home care health: Vitamin - High Cholesterol, Triglycerides Can Keep Vitamin E From Reaching Body Tissues

A vitamin is an organic molecule (or a set of molecules next door to connected chemically, i.e. vitamers) that is an essential micronutrient which an organism needs in small quantities for the proper dynamic of its metabolism. valuable nutrients cannot be synthesized in the organism, either at every or not in tolerable quantities, and thus must be obtained through the diet. Vitamin C can be synthesized by some species but not by others; it is not a vitamin in the first instance but is in the second. The term vitamin does not enlarge the three supplementary groups of necessary nutrients: minerals, essential fatty acids, and valuable amino acids. Most vitamins are not single molecules, but groups of associated molecules called vitamers. For example, there are eight vitamers of vitamin E: four tocopherols and four tocotrienols. Some sources list fourteen vitamins, by including choline, but major health organizations list thirteen: vitamin A (as all-trans-retinol, all-trans-retinyl-esters, as competently as all-trans-beta-carotene and supplementary provitamin A carotenoids), vitamin B1 (thiamine), vitamin B2 (riboflavin), vitamin B3 (niacin), vitamin B5 (pantothenic acid), vitamin B6 (pyridoxine), vitamin B7 (biotin), vitamin B9 (folic caustic or folate), vitamin B12 (cobalamins), vitamin C (ascorbic acid), vitamin D (calciferols), vitamin E (tocopherols and tocotrienols), and vitamin K (phylloquinone and menaquinones).

Vitamins have diverse biochemical functions. Vitamin A acts as a regulator of cell and tissue mass and differentiation. Vitamin D provides a hormone-like function, changeable mineral metabolism for bones and supplementary organs. The B mysterious vitamins be in as enzyme cofactors (coenzymes) or the precursors for them. Vitamins C and E action as antioxidants. Both deficient and excess intake of a vitamin can potentially cause clinically significant illness, although excess intake of water-soluble vitamins is less likely to do so.

Before 1935, the abandoned source of vitamins was from food. If intake of vitamins was lacking, the outcome was vitamin deficiency and consequent nonappearance diseases. Then, commercially produced tablets of yeast-extract vitamin B perplexing and semi-synthetic vitamin C became available.

This was followed in the 1950s by the bump production and marketing of vitamin supplements, including multivitamins, to prevent vitamin deficiencies in the general population. Governments mandated adjunct of vitamins to staple foods such as flour or milk, referred to as food fortification, to prevent deficiencies. Recommendations for folic pointed supplementation during pregnancy reduced risk of infant neural tube defects.

The term vitamin is derived from the word vitamine, which was coined in 1912 by Polish biochemist Casimir Funk, who unaccompanied a technical of micronutrients valuable to life, all of which he presumed to be amines. past this presumption was difficult certain not to be true, the "e" was dropped from the name. all vitamins were discovered (identified) along with 1913 and 1948.

Vitamin Supplements: Good For You? Dangerous? @ Katherine Tallmadge, MA, RD