Vitamin C there may be other, as yet unknown functions. Consequences of all this organ content is that plasma vitamin C is not a good indicator of whole-body status, and people may vary in the amount of time needed to show symptoms of deficiency when consuming a diet very low in vitamin C. Excretion can be as ascorbic acid, via urine. In humans, during times of low dietary intake, vitamin C is reabsorbed by the kidneys rather than excreted. Only when plasma concentrations are 1.4 mg/dL or higher does re-absorption decline and the excess amounts pass freely into the urine. This salvage
Vitamin C an article by Linus Pauling. Briefly, his position was that for optimal health, humans should be consuming at least 2,300 mg/day to compensate for the inability to synthesize vitamin C. The recommendation also fell into the consumption range for gorillas - a non-synthesizing near-relative to humans. A second argument for high intake is that serum ascorbic acid concentrations increase as intake increases until it plateaus at about 190 to 200 micromoles per liter (µmol/L) once consumption exceeds 1,250 milligrams. As noted, government recommendations are a range of 40 to 110 mg/day and normal plasma is approximately 50 µmol/L, so 'normal'