A new study looked at smartphone survey data to help reveal the timecourse of changes in mood outcomes following vitamin C or kiwifruit intervention in adults with low vitamin C.
“This study analyses secondary outcomes from our main trial (KiwiC for Vitality study) published in 2020, » study author Tamlin Conner told us. « The secondary outcomes used smartphone surveys of people’s mood every second day throughout the eight-week intervention trial.”
Conner works in the Department of Psychology at the University of Otago and is also the Associate Editor of Emotion.
Vitamin C has long been touted for its cognitive benefits. The brain uses a lot of vitamin C for its functioning and processing. There is more vitamin C in the brain than in the rest of the body. Many studies have found that vitamin C helps with mental functioning.
« This approach is novel in nutrition research because it allowed us to determine how quickly mood changed in response to the vitamin C intervention, and whether mood changes were sustained across the trial,” Conner told us. “We were surprised that mood improved in as early as four days into the trial in the kiwifruit condition.”
Mood improvements also disappeared as quickly when participants stopped eating the kiwifruit in the two-week washout period at the end of the trial.
“Vitamin C is processed quickly in the body, and we think mood improvements corresponded to when participants’ blood vitamin C levels reached saturation,” Conner told us. “Vitamin C is an important micronutrient critical to physical and mental health.”
The present study suggests that whole-food sources of vitamin C may help restore mood in those with low vitamin C levels. For those highly deficient in vitamin C, the researchers also encourage supplementation with vitamin C to accelerate the rate of restoration of vitamin C in the body.