The exhaustion is real. No matter how much sleep you get, you can’t seem to catch up. You wake up at 3am almost every night. You can’t decide if it’s burnout, perimenopause, or existential angst. Or maybe you just want to buy a bed and breakfast somewhere in Bordeaux, change your name, and never look back – which seems reasonable.

Your adrenals have a lot to say about the way life is in 2026, and to sum it up, they’re not a fan. Cortisol is an adrenal hormone that allows your body to be ready to respond to stress, but when it’s triggered too often, it depletes energy, messes with your memory and learning, and makes depression more likely.

In a German study, people were given a task that most people consider very stressful: they had to do a bit of public speaking. One group of participants was given no supplementation prior to the speaking task, and the other group was given 1000 MG of good ol’ vitamin C. Objective results showed that those who received the vitamin C had significantly lower blood pressure and cortisol levels after the task than the other half of the cohort. Subjectively, they also reported feeling less stress than the group who did not receive supplementation. These results are supported by earlier animal studies that reported similar results when vitamin C was administered alongside stressful events.

US RDA recommendations for vitamin C have remained unchanged for years, and were predicated on the prevention of scurvy. To thrive, it’s starting to look like we need much more than the 60mg we see on those recommendations. I’ve been adding 1000mg of vitamin C to my bedtime regimen, and – subjectively – I am waking up in the middle of the night less (the middle of the night is when cortisol levels do hinky things) and feeling less tired, as a result. I’ll take that any day.

Want to try the best Vitamin C you can get, with a discount (good for the next 30 days)? Thorne Vitamin C, 1000 mg, is a click away.

Source: Psychology Today, “Vitamin C, Stress Buster.” Reveiwed June 4, 2025.

*Full disclosure, AI didn’t write this, I did. And the links? Yep, they’re my Thorne Partner links, so if you shop with me, I earn a small commission, you pay zero extra pennies, and in fact, get a discount off of MSRP. Thanks for your support!