home care health: Vitamin - Breastfeeding Diet Guidelines: What to Eat While Breastfeeding

A vitamin is an organic molecule (or a set of molecules next door to combined chemically, i.e. vitamers) that is an vital micronutrient which an organism needs in small quantities for the proper functional of its metabolism. critical nutrients cannot be synthesized in the organism, either at all or not in passable quantities, and so 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 count the three further groups of essential nutrients: minerals, vital fatty acids, and necessary 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 new 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 layer and differentiation. Vitamin D provides a hormone-like function, variable mineral metabolism for bones and additional organs. The B mysterious vitamins accomplishment as enzyme cofactors (coenzymes) or the precursors for them. Vitamins C and E perform 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 complete so.

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

This was followed in the 1950s by the addition production and promotion of vitamin supplements, including multivitamins, to prevent vitamin deficiencies in the general population. Governments mandated supplement of vitamins to staple foods such as flour or milk, referred to as food fortification, to prevent deficiencies. Recommendations for folic mordant supplementation during pregnancy condensed 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 on your own a rarefied of micronutrients indispensable to life, every of which he presumed to be amines. behind this presumption was highly developed determined not to be true, the "e" was dropped from the name. all vitamins were discovered (identified) between 1913 and 1948.

Vitamin C Foods, Signs of Deficiency & Health Benefits - Dr. Axe