home care health: Vitamin - Why your kids might need more vitamin D

A vitamin is an organic molecule (or a set of molecules next door to united chemically, i.e. vitamers) that is an critical micronutrient which an organism needs in small quantities for the proper working of its metabolism. valuable nutrients cannot be synthesized in the organism, either at all or not in passable quantities, and for that reason 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 include the three further groups of critical nutrients: minerals, vital fatty acids, and valuable 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 other 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 acid 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 growth and differentiation. Vitamin D provides a hormone-like function, modifiable mineral metabolism for bones and further organs. The B highbrow vitamins con as enzyme cofactors (coenzymes) or the precursors for them. Vitamins C and E feat 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 accomplish so.

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

This was followed in the 1950s by the deposit production and promotion of vitamin supplements, including multivitamins, to prevent vitamin deficiencies in the general population. Governments mandated complement 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 edited 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 lonesome a technical of micronutrients valuable to life, all of which he presumed to be amines. taking into account this presumption was progressive determined not to be true, the "e" was dropped from the name. every vitamins were discovered (identified) between 1913 and 1948.

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