home care health: Vitamin - 13 Essential Vitamins—And How to Get Enough of Them in Your Diet

A vitamin is an organic molecule (or a set of molecules nearby aligned chemically, i.e. vitamers) that is an critical micronutrient which an organism needs in little quantities for the proper lively of its metabolism. indispensable nutrients cannot be synthesized in the organism, either at all or not in enough quantities, and hence 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 affix the three new groups of critical nutrients: minerals, necessary fatty acids, and necessary amino acids. Most vitamins are not single molecules, but groups of joined 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 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 sharp 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 enlargement and differentiation. Vitamin D provides a hormone-like function, bendable mineral metabolism for bones and extra organs. The B mysterious vitamins produce an effect as enzyme cofactors (coenzymes) or the precursors for them. Vitamins C and E operate 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 on your own 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 mass production and promotion of vitamin supplements, including multivitamins, to prevent vitamin deficiencies in the general population. Governments mandated addition of vitamins to staple foods such as flour or milk, referred to as food fortification, to prevent deficiencies. Recommendations for folic prickly supplementation during pregnancy abbreviated 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 lonely a perplexing of micronutrients necessary to life, all of which he presumed to be amines. as soon as this presumption was sophisticated clear not to be true, the "e" was dropped from the name. all vitamins were discovered (identified) in the middle of 1913 and 1948.

Vitamin B5 (Calcium Pantothenate) Benefits