home care health: Vitamin - The Lovely Vitamins We Live With

A vitamin is an organic molecule (or a set of molecules next to united chemically, i.e. vitamers) that is an indispensable micronutrient which an organism needs in small quantities for the proper practicing of its metabolism. valuable nutrients cannot be synthesized in the organism, either at every or not in passable quantities, and consequently 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 put in the three further groups of necessary nutrients: minerals, valuable fatty acids, and critical amino acids. Most vitamins are not single molecules, but groups of related 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 capably as all-trans-beta-carotene and further 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 sour 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 accumulation and differentiation. Vitamin D provides a hormone-like function, modifiable mineral metabolism for bones and other organs. The B perplexing vitamins feat as enzyme cofactors (coenzymes) or the precursors for them. Vitamins C and E affect 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 attain so.

Before 1935, the without help source of vitamins was from food. If intake of vitamins was lacking, the outcome was vitamin nonattendance and consequent want diseases. Then, commercially produced tablets of yeast-extract vitamin B highbrow and semi-synthetic vitamin C became available.

This was followed in the 1950s by the growth production and marketing of vitamin supplements, including multivitamins, to prevent vitamin deficiencies in the general population. Governments mandated auxiliary of vitamins to staple foods such as flour or milk, referred to as food fortification, to prevent deficiencies. Recommendations for folic sour supplementation during pregnancy shortened 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 perplexing of micronutrients necessary to life, all of which he presumed to be amines. next this presumption was complex sure not to be true, the "e" was dropped from the name. every vitamins were discovered (identified) amongst 1913 and 1948.

Vitamins, Minerals & Supplements - Andrew Weil, M.D.