinforcing the walls of your blood vessels and your internal organs to keep making collagen. A healthy and properly fed human body will burn through about eight to

ten milligrams of vitamin C every day. That's about zero point zero zero zero three ounces, although it's recommended that adults eat at least ten times that amount, and if that sounds like a small number, it kind of is.

You can get your daily recommended intake by eating an orange or a cup worth about two hundred and fifty milli liters of fruit or vegetables like strawberries, bell pepper, or brussels sprouts, and fruits and veggies aren't the only place you can get vitamin C. A case in point many of the Arctics indigenous peoples who for millennia subsisted on traditional meat based diets with very few vegetables and fruits, but they rarely experienced scurvy outbreaks because it turns out

that some raw meats are a pretty good source of vitamin C, and lots of organ meat like caribou liver, is naturally rich in it. However, you get your vitamin C, your bloodstream is really good at distributing it around the body. But if you go sixty to ninety days without ingesting any and your internal supply dips too low, a scurvy will begin to take hold. At first, it's hardly noticeable. In the early stages, a person will feel lethargic, a weak,

and achy. They may also experience weight loss and a reduced appetite. As time wears on, symptoms get more grotesque unless the person writes the ship by ingesting more vitamin C. Unchecked scurvy causes the gums to swell, bleed, and loosen the teeth at their roots. A pain breaks out in the joints and muscles. The skin loses its ability to form scar tissue, so old wounds may reopen and new

ones will refuse to hear. Internal bleeding causes splotchy marks to appear under the skin, and deeper down the bones themselves will become weak. If the disorder isn't treated, a fevers arise and gangrene sets in. Slowly but surely. The person will die, often as the result of a fatal hemorrhage in the heart or brain. The explorer Robert Falcon Scott wrote that once late stage scurvy has taken hold, quote,

death is a merciful release. Scott famously died in the Antarctic in nineteen twelve, by which time scurvy had been a global nuisance for thousands of years. Hippocrates was aware of it, and an Egyptian document written in fifteen hundred BCE describes the malady symptoms. A scurvy was prevalent during the Crusades, when armies were made to march across vast distances with limited access to fresh fruits and vegetables. It also claimed a number of lives during the Irish potato

famine and the American Civil War. Early seafarers like the Phoenicians and the Vikings carried fresh food on voyages, and they didn't report the disease. However, scurvy became associated with sailing when between around fifteen hundred and eighteen hundred CE, some two million sailors died of it. Scurvy was the leading cause of naval death at the time, outstripping battles and disasters. This was due to the poor diet of

colonial era sailors. They ate mainly food that wouldn't spoil on long voyages, like salted meats, hard biscuits, beer, and peas, no fresh fruits or veggies on the menu. A living conditions aboard ship were also cramped and damp, which worsened the disease, as research has shown that people need more

vitamin C in cold, damp conditions. The affliction's prevalence on the high seas started to decline after seventeen forty seven, which is when Scottish position James Lynde conducted the world's first clinical trial to demonstrate that lemons and oranges could cure scurvy. He gave different groups of sailors a variety of treatments for scurvy, and the citrus eating group was the only one to recover. Although Lynde wasn't the first person to suggest citrus as a cure, his published writings

have been credited with spreading the knowledge. Some forty years later, in seventeen ninety five, the British Navy finally decreed that each sailor be given a daily ration of lemon juice. A later lime juice, and scurvy started to disappear from its fleet. Yet, despite the breakthroughs of lind and other researchers,

scurvy was never completely eradicated. Around the world, scurvy cases tend to pop up in communities where residents don't have reliable access to foods that are rich in vitamin C. For example, following a drought in twenty seventeen, an outbreak of the disorder occurred in Kenya. It's also been reported that a full ninety five percent of the houseless population in Paris, France, is vitamin C deficient and therefore vulnerable.

Over in the United Kingdom, the rate of scurvy related hospital admissions rose by twenty seven percent between twenty nine and twenty fourteen with a corresponding increase in malnutrition, and in recent years, multiple cases of scurvy have been documented within the United States, usually in low income populations a children, elderly people, people with food allergies, and crash dieters may also be at risk of developing scurvy. But there is

good news. Scurvy isn't hard to treat. Post diagnosis, it could be remedied by increasing the patient's supply vitamin C. One can usually expect to make a complete recovery after about three months, and bleeding in the gums and skin can stop and as little as twenty four hours after receiving treatment. Today's episode is based on the article Scurvy, The Scourge of the High Seas Remains at Large Today

on House Tofforkstyle, written by Mark Mancini. Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how stuffworks dot Com, and it is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts from my heart Radio visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.