home care health: Vitamin - Micronutrient Monday: All Things Vitamin A

A vitamin is an organic molecule (or a set of molecules nearby connected chemically, i.e. vitamers) that is an necessary micronutrient which an organism needs in little quantities for the proper full of zip of its metabolism. vital 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 add up the three other groups of indispensable nutrients: minerals, necessary fatty acids, and essential amino acids. Most vitamins are not single molecules, but groups of connected 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 with ease 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 biting 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, amendable mineral metabolism for bones and supplementary organs. The B obscure vitamins put-on as enzyme cofactors (coenzymes) or the precursors for them. Vitamins C and E bill 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 result was vitamin nonattendance and consequent dearth diseases. Then, commercially produced tablets of yeast-extract vitamin B obscure and semi-synthetic vitamin C became available.

This was followed in the 1950s by the increase production and publicity 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 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 deserted a profound of micronutrients essential to life, every of which he presumed to be amines. in the manner of this presumption was highly developed clear not to be true, the "e" was dropped from the name. every vitamins were discovered (identified) in the middle of 1913 and 1948.

Eye specialist calls for consumption of Vitamin A foods