Ascorbic acid (C6H8O6) is a water-soluble vitamin, whose structure is shown in Fig. 1. Vitamin C is easily oxidized, and the majority of its functions in vivo rely on this property. It plays a key role in the body’s synthesis of collagen and norepinephrine by keeping the enzymes responsible for these processes in their active reduced form.2 Vitamin C may also play a role in detoxifying by-products of respiration. Occasionally during respiration O2 is incompletely reduced to superoxide ion (O2-) instead of being reduced completely to its -2 oxidation state (as in H2O). Normally an enzyme called superoxide dismutase converts O2- to H2O2 and O2, but in the presence of Fe2+ the hydrogen peroxide may be converted into the highly-reactive hydroxyl radical (•OH). The hydroxyl radical can initiate unwanted and deleterious chemistry within a cell when it removes a hydrogen atom (H•) from an organic compound to form H2O and a new, potential more reactive free radical. Ascorbic acid can donate a hydrogen atom to a free radical, and thus stop these reactions from occuring.2