home care health: Vitamin - Foods with More Vitamin C than an Orange

A vitamin is an organic molecule (or a set of molecules next door to related chemically, i.e. vitamers) that is an necessary micronutrient which an organism needs in little quantities for the proper involved of its metabolism. vital nutrients cannot be synthesized in the organism, either at all or not in passable quantities, and as a result 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 complement the three new groups of critical nutrients: minerals, vital fatty acids, and critical amino acids. Most vitamins are not single molecules, but groups of united 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 well 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 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 deposit and differentiation. Vitamin D provides a hormone-like function, changeable mineral metabolism for bones and additional organs. The B technical vitamins decree as enzyme cofactors (coenzymes) or the precursors for them. Vitamins C and E behave 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 realize so.

Before 1935, the on your own source of vitamins was from food. If intake of vitamins was lacking, the upshot was vitamin nonexistence and consequent nonappearance 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 mass 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 cutting supplementation during pregnancy reduced 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 abandoned a perplexing of micronutrients necessary to life, every of which he presumed to be amines. similar to this presumption was future distinct not to be true, the "e" was dropped from the name. all vitamins were discovered (identified) amongst 1913 and 1948.

"Vitamin C supplements can stop you getting a cold": myth or reality? DANTEmag