home care health: Vitamin - Vitamins, minerals and supplements

A vitamin is an organic molecule (or a set of molecules alongside aligned chemically, i.e. vitamers) that is an vital micronutrient which an organism needs in small quantities for the proper dynamic of its metabolism. vital nutrients cannot be synthesized in the organism, either at every or not in tolerable quantities, and consequently 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 extra groups of vital nutrients: minerals, essential fatty acids, and valuable amino acids. Most vitamins are not single molecules, but groups of combined 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 sour 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 increase and differentiation. Vitamin D provides a hormone-like function, flexible mineral metabolism for bones and other organs. The B highbrow vitamins work as enzyme cofactors (coenzymes) or the precursors for them. Vitamins C and E law 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 only source of vitamins was from food. If intake of vitamins was lacking, the result was vitamin want and consequent want diseases. Then, commercially produced tablets of yeast-extract vitamin B mysterious and semi-synthetic vitamin C became available.

This was followed in the 1950s by the bump production and marketing 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 prickly 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 single-handedly a highbrow of micronutrients valuable to life, all of which he presumed to be amines. gone this presumption was highly developed certain not to be true, the "e" was dropped from the name. every vitamins were discovered (identified) in the midst of 1913 and 1948.

New study: No benefit with Vitamin D supplements in the age - Fitnessefficace