VITAMIN

The importance of vitamin B complex

2012-01-06T23:07:00.000-08:00

B vitamins acts primarily as coenzymes, or as parts of coenzymes (compounds that enables specific enzymes to function). Scientists know that B vitamins influence several important bodily functions:

Vitamin B1 (thiamine) and vitamin B2 (riboflavin) help the body produce energy and affect enzymes that influence the muscles, nerves, and heart.

Thiamine is the vitamin portion of the coenzymes thiamin pyrophosphate TPP), which participates in a vital reactions known as decarboxylation which removes a carboxyl group and release it as carbon dioxide.

Vitamin B1 and vitamin B2, is required for multiple bodily functions that are likely to directly and indirectly influence immune function.

Vitamin B3 (niacin) also has a role in energy production in cells and in maintaining the health of the skin, nervous system, and digestive system.

Niacin deficiency leads to pellagra. Niacin is active in the human body in two coenzyme forms: nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) and nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADP).

Vitamin B5 (pantothenic acid) influences normal growth and development.

It is essential for life as component of coenzyme A where it is involved in gene expression through replication of DNA and transcription of DNA and transcription of cell messages in cell signaling.

Vitamin B6 (pyridoxine) helps the body break down protein, and helps maintain the health of red blood cells, the nervous system, and parts of the immune system.

Vitamin B6, functions as a coenzymes, usually in the form of pyridoxal phosphate (PLP) for more than 100 enzymes. PLP facilitates the transfer of amino groups and in thus critical for the production of nonessential amino acids.

Vitamin B7 (biotin) helps break down protein, and carbohydrates, and helps the body make hormones.

It is used to the metabolism of carbohydrates and fats as well as to support adrenal function. It helps maintain a healthy nervous system.

Vitamin B9 (folic acid) helps the cells in the body make and maintain DNA, and is important in the production of red blood cells.

Vitamin B12 (cobalamin) plays a role in growth, development, the production of blood cells, the functions of the nervous system, and how the body uses folic acid and carbohydrates.

Vitamin B12 is essential to the conversion of folate to an activated form. Without vitamin B12, folate cannot function in DNA synthesis or blood cell synthesis, nor can it metabolize homocysteine.
The importance of vitamin B complex

Ascorbic acid in food

2011-12-11T07:28:00.000-08:00

Ascorbic acid or vitamin C is required for the formation of the intercellular substances in the body, including dentine, cartilage, and the protein network of bone. Hence it is important in tooth formation, the healing of broken bones, and the healing of wounds.

It may be important to oxidation-reduction reactions in the body and to the production of certain hormones. Deficiency of vitamin C causes scurvy (spongy gums, loose teeth, swollen joints, hemorrhages in various tissue, etc) and impaired healing of wounds.

Orange juice is an excellent source of vitamin C. Tomato juice, if it has been processed properly, is a fair source of this vitamin. Green peppers, cabbage, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts are excellent to good sources of vitamin C, while other vegetables such as peas, spinach, and lettuce are good to fair sources. Many fruits contain fair amounts of ascorbic acid or vitamin C.

In 2007, scientists study shows that vitamin C is essential for plant growth. This discovery would have implications for agriculture and for the production of vitamin C dietary supplements. The discovery also identifies the new enzyme as a key player in controlling vitamin C accumulation in response to light.

The finding could pave the way for a new approach to producing vitamin C dietary supplementary. Vitamin C is currently produced by mixed fermentation and chemical synthesis. The new enzyme provides the potential to engineer microbes to produce vitamin C by a simpler one-step process.

In another study, a group of Johns Hopkins scientists have shown that vitamin C can indeed inhibit the growth of some tumors. They found that the antioxidants’ actual role may be to destabilize a tumors’ ability to grow under oxygen-starved conditions.

Since potential anticancer benefits of antioxidants have been the driving force for many clinical and preclinical studies, by uncovering the mechanisms behind antioxidants, scientists now better suited to maximize their therapeutic use.
Ascorbic acid in food

Several functions of vitamin E

2011-11-22T00:04:00.000-08:00

Vitamin E is present in human tissues and it is necessary for normal metabolism. It is found to be widely distributed in foods.

Much of the vitamin E in the diet comes from vegetable oils and products made from them, such as margarine and salad dressings. Wheat germ oil is especially rich in vitamin E.

The name originated in the early 192ss, Evans and Scoot Bishop describe a ‘substance X’ present in getable oil that was essential to maintain rat fertility.

Deficiency of vitamin E in man has not been reported and so there is no recommended daily intake.

Vitamin E, however plays an important role in the body as an antioxidant by protecting substances such as unsaturated fatty acids, carotene and ascorbic acid, which are easily oxidized.

Vitamin E is an essentially naturally occurring fat-soluble nutrient that is involved in several biological processes such as immunity, protection against tissue damage (hear, nerve, etc) reproduction, growth and development.

One of the few generally recognized uses for vitamin E is in the treatment of hemolytic anemia in premature babies.

There were also a studies indicate that vitamin E may slow the aging process and prevent premature aging by prolonging the useful life of our cells, thus maintaining the function of our organs.
Several functions of vitamin E

Discovery of Vitamin D

2011-11-08T04:16:00.000-08:00

Hippocrates, the father of medicine, used heliotherapy or exposure to sunlight to treat phthisis.

The Greek historian, Herodotus (485-426 BC), observed that Persian warriors had much softer skulls than Egyptian warriors and attributed it to the turbans worn by Persians and Hippocrates described as disease resembling rickets in 130 AD.

The first scientific description of a vitamin D-deficiency, namely rickets, was provided in the 17th century by both Dr. Daniel Whistler (1645) and Professor Francis Glisson (1650).

Cod liver oil was first described as a medicinal agent for the treatment of chronic rheumatism in 1789.

Rickets captured the imagination of many chroniclers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The cause of this was a lack of a vitamin that is not a vitamin.

Beginning in the 1820s, studies showed that administering doses of cod liver oil to afflicted children could cure rickets.

The major breakthrough in understanding the causative factors of rickets was the development in the period 1910 - 1930 of nutrition as an experimental science and the appreciation of the existence of vitamins.

It was in 1919/20 that Sir Edward Mellanby, working with dogs raised exclusively indoors (in the absence of sunlight or ultraviolet light), devised a diet that allowed him to unequivocally establish that the bone disease, rickets was caused by a deficiency of a trace component present in the diet.

In 1921 he wrote, "The action of fats in rickets is due to a vitamin or accessory food factor which they contain, probably identical with the fat-soluble vitamin."

Shortly thereafter E. V McCollum and McCallum succeeded in inducing a rickets-like disease in chickens by administering an incomplete diet. The disease could be cured with cod-liver oil. They assumed that vitamin, present in cod-liver oil, was responsible for the curative effect.

In 1923 Goldblatt and Soames clearly identified that when a precursor of vitamin D in the skin (7-dehydrocholestrol) was irradiated with sunlight or ultraviolet light, a substance equivalent to the fat-soluble vitamin was produced.

Huldschinsky, Hess and Steenbock in 1924 found that a great number of foodstuff, having no antirachitic properties, became antirachitic after irradiation with sunlight or ultraviolet light. The substance activated by sunlight was called ‘provitamin D.’

Several other independent observations in the 19th and early 20th centuries fostered further links between sunlight and cutaneous vitamin D synthesis.

The first analogue of the vitamins D were determined in the 1930s in the laboratory of Professor A. Windaus at the University of Gottingen in Germany.

With the chemical isolation and finally synthesis of the two parent or native D vitamins, vitamin D2 (egocalciferol) and vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol), an etiology therapy for rickets and osteomalacia was established.

Vitamin D2 which could be produced by ultraviolet irradiation of ergosterol was chemically characterized in 1932. Vitamin D3 was not chemically characterized until 1936 when it was shown to result from the ultraviolet irradiation of 7-dehydrocholesterol.

In 1970, it is learned that vitamin D was not the biological active principle for healing bone disease.
Discovery of Vitamin D

Niacin deficiency

2011-10-21T18:42:00.000-07:00

First documented in 1735 by a Spanish physician named Gaspar Casal the niacin deficiency disease pellagra was originally named ‘mal de la rosa,’ or ‘red sickness.’ Its due to the telltale redness that appears around the necks of people with the disease.

Pellagra means ‘rough skin’ in Italian. The great pellagra epidemic in America’s South did not emerged until the early twentieth century.

Because the niacin coenzymes NAD and NADP are involved in just about very metabolite pathway, niacin deficiency wreaks havoc throughout the body. It also that the depressive psychosis is assumed to be because of inadequate formation of the neurotransmitter serotonin as a result of tryptophan deficiency.

The classical features of endemic pellagra are dermatitis, inflammation of the mucous membranes, diarrhea and psychiatric disturbances.

The dermatitis often appears after exposure to sunlight and resembles sunburn.

Pellagra condones to plaque people living in Southeast Asia and Africa however, whose diet lack sufficient niacin and protein.
Niacin deficiency

Folic Acid & Cobalamin

2011-10-07T21:19:00.000-07:00

A deficiency of folate or vitamin B12 may increase the level of homocysteine, an amino normally found in the blood.

High levels of homocysteine may damage coronary arteries or make it easier for blood clotting cells called platelets to clump together and form clot.

In the absence of either vitamin B12 or folic acid, DNA synthesis is impaired and the developing red cells in the bone marrow exhibit a characteristic disturbance of cell maturation.

Folic acid is a B-group vitamin that is needed for healthy growth and development. The word of folic acid is derived from the Latin ‘folium’ mean ‘leaf’.

Folic acid is required for the formation of blood cells by bone marrow and is involved in the formation of the blood pigment hemoglobin.

It is also required for the synthesis of some amino acids. Deficiency symptoms involved pernicious anemia.

This vitamin is known as folate when it is found naturally in food, such as green leafy vegetables, and as folic acid when it is added to food, such as bread and breakfast cereals or used in dietary supplements.

Nuts, dried beans, turnips, lentils corn, and shredded wheat are good sources of this vitamin, while liver and wheat bran are excellent.

Vitamin B-12 or cobalamin is a very complex chemical compound. This vitamin is required for the normal development of red blood cells, and a deficiency in it causes acute pernicious anemia and a variety of other disorders.

Vitamin B12 is unique among vitamins in that it is synthesized in nature by bacteria. It is found in the tissues of animal which require the vitamin for critical functions in cellular division and growth.

The organs of animals are excellent sources of vitamin B-12 and the muscles of warm blooded animals and fish are good sources. Vitamin B12 is found in meat, liver and other foods in animal protein.

Folic acid supplements can correct the anemia associated with vitamin B12 deficiency, Unfortunately, folic acid will not correct changes in the nervous system that result from vitamin B12 deficiency.
Folic Acid & Cobalamin
Folic Acid & Cobalamin

Vitamin in Apple Juice

2011-10-04T23:38:00.000-07:00

A high percentage of the vitamin A in apples is concentrated in their skins. Therefore, the apple juice with highest vitamin A content will be the apple juice from unpeeled, organically grown apples that are juiced with their skin on.

Vitamin A helps ward off colds and other infections and promotes growth. It also keeps the eyes in good condition, and prevents night blindness.

The vitamin C content of fresh juice from both peeled and unpeeled apples helps prevent colds flu, and intestinal infections. Vitamin C also act as a body normalizer and is essential in keeping bones and teeth sound.

Other than that apple juice also contributes some vitamin K. It is very necessary for the body to promote blood clotting.
Vitamin in Apple Juice

Vitamin requirements during pregnancy

2011-10-02T20:10:00.000-07:00

Vitamins are just to be catalysts for many chemical reactions in the body and the supply should be sufficient amounts during pregnancy.

Vitamin C plays a role in collagen formation, hormone synthesis, and proper immune function. Increase vitamin C intake also positively affects the absorption of iron – another nutrient critical for a healthy baby.

Because the formation of the nervous system occurs during the first few weeks of regency, before a woman know she is pregnant, all women of childbearing age are well advised to include at least 400 micrograms of folic acids.

Deficiency during pregnancy may lead to easy rupture of fetal membrane and increased newborn mortality rate.

Vitamin A is essential and a key nutrient for normal reproduction function, and it can be obtain by it eating green vegetables and deep yellow or orange fruits and vegetables.

It plays important roles in reactions involved in cell differentiation.

Taking excessive amounts of vitamin A can cause kidney and brain malformations in baby and therefore should be avoided.

However deficiency that occurs early in pregnancy can produce malfunction of fetal lungs urinary tract and heart.

For vitamin K, it usually present in small amounts in human milk. Fetal stores of vitamin K protect the infant as does the prophylactic dose usually given at birth, until the newborn receives sufficient milk from the mother and the child’s intestine matures enough to manufacture its own.

Altered maternal metabolism, the growth of the fetus and additional storage of some vitamins in the placenta, in particular vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B6, B12, C and folic acid, increase vitamin requirements during pregnancy.
Vitamin requirements during pregnancy

Vitamin Supplements

2011-10-01T21:34:00.000-07:00

Many athletes resort to vitamin and /or mineral supplement as either a type of nutritional insurance or in hopes of improving performance.

It also enhancing effect in healthy, well nourished, physically active men on measures of maximal aerobic capacity, heart rate sub-maximal endurance running performance and muscle glycogen stores.

Non competitive athletes and fitness enthusiast are also turning to vitamin/mineral supplements in an efforts to lose weight add muscle mass, prevent injury, relive pain, alleviate stress or retard the aging process.

The research shows that multivitamin (including vitamin B, C, and E) can improve immune parameters, pregnancy outcomes and child growth and health among HIV infected women and children.

It is vital to include sufficient amount of vitamins in the diet, but in spite of the progress achieved in vitamin research, there still confusion as to what people should do.

Hopes are that vitamin supplements might be helpful in the prevention of diseases, in fighting cancer and heart disease and in postponing the ravages of aging.

Vitamins are necessary for normal functioning of the body, but for children don’t need to take vitamin supplements on a regular basis if they are eating a diet containing all the food.

Breast children need a vitamin D supplement, but once a child is drinking whole milk, it is no longer necessary as vitamin D is added to all commercial liquid milks.
Vitamin Supplements

Biotin in general

2011-10-01T19:41:00.000-07:00

Biotin is a water soluble vitamin that is generally classified in the B complex group.

Biotin is reported to be coenzyme in the synthesize of aspartic acid, which plays a part in a deaminase system and in other processes involving the fixation of carbon dioxide.

Biotin concentration in plasma are small relative those of other water soluble vitamins. Most biotin in plasma is free, dissolved in the aqueous phase of plasma.

Deficiency of this compound is unusual, but can be demonstrated by the feeding of raw egg white, which contains the substance, avidin, which ties up biotin.

Because some anticonvulsant drugs breakdown biotin, people who take then for long periods also risk a deficiency.

Infants born with biotinidase deficiency suffer from a rare genetic defect that leads to biotin depletion.

Deficiency of biotin cause scaling skin, skin lesions, and a deterioration of nerve fibers.

Due to production of biotin by the microbial flora of the intestine, the requirement for this compound is not known.

The deficiency also can delay growth and development.

Biotin is widely distributed in foods and feedstuff, but mostly in very low concentration.

Liver is an excellent source of biotin, and peanuts, peas, beans and whole cooked eggs are good sources.

Most fruits and meats rank as poor source.
Biotin in general

Blueberries with vitamin

2011-10-01T03:45:00.000-07:00

Vitamin in blueberries include vitamin C, vitamin B1, vitamin B2, vitamin B3, vitamin B6 and vitamin E.

Vitamin also can help heal wounds, fight infections and enhance absorptions of iron from other foods.

Vitamin C and vitamin E in blueberries offer an oxidant properties, which help to fight aging by ridding human bodies of harmful chemicals that have damaging, long term effects on human features and internal organ systems.

Blueberries also contain natural compounds related to vitamin A called lutein that promote healthy night vision and prevent ‘macular degeneration’- age related eye disease that’s the leading cause of vision loss in the elderly.

Cooking will destroy some the vitamin C in fresh blueberries and lets water-soluble B vitamin leach out.
Blueberries with vitamin
Blueberries with vitamin

Modern History of Rickets

2011-09-29T03:08:00.000-07:00

The rickets were first know in the West of England, in the counties of Dorset and Somerset.

The rickets appeared first about the year 1620 an afterwards travel into all parts of England. It is an old disease that became epidemic after 1650 when soft coal was introduced as a fuel source.

The origin of the term is uncertain. Suggestion have included English racket – short of breath, and rucken – to rock or reel.

The term ‘rickety’ came to mean ‘shaky or tottering’ because the person so afflicted were impaired in posture and gait.

Rickets might be an Anglicized corruption of the Greek rhachitis, or it might have originated in the Old English ‘wricken’, ‘to twist’.

Whatever origin, the word ‘rickets’; first appears in a Bill of Mortality for 1634 as accounting for fourteen death, the number from that cause increasing year by year until 1659 when surprising figure of 476 out of less than 15,000 burials or 3% of total deaths is recorded.

The first full description of the disease was written in the seventeenth century by the English physician Glisson.

While rickets has a distinguished antiquity, historically, it came to medical attention particularly in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Europe, not appearing in the U.S.A until the latter part of the nineteenth century.

In 1822, a Polish physician observed that children in Warsaw suffered severely from rickets, yet rickets was unheard outside of the city, he concluded that sunbathing was the cure for rickets.

Huldschinsky, in 1919, was the first to prove that exposure of the skin to ultraviolet radiation could cure rickets.

Within two years, Hess and Unger reported that exposure of several rachitic children to sunlight was adequate for curing this bone deforming disease.
Modern History of Rickets

Roles of Vitamin E

2011-09-28T19:16:00.000-07:00

Vitamin E is a fat-soluble vitamin that exists in eight different forms. Each form has its own biological activity, the measure of potency or functional use in the body.

It is actually two sets of four compounds each, the tocopherols (alpha, beta, gamma and delta) and the chemically related tocotrienols (alpha, beta, gamma and delta).

Alpha-tocopherol is the most active form of vitamin E in humans, and is a powerful biological antioxidant. It is the major lipid soluble found in cells.

The alpha-tocopherol form is the one found in the largest quantities in human blood and tissue. Small amounts of the gamma from are also found.

Antioxidants such as vitamin E act to protect body cells against the effects of free radicals, which are potentially damaging by-products of the body's metabolism. Vitamin E serves as one of the body’s chief defenses against damage by free radicals.

Most notably, vitamin E prevents the oxidation of the polyunsaturated fatty acids, but is protects other lipids and related components (e.g. vitamin A) as well.

Research and the clinical experiences of physician show beyond a doubt that vitamin E is good for the heart. The role of vitamin E as a heart protector has been building for decades.

However, of low vitamin E intake may enhance the effect of selenium deficiency, which is associated with increased risk of fatal cancer.
Roles of Vitamin E

Toxicity of Vitamin D

2011-09-27T19:59:00.000-07:00

Overdose of vitamin D is the most toxic of all vitamins. Supplements that contain two times the RDA for children and ten times the RDA for adults can produce vitamin D toxicity.

Excess vitamin D in the blood causes calcium to be deposited in organs such as the heart, kidney and brain.

Excess vitamin D will also contribute to, not prevent , osteoporosis and hardening of arteries and some studies shown that very high levels of vitamin D (around 80 ng/ml) can actually result in the same prostate cancer risk as vitamin D levels at are too low.

The initial signs of a vitamin D overdose are silent. It starts with an elevated calcium level in urine. And then there is an increase amount of calcium in the blood.

Symptoms of elevated calcium in the blood can include abdominal pain, constipation, muscle weakness, itching, vomiting, and extreme thirst.

However, it can never make too much vitamin D from sun exposure because excess vitamin D is automatically inactivated in the skin by further sun exposure. The Ultra violet B of vitamin D production is a self regulating process.

The synthesis of bioactive vitamin D hormone is tightly regulated and vitamin D toxicity usually occurs only if excessive doses are taken.
Toxicity of Vitamin D

Diabetes Type II Vitamin D Deficiency

2011-09-27T06:12:00.000-07:00

Vitamin D deficiency appears to have a very plausible relationship to type II diabetes. It is needed to maintain adequate blood levels of insulin.

Vitamin D receptors have been found in the pancreas where insulin is made, and preliminary evidence suggests that supplementation may increase insulin secretion for some people with adult-onset (type 2) diabetes.

Research found that 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 deficiency inhibits the pancreatic secretion of insulin and that this effect is only partially dependent upon serum calcium levels. Diabetes is a chromic metabolism disorder characterized by hyperglycemia.

In type one diabetes, injection of insulin is mandatory because the beta cells of the pancreas produce no insulin, a hormone that moves sugar from blood to the cells. This an autoimmune disease, where immune system make antibodies to destroy islets cells that manufacture insulin.

In the case of type II diabetes, insulin may or may not be needed. It is characterized by impairment in insulin release as well as insulin resistance in muscles, fat cells and the liver.

The research shows that vitamin D needed for pancreas to release insulin. Diabetes Type II Vitamin D Deficiency

The Roles of Vitamin D in Human Body

2011-09-25T18:53:00.000-07:00

Vitamin D is a fat soluble steroid hormone precursor that contributes to the maintenance of normal levels of calcium in the blood stream by increasing absorption of calcium from food and reducing urinary calcium loss (reabsorption by the kidneys).

Both effects keep calcium in the body and therefore spare the calcium that is stored in bones. When necessary, vitamin D transfers calcium from the bone into the bloodstream, which does not benefit bones.

The bones grow denser and stronger as they absorb and deposit the calcium.

Although the overall effect of vitamin D on the bones is complicated, some vitamin D is necessary for healthy bones and teeth.

Therefore, vitamin D prevent muscle aches, bone pains, chronic fatigue and osteoporosis.

Vitamin D plays a vital role in the normal functioning of the immune system and blood cell formation and also helps cells "differentiate"—a process that may reduce the risk of cancer.

From animal and human studies, researchers have hypothesized that vitamin D may protect people from tuberculosis, gum inflammation, multiple sclerosis, autoimmune arthritis, and juvenile diabetes.

Vitamin D controls the growth of normal as well as cancerous cells. It is important role in the prevention of various cancer especially cancer of the colon, prostate pancreas and breast.

Vitamin D is also needed for adequate blood levels of insulin. It stimulates the production of insulin form insulin producing cells in the pancreas.

Vitamin D isn’t actually a vitamin Vitamin D produced by the body. When the skin exposed to ultra Violet B radiation from sun, vitamin D is synthesized.

This fat soluble vitamin is transported to the liver and kidneys and become activated vitamin D.
The Roles of Vitamin D in Human Body

Vitamin C in Guava

2011-09-25T08:28:00.000-07:00

The ripe fruit is very wholesome and nourishing. Guava provide large amounts of the antioxidants vitamin C and beta carotene, which can block the effects of harmful oxygen molecules called free radicals, which can damage healthy tissues throughout the body.

Guava is a good source of vitamin C. The vitamin C in the guava enhances the absorption of iron and helps in preventing anemia.

Taking guava regularly makes the complexion fair and the skin soft and shining.

Vitamin C and calcium present in guava helps in tightening the capillary vessels and preventing bleedings of inner parts of body.

Vitamin C also play a role in preserving immune function and preventing oxidative damage caused by chronic inflammation.

Vitamin C may also contribute to the maintenance of a healthy vasculature and to a reduction in atherogenesis through the regulation of collagen synthesis, prostacyclin production and nitric oxide.
Vitamin C in Guava

Vitamin D sources

2011-09-21T06:50:00.000-07:00

Vitamin D is a nutrient involved in regulating serum calcium.

Since milk, human as well as cow’s, is not a good source of vitamin D, a small supplement is required for both breast-fed and bottle-fed infants.

Fish liver oil preparations are normally used as supplements for the supply of vitamins A and D.

Food sources of vitamin D come in natural and fortified forms. Fortified forms are included in milk, cereals, and some margarines.

The chief food sources of vitamin D in western doest are fortified milk and cereals, and fatty fish.
Natural sources include fish oils, salmon, sardines, herring, egg yolks and liver. Two basic substances with vitamin D activity, D2 and D3, occur only in yeast and fish liver oils.

Mushroom also contain a small amount of vitamin D. This include mushroom shiitake and maitake mushroom – when they are dried outdoors such as under the summer sun for six and eight hours.
Vitamin D sources

Functions of Vitamin D

2011-09-21T04:45:00.000-07:00

Functions of Vitamin D
Vitamin D can be considered either a vitamin or a hormone.

Vitamin D is essential for the absorption of calcium and phosphorus from the digestive tract and deposition in the bones.

By promoting calcium absorption, vitamin D helps to form and maintain strong bones.

25(OH)D is the active form of vitamin D which its primary role is to maintain blood calcium and phosphorus levels within a normal range.

It acts in the concert with two others hormones: parathyroid hormone (PTH) from the parathyroid glands and calcitonin from the thyroid glands.

It is also important for regulating cell differentiation and growth. It may also protective against colorectal cancer.

Vitamin D is formed from a substance present in our skin, called 7-dehydrocholestrol. This substance will be converted to cholecalciferol which then enters the bloodstream and travels to the liver.

It is a fat-soluble steroid hormone precursor that contributes to the maintenance of normal levels of calcium and phosphorus in the bloodstream.

The infant needs to be exposed to sunlight to permit the synthesis of vitamin D from the precursor in the skin.

Sensible sun exposure can provide an adequate amount of vitamin D which is stored in body fat during the winter, when vitamin D cannot be produced.

Since milk, human as well as cow’s, is not a good source of vitamin D, a small supplement is required for both breast-fed and bottle-fed infants.

Fish liver oil preparations are normally used as supplements for the supply of vitamins A and D.

Food sources of vitamin D come in natural and fortified forms. Fortified forms are included in milk, cereals, and some margarines.

Natural sources include fish oils, salmon, sardines, herring, egg yolks and liver.
Functions of Vitamin D

Discovery of Biotin

2011-09-15T22:22:00.000-07:00

The discovery of biotin and the eventual elucidation of its structure, as well as its role in metabolism, involved diverse investigation spanning many decades.

Early in the 1900s, it was observed that certain strains of yeast required a material called ‘bios’ for growth.

Biotin was the name given to a substance isolated from egg yolk by Kogl and Tonnis in 1936 that was necessary for yeast growth.

This substance was discovered to be identical to a growth factor named coenzymes R that was required by legume nodule bacteria.

The toxic properties of feeding raw egg white to animals were first observed by Bateman in 1927.

Clinical sign of dermatitis and hair loss due to egg white injury were prevented by several researchers by feeding certain foods, notably liver and kidney.

It was recognized in 1936 that this condition can be healed by biotin supplements.

Paul Gyorky, Hungarian biochemist, studied the chemistry of this protective factor in certain foods, which he named factor H in 1937.

In 1940 Gyorky and associates found that biotin, vitamin H and coenzyme R were the same substance.

Biotin was extracted from egg yolks, but is also to be found in yeast, liver and elsewhere.

The structure id biotin was determined by Dr. Vincent du Vigneaud in 1942, and the vitamin was synthesized soon after by Harris and co-workers in 1943.

Soon after the research into its chemistry, it was discovered that biotin in involved in biochemical carboxyl transfers.
Discovery of Biotin

Function of Pantothenic acid

2011-09-01T03:02:00.000-07:00

The name of pantothenic acid name comes from the Greek would ‘pantothen’, meaning “from every side” in reference to its ubiquitous occurrence after it was found to have a similar function in lactic acid bacteria, chicks, and rats.

Pantothenic acid also known as vitamin B5, was first discovered as an essential growth factor for yeast cells.

It was isolated in 1938 by Dr. Williams.

Pantothenic acid, a vitamin required for normal growth, nerve development, and normal skin is a component of enzyme systems involved in metabolism (e.g., acetylation processes). It is believed, and there is evidence, that pantothenic acid is intimately related to riboflavin in human nutrition.

Pantothenic acid is a component of coenzyme A (CoA), which in turn a component of acetyl CoA. Acetyl CoA sits at the crossroads of a number of metabolic pathways – both energy generating pathways and biosynthetic pathways.

CoA is essential for the production of ATP from the metabolism of carbohydrate, protein and fat.

Pantothenic acid functions as the prosthetic group for acyl carrier protein, an important component of the fatty acid synthase complex that is involved in the synthesis of fatty acids. It was demonstrated that mild pantoithenate deficiency in rats caused increase serum and free fatty fatty acid levels.

There is some indication that pantothenic acid helps improve our ability to heal and withstand the stress of physical injury.
Function of Pantothenic acid

Vitamin B6 – Pyridoxine

2011-08-15T05:25:00.000-07:00

Vitamin B6 also known as pyridoxine, is part of the enzyme systems that removes CO2 from the acid group (COOH) of certain amino acids and transfers amine groups (NH2) from one compound to another in the body.

It is also needed for the metabolism of protein and the proper utilization of stored glycogen as fuel for muscles.

Pyridoxine also participates involved in the production of neurotransmitters, the chemicals signaling agents of the nervous system. This including dopamine, serotonin, epinephrine, norepinephrine and gamma aminobutyric acid.

It is also critical in the synthesis of many hormones, such as insulin and growth hormone. It is necessary for the formation of red blood cells and plays an essential role in amino acid and fatty acid metabolism.

Deficiency is rare except in cases of alcoholism and severe malnutrition.

Pyridoxine is unique in that both the deficiency and toxic states result in neurological symptoms.

Deficiency manifestations are dermatitis around the eyes, eyebrows, and angels of the mouth.

Pyridoxine deficiency disorders are characterized by fatigue, nervousness, irritability, depression , insomnia and walking difficulties.

There are also a sensory neuritis, and a decrease in certain white blood cells and an increase in others.

Prolonged deficiency leads to fall in hemoglobin, mental depression, confusion, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal distension and convulsions.

Since pyridoxine is involved in the synthesis of serotonin, deficiency of pyridoxine may play a role in the pathogenesis of hypertension. Low serotonin levels can lead to general stimulation of the sympathetic nervous system.

The best source of pyridoxine include chicken, fish, kidney, and liver. Good source include egg, brown rice, soybeans, oats, whole wheat bread, peanuts and walnuts.

Because of the widespread occurrence of the vitamin in food, pure pyridoxine deficiency is uncommon, except when the pyridoxine content of food is destroyed or covered to less available protein bound forms during processing.
Vitamin B6 – Pyridoxine

Vitamin B - Niacin

2011-08-01T04:40:00.000-07:00

Niacin is a water soluble B vitamin important for DNA repair and energy metabolism.

Niacin is the name for two similar nicotinic acid and nicotinamide. In 1867, nicotinic acid was produced from nicotine in tobacco. In the early 1940s, with its role as a vitamin established, it was renamed “niacin” so people wouldn’t confuse it with nicotine.

Niacin is part of coenzyme that participates in the production and breakdown of carbohydrates, fatty acids, and amino acids. It involved in at least 200 metabolic pathways.

It is also a compound that dilates blood vessel. Deficiency on niacin causes pellagra a (disease that causes diarrhea, dermatitis, nervous disorders, and sometimes death).

Pellagra is characteristically associated with maize based diets.

The disease pellagra has been known since the introduction of corn to Europe in the 1770s. The connection between pellagra and niacin was confirm in 1937 by an American scientist who reaching for the cause of pellagra.

In industrialized country, particularly among alcoholics, niacin deficiency may present with only encephalopathy.

Niacin comes form the diet, but the body can also manufacture it from the amino acid tryptophan, with riboflavin helping out in the process.

Adults require 13-20 mg niacin. In pregnancy, lactation and active muscular work, niacin requirement is further increased by 3-4 mg. Children require 5-16 mg niacin.

Most niacin in the American diet comes from meat, poultry, fish, nuts and peanuts an enriched and while grain products.

In grains, niacin is present ion covalently bound complexes with small peptides and carbohydrates, collectively referred to as niacin.
Vitamin B - Niacin

Discovery of Vitamin B

2011-07-15T05:22:00.000-07:00

The Englishman Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins is given credit for approaching the discovery of the vitamin concept, when in 1906, he determined that food contains essential ingredients beyond carbohydrates, minerals fats, proteins and water.

The term vitamin was first used for water soluble substance which was necessary for the nutrition of infants and which was separated from wheat germ, yeasts and milk.

In fact this term was used after the first discovery of anti-beriberi factor by Casimir Funk in 1912. The first vitamin B discovered was vitamin B1 by Funk that was extracted from police rice husk.

It was then isolated in pure and crystalline form by B.C.P Jansen in 1925.

Casimir coined the term ‘vital amine’ to describe the class of chemicals that he and other researchers were studying, and the word was simplified to ‘vitamin’ by 1920.

Three years after this discovery, Elmer Vernon McCollum and Marguerite Davis labeled it ‘water soluble B’ which British biochemist Jack Cecil changed to vitamin B in 1920.

Casimir Funk (1884-1967), a Polish born American biochemist, collected all published literature in the issue of deficiency diseases. He was the first to isolate niacin, latter called vitamin B3.
Discovery of Vitamin B

Vitamin in goat’s milk

2011-07-07T03:17:00.000-07:00

Goat milk supplies adequate amounts of vitamin A and niacin, and excesses of thiamin, riboflavin and panthothenate for human.

Vitamin A functions at two levels in the human body: the first is in the visual cycle in the retina of the eye; second is in all body tissue where it systemically maintains the growth and soundness of cells.

While for niacin, it functions in many metabolic pathways, especially anaerobic, Krebs cycle-oxidative phosphorylation and fatty acids synthesis and oxidation.

Goat milk has higher amounts of vitamin A than cow milk. Milk from goat also higher in niacin but does not have the same amount of vitamin B6, B12 and C as cow’s milk.

Goat milk has a reputation of being a highly digestible dairy product even more digestible than cowls milk and less allergenic as well.

Goats milk contains 47% more vitamin A, 25% more vitamin B6 and three percent more niacin compared with cow’s milk.
Vitamin in goat’s milk

Vitamin in Food

2011-06-15T20:33:00.000-07:00

Vitamins are minor components of foods that play an essential role in human nutrition.

They are food substances contained in all living organisms and as such are absolutely necessary for proper growth and maintenance of health.

Many vitamins are unstable under certain condition of processing and storage and their levels in processed foods, therefore may be considerably reduced.

Synthetic vitamins are used extensively to compensate for these losses and to restore levels in foods. The vitamins are usually divided into two main groups, the water soluble and the fat soluble vitamins.

The occurrence of the vitamins in the various food groups is related to their water or fat solubility.

All vitamins found in liver and eggs are fat soluble, and those that are in fruits and vegetables are water soluble.

Some vitamins function as part of a coenzyme, without which the enzyme would be ineffective as a biocatalyst.

As catalysts vitamins speed up the processes in all living cells, plant and animal.

Some vitamins occur in foods as provitamins - compound but can be changed by the body into vitamins.

Lack of vitamins has long been recognized to result in serious deficiency disease. It can occur not only as a consequence of insufficient supply of vitamins by food intake, but an be caused by disturbances in resorption, by stress and by disease.

Almost all foods contain some vitamins and all the food groups contain foods that are good sources of a variety of vitamins. The sources of vitamins in significant amounts by food groups have been listed below:

*Meats, poultry, fish and beans provide thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, pyridoxine, pantothenic acid, biotin and vitamin B12.

*Milk contains both fat and water soluble vitamins. Milk and milk products provide vitamins A and D, riboflavin, pyridoxine and vitamin B12.

*Bread and cereals provide thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, pyridoxine, folate, pantothenic acid and biotin.

*Fruits and vegetables provide vitamins A and K. ascorbic acid, riboflavin and folate.

*Fat and oil provide vitamins A and E.

There are 13 vitamins in all, you need every single one of them, no exceptions.

No one food is a good source of all vitamins and as such a variety of foods should be consumed.

Some foods are very high in selected vitamins whereas some contain precursors or substances at serve as building blocks for many the vitamin in the body.
Vitamin in Food

Vitamin in general

2011-06-01T08:09:00.000-07:00

Mention the word vitamin, and almost magical image comes to mind. Vitamins have been purported to do everything from boosting one’s energy level to increasing sexual prowess to curing disease.

In 1912, a Polish chemist named Casimir Funk, proposed that disease may be caused by a missing ingredient that should be in the diet. He suggested that this ingredient was responsible for giving life and contained nitrogen.

Although not all vitamins contain nitrogen, the word “vitamin” has survived since its naming by Funk who set in motion the idea that many disease may be cured by administering foods rich in certain vitamins.

Vitamins are essential dietary substance needed in small amounts to regulate chemical reactions in the body.

Vitamins needed to make enzymes and hormones – important substances of the body uses to make all the many chemical reaction for the body to live.

Vitamins are important for proper growth and maintenance of good health, but they appeared to posses no greater properties beyond their basic chemical function.

Vitamins do indeed participate in the chemical reactions that release energy from carbohydrates, and proteins, and fats, but contain no inherent energy themselves.

Vitamins are required for normal reproductive metabolism, but they are not aphrodisiac. And inclusion of vitamins in the diets will cure disease, but only the specify deficiency diseases that develop in their absence.

Vitamins are generally found throughout the food supply in developed countries and are consumed in adequate amounts, so despite popular believe belief, a vitamin supplement is usually not needed.

Vitamins are divided into two groups: fat soluble and water soluble.

Solubility confers on vitamins many of their characteristics,. It determines how they are absorbed and transported around by the bloodstream, whether they can be stores in the body, and how easily they are lost from the body.
Vitamin in general

Ascorbic Acid

2011-05-06T09:09:00.000-07:00

Ascorbic acid was recognized as early as 1734 as the factor in fresh fruit and vegetables that prevent the development of scurvy.

Vitamin C has been implicated in the hydroxylation of proline to form the hydroxyproline required in the formation of collagen.

It helps in the healing of wounds fractures, bruises and bleeding, gums and recues liability the infection.

Excellence sources of vitamin C are citrus fruits, berries, guava, capsicum and green leafy vegetables. Tomato juice, if it has been processed properly, is a fair source of this vitamin. Green peppers, cabbage, broccoli, and sprout are excellent to good sources of vitamin C.

Deficiency of vitamin C causes scurvy (spongy gums, loose teeth, swollen joints, hemorrhages in various tissue, etc) and impaired healing of wounds. Orange juice is an excellent source of vitamin C.
Ascorbic Acid

Vitamins in Prune

2011-04-22T01:52:00.000-07:00

Prune is a member of the plum family (Prunus domestica) that are suitable for drying. When fresh this fruit is called a plum; when dried, it is called prune.

Prune juice is a good source of vitamin B6 and vitamin C. It also contributes some riboflavin, and niacin.

Research discovered that when healthy elderly people had vitamin B6 almost completely taken out of their diets, immune response went down. Old people can boost vitamin B6 intake by drink prune juice where an eight ounce glass of prune juice provides 28% of dietary value of B6.

Prune juice also has a plentiful of vitamin C built in to enhance its absorption. It also bolster the immune system and provide some protection against certain types of cancer.

Prunes are very rich in vitamin A and a good source of vitamin B1, B2 and vitamin E.

Vitamin A enhances white blood cell function, increases resistance to infection and carcinogen.
Vitamins in Prune

Deficiency of pantothenic acid symptoms

2011-04-15T05:17:00.000-07:00

Pantothenic acid deficiencies are virtually non-existent in the general population. It was noted that pantothenic acid is widely distributed in foods and since it is absorbed throughout that small intestine, it is possible that intestinal bacterial synthesis also makes a contribution to pantothenic acid nutrition.

Deficiencies of this vitamin cause degeneration of nerve tissues with resulting muscular weakness, numbness, and malaise.

These people suffered symptoms that included irritability, restlessness fatigue, apathy, sleep disturbances, nausea, tingling, muscle cramps, staggering gait, and hypoglycemia.

Scaling skin and dermatitis, diarrhea with bloody stools, and ulceration of intestine are also deficiency symptoms.

Deficiency in pantothenic acid have been shown to adversely affect the immune system in both humans an animals, indicating that the nutrient also has a role in our system of defense.

Historically, it has been implicated in the the “burning feet” syndrome, a condition noted among malnourished prisoners of war during World War II.
Deficiency of pantothenic acid symptoms

Vitamins in passion fruit

2011-04-12T04:56:00.000-07:00

Passion fruit mainly enjoyed for its juice. It grows on vines in the South American tropics.

Ripe fruits are yellow or purple with hard shiny skin that wrinkles as it ripens. The sweet and tart, pulpy flesh is sharply aromatic and laden with crunchy, edible seeds.

Key vitamin in passion fruit include vitamin C, vitamin B6, vitamin A, vitamin E, vitamin B2 (riboflavin) and vitamin B3 (niacin).

Yellow and purple passion fruit are good sources of pro-vitamin A, niacin, riboflavin and ascorbic acid. Vitamin C in passion passion fruit is between 20 to 30 mg while 1,272 IU of vitamin A per 100 g of fresh fruit.

The fruit provides 1.5 mg of vitamin B12 per 100 g.

Lots of vitamin C and some vitamin A means better immunity and possible cancer protection. Passion fruit pulp is a good source of vitamin A. Research at the University of Florida support the fruit juice as a cancer fighting substance.

With some B vitamins and magnesium, passion fruit contribute to healthy skin, nerves and muscles.
Vitamins in passion fruit

Discovery of Vitamins B by Casimir Funk

2011-04-01T22:16:00.000-07:00

Beriberi, was endemic for centuries and finally proved to be deficiency disease. In 1890 Eijkman developed a polyneuritis by feeding polished rice to hens. This was cured by feeding rice polishing by Dr. Casimir Funk in 1911.

Casimir Funk born in 1884, had grown up in a Poland that was then under a Russian government.

His father, a physician, was able to send Casimir at the age of sixteen to continue his studies in Switzerland, first in Geneva then moving to Berne to specialize in organic chemistry and obtain a doctoral degree at the early age of twenty.

He began his career in Warsaw before moved in 1904 to Pasteur Institute in Paris; then in 1906 to Berlin to work on amino acids and again in 1901 to the Lister Institute in London.

In London, he managed to extract from yeast a compound that was very effective against beriberi, which he called vitamin because its amine content,

He made a great advances in 1912 when he hypothesized that certain diseases such as beriberi, scurvy, pellagra and rickets are caused by deficiency of nutrients.

Casimir Funk coined the word “vitamine”. He describe an organic compound ‘thyamin’ as a ‘vital amine’ and it became known as vitamin B.

He believed that all these substance were ‘vital amines’, however, it was soon shown that most of the vitamins are unrelated chemically and that only a few of them are amines.

Later, as each vitamin was isolated in pure form and its chemical structure was determined, it was given a chemical name.
Discovery of Vitamins B by Casimir Funk

Vitamin D deficiency can cause rickets

2011-03-25T20:47:00.000-07:00

In an infant or child this deficiency results in the disease called rickets, in which the rapidly growing bones grow soft and eventually bend under the weight of the body.

It’s a defect in the mineralization of bone matrix with increase bone mass.

Affected children lack the exposure to ultraviolet light necessary for the dermal synthesis of vitamin D and have a poor diet in vitamin D in which the component (high fiber and high cereal) probably contribute to the excessive breakdown of vitamin D.

In adults, the same disorder is called osteomalacia or adult rickets. It is to be distinguished from osteoporosis where bone mass is decreased from hypophosphatemic osteopeniaof premature infants, and from renal osteodystrophy.

The name rickets is from the Old English wrickken, to twist. The more technical medical term, rachitis, which comes from Greek, the spine , was suggested by Francis Glisson in 1650.

Vitamin D deficiency rickets occurs in underprivileged populations throughout the world, particular in the northern hemisphere.

Women in United States usually take multivitamins and eat vitamin D dairy foods so rickets and vitamin D deficiency is less a problem than in developing countries and northern Europe.
Vitamin D deficiency can cause rickets

Beriberi Disease

2011-03-16T03:10:00.000-07:00

Beriberi is a deficiency disease which is caused by the absence of vitamin B1 in our diet. It is a serious disease.

The disease was accurately described for the first time in 1629 by the Leiden physician Jacobs de Bondt.

He noted that the word ‘beriberi’ was derived from a local word for sheep because of the tottering walk of those affected disease.

Beriberi is characterized by degenerative changes in the nervous system which cause pain, weakness and paralysis of the limbs, by edema and by hypertrophy of the heart which causes shortness of breath and other cardiac symptoms and frequently ends in heart failure and death.

Vitamin B1 or thiamine also known as anti-beriberi or antineuritic factor. Beriberi is common in those area where polished rice is eaten.
Beriberi Disease

Vitamin E Sources and Functions

2011-03-15T18:07:00.000-07:00

It was discovered in 1922 in vegetable oil given the name ‘tocopherol’. Vitamin E, of which there are four different forms, is fat soluble.

The four have the same name except with the prefixes alpha-, beta-, gamma-, and delta-, (the first four letters of the Greek alphabet).

Only alpha-tocopherol contributes toward meeting the human vitamin E requirement and it is the most common form of vitamin E in food.

It is our body’s major fat soluble antioxidant. It protects vulnerable polyunsaturated lipids in cell membranes, in blood and elsewhere throughout the body.

The richest dietary sources of vitamin E are the vegetable oils. Safflower and olive oil contain the highest proportion of alpha-tocopherol, followed by soybean oil.

Curiously enough, these oils are also the richest sources of polyunsaturated fatty acids, which vitamin E protects from oxidation.

Nuts and seeds such as sunflower seeds, are among the best food sources.

In western diet, vitamins E intake derives mainly from fats and oils contained in margarine, mayonnaise, salad dressing and desserts, and increasingly also from fortified food (e.g., breakfast cereals, milk, fruit juices).

Vitamin E helps reduce oxidation of lipid membranes and the unsaturated fatty acids and prevents the breakdown of other nutrients by oxygen.

Some scientists compare the function of vitamin E on the cell membrane to a lightening and nullifying the damage that occurs of lightening strikes. This function of vitamin E is also performed and enhanced by other antioxidants, such as vitamin C, beta-carotene, glutathione (L-cysteine), coenzyme Q and the mineral selenium.

In fact, there is a direct recycling process for vitamin E that requires the immediate presence of beta-carotene, vitamin C, flavonoids, and coenzyme Q to work.

Observational studies have suggested that high intake of antioxidant including vitamins E, may lower the risk of some chronic disease, especially heart disease.

Different forms of vitamin E, other than alpha-tocopherol, have immuno-regulatory functions,

Alpha-tocopherol is the most common form of vitamin E in plasma and tissues and the most extensively studied for its beneficial effect on immune function, probably because it is the exclusively component in most vitamin E supplements.
Vitamin E Sources and Functions

Vitamin E and Cancer

2011-03-02T20:38:00.000-08:00

The essentiality of vitamin E for humans was recognized in the late 1960s in connection with studies on premature infants in which hemolytic anemia was associated with vitamin E deficiency.

Vitamin E is considered to be most effective antioxidant more effective, for example, than beta carotene at relatively higher oxygen partial pressure, and is more selectively distributed to the nuclear fraction as compared with other sub-cellular fractions.

The fact that that high dosage of vitamin E is not toxic, therefore many research is focused on anti-cancerous properties of vitamin E.

The later study being made is the relation of vitamin E to the new growth, or division, of cells necessary to keep the tissues in healthy repair.

In one study, when cancer tissue was placed in a vitamin-E-rich blood serum, the cancer tissue did not grow. When a blood serum lacking vitamin E as used in a similar test, the cancer cells divide normally in the presence of vitamin E.

Many studies have also found that high levels of vitamin E in the body are associated with a lower risk of cancer, whereas low level are associated with a greater risk.

These trends have been indentified with breast cancer, cervical cancer and cervical dysplasia, colon cancer, lung cancer, and throat cancer.
Vitamin E and Cancer

Vitamin in Mango

2011-02-26T21:04:00.000-08:00

Vitamin in Mango
The vitamin value of mango fruit lies mainly in its vitamin C, vitamin A and small amounts of vitamin B group. They are extremely rich in vitamin A, with a high concentration of beta carotene. One mango may have 10,000 IU of vitamin A.

Mango source of vitamin A to the extent that one medium size mango can meet the vitamin A requirement for one week.

Intake of mango, therefore, can avoid vitamin A deficiency which otherwise leads to many eye troubles like keratitis.

The vitamin also protects the epithelium of the cornea, iris and retina.

During ripening process, the fruit are initially acidic, astringent and rich in ascorbic acid (vitamin C). Ripe mangoes containing moderate levels of vitamin C, fairly rich in provitamin B1 and B2. Pulp mangoes is concentrated source of vitamin C.

Vitamin C has been touted as a nutrient that can help fight stress. Vitamin C also boosts the body’s ability to fight infection and a growing body of research suggest that it may protect against heart disease and certain types of cancer.

Vitamin C’s potential as a chronic disease fighter stems from its function as an antioxidant.
Vitamin in Mango

Deficiency of Biotin

2011-02-20T20:44:00.000-08:00

Biotin is a water soluble vitamin that is generally classified in the B complex group. This B complex vitamin used in the formation of enzymes that fuel the human body.

Biotin is a key factor in metabolizing and utilizing fats an glucose for energy.

Deficiency of this compound is unusual, but can be demonstrated by the feeding of raw egg white, which contains the substance, avidin, which ties up biotin.

Because some anticonvulsant drugs breakdown biotin, people who take then for long periods also risk a deficiency.

Biotin deficiency also has been clearly demonstrated in biotinidase deficiency. This due to several process which involved gastrointestinal absorption, salvage of biotin at cellular level and renal loss of biocytin.

Infants born with biotinidase deficiency suffer from a rare genetic defect that leads to biotin depletion.

Decreased levels of biotin cause the metabolism to become severely impaired. When enzymes aren’t available to breakdown and build up protein, every biochemical process of the body suffers since protein are the essential building blocks of cellular composition.

The clinical findings and biochemical abnormalities caused by biotinidase deficiency are quiet similar to those of biotin deficiency: common finding include periorificial dermatitis, conjunctivitis, alopecia, ataxia, and development delay.
Deficiency of Biotin

Vitamin B

2011-01-31T01:44:00.001-08:00

The Vitamin B are water soluble. The vitamin B are utilized as coenzymes in almost all parts of the body.

The vitamins that belong to vitamin B complex group are vitamin B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B12, folic acid, biotin, choline, inositol and para-aminobenzoic acid.

It is necessary for nerve function, appetite, and normal digestion. It is also required for growth, fertility, and lactation.

B vitamins have many roles to play in ensuring optimal brain function. They are vital for delivering oxygen to the brain and protecting it from harmful oxidants.

They are also help turn glucose into energy within brain cells and help to keep the neurotransmitters in circulation.

Vitamin B also necessary for the metabolism of carbohydrate, fats and proteins. It also may play a role in supporting immune system.

Vitamin B6 and B12 and folic acid are most important in terms of enhancing mood.

This vitamin is often lacking in the diet because much of the naturally occurring amounts of it in food are destroyed during the processing of the food. The adult requirement of vitamin B is related to the food intake.

This vitamin makes up a part of enzyme systems involved in the oxidation and reduction of different materials in the body.

Deficiency of riboflavin generally results in growth retardation and may result in vision impairment, scaling of the skin and lesions on mucous tissue. Also enlargement of heart, hypertension and beri-beri. Neuritis is another deficiency effect.

The various effect of a disturbance of the nerve centers such as forgetfulness or difficulty in thinking are other manifestations of vitamin B-1 deficiency.

Specific vitamin B deficiencies have been found to be associated with psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, depression, delirium, and anxiety.

Low intakes of three B vitamins, folate, vitamin B12 and vitamin B6 are linked with increased of fatal heart disease in both men and women.

People with low blood levels of these B vitamins tend to have high blood levels of the protein related compound homocysteine. High levels of homocysteine seem to enhance blood clot formation and damage to arterial walls, as well as raising the risk of suffering a heart attack or stroke as much as fourfold.

Although the B vitamins are not antiaging nutrients per se, they are involved in preventing a variety of aging related problems.
Vitamin B

Vitamin in Mangosteen

2010-12-15T20:55:00.000-08:00

Mangosteen belongs to family Clusiaceae, formerly known as Guttiferae, which includes 9 genera and 86 species.

Genus Garcinia has 68 species and the most esteemed member of this genus is Garcinia mangostana, the mangosteen.

Mangosteen ‘the finest fruit of the world’, is very important crop of warm humid tropics. It is sweet and soft delicious fruit with exciting flavour of universal appeal.

Fruit contains 14 IU vitamin A, 0.09 mg thiamin, 0.06 mg riboflavin, 0.1 mg niacin and 66 mg vitamin C per 100 g edible portion.

Mangosteen contains several types of antioxidants, consisting mainly of some vitamin C and beta-carotene, both of which are well known for their antioxidants properties.

Vitamin C is water soluble that helps quench singlet species. Beta carotene is a fat soluble vitamin that is common in all red, orange and yellow vegetables and fruits.
Vitamin in Mangosteen

Vitamin A (Retinol)

2010-11-24T00:23:00.000-08:00

Vitamin A (Retinol)
Vitamin A has a number of varied functions in the body. It is necessary for growth and development. It helps to keep the skin and epithelial tissues healthy and resistant to infection.

Vitamin A occurs in the retina of the eye, as a part of substance rhodopsin or visual purple.

Visual purple is bleached in the presence of light and regenerated in the dark with the help of vitamin A.

Vitamin A is needed visual cycle, which enables a person to adjust to light of varying intensity. Thus, Vitamin A is needed for normal vision in light and darkness (night).

The earliest symptom of Vitamin A deficiency is night blindness, the inability to see normally in dim light.

Other symptoms of Vitamin A deficiency which develop progressively are dryness of conjunctiva, xerosis of cornea and corneal infection, which if unchecked may lead to blindness.

In addition, severe deficiency of Vitamin A results in growth failure and skin changes (dryness, wrinkling, thickness).

Being fat-soluble, vitamin A is present only in the fat of animal foods, such as whole milk products ghee, butter, egg yellow, liver etc.

A plant pigment (red-orange in color) called carotene is converted to vitamin A in the body.

Therefore, foods which contain carotene are indirect sources of vitamins A. Such foods include dark green leafy vegetables, such as amaranth, coriander drumstick, radish leaves and spinach, and orange-yellow vegetables and fruit, such as carrot, pumpkin, papaya and mango.

Severe deficiency of vitamin A leads to growth failure skin changes infections of the eye and eventual loss of vision.
Vitamin A (Retinol)

The importance of vitamins

2010-11-17T19:11:00.000-08:00

The importance of vitamins
Until the beginning of twentieth century, it was thought that a diet containing proteins, carbohydrates, fats, minerals and water was adequate to maintain life. But research conducted in the early part of that century proved that some vital factor was missing from the diet.

This vital factor was given the name vitamin. Later it was found that there were more than one factor involved.

Now we know that vitamins are one of the six classes of nutrients supplied by food. They are required for normal growth and maintenance of all animal life.

Vitamins are important for their regulatory and protective functions. Unlike most other nutrients, they are required in very small amounts. But it is necessary to provide these in the diet because many of them cannot be manufactured by the body.

The lack of vitamins results in definite deficiency disorders which are specific of each particular vitamin.

These are essential for the maintenance of good health as they catalyses various body processes, which help to utilize all the nutrients supplied and regulate a number of functions in the body.

Vitamins are conveniently classified into two groups on the basis of their solubility (in fat or in water) into fat soluble and water soluble vitamins. Fat soluble vitamins include A, D, E and K, and water soluble vitamins include the B-group and vitamin C, Foods differ greatly in the amount and kinds of the vitamins they supply.
The importance of vitamins

Vitamin E Deficiency in Human

2010-09-27T18:43:00.001-07:00

Vitamin E was discovered in 1922, but not until 1983 that vitamin E was demonstrated to be dietary essential for human beings.

Vitamin E deficiency was first describe in children with fat malabsorption syndromes, principally abetalipoproteinemia, cystic fibrosis, and cholestatic liver disease.

They have been reports of vitamin E deficiency symptoms in person with protein calories malnutrition.

The frequency of human vitamin E deficiency is very rare, deficiency is usually associated with disease of fat malababsorption such as cystic fibrosis.

In individual at risk, it is clear that vitamin E supplements should be recommended to prevent deficiency symptoms.

Without vitamin E, the red blood cells break open and spill their contents, probably due to oxidation of the polyunsaturated fatty acids in their membranes.

The classic sign of vitamins E deficiency, known as erythrocyte hemolysis, is seen in premature infants, born before the transfer of vitamin E from the mother to the infant that takes place in the last week of pregnancy.

The primary human vitamin E deficiency symptoms is a peripheral neuropathy characterized by the degeneration of the large caliber axons in the sensory neurons.

Other vitamin E deficiency symptoms observed in humans include spinocerebellar ataxia, skeletal myopathy, and pigmented retinopathy.

Prolonged vitamin E deficiency also can causes neuromuscular dysfunction involving the spinal cord and retina of the eye.
Vitamin E Deficiency in Human

Vitamin in Apricots

2010-08-26T00:31:00.000-07:00

Vitamin in Apricots
Apricots are known for their high vitamin A content; they are also rich and source of vitamin C. If you wish to have a nice smooth, clean skin then eat lots of fresh apricots.

Dried apricots have a higher concentration of nutrients than fresh, making them extra rich in vitamin A and riboflavin.

In an eight-year study of 90,000 nurses, those worth the doest richest in carotenoids had 25% lower risk of heart diseases.

A study of more than 50,000 nurses found that women who got the most vitamin A in their diet reduced their risk of getting cataracts by more one-third. Three apricots provide 2,769 IU of vitamin A, 55 percent of RDA.

Dried apricots are best medicine for colds.

Apricots are an excellent source of vitamins B1, B2, B3, B5, and B6.
Vitamin in Apricots

Food Source of Niacin, Vitamin B6, and Folic Acid

2010-08-23T20:44:00.000-07:00

Food Source of Niacin, Vitamin B6, and Folic Acid
Niacin or Nicotinamide nicotinic acid
In Central Europe a niacin deficiency is likely only when the diet deviates greatly from the common practices.

Severe alcoholics are especially at risk. On average, more than twice the recommended intake is consumed with the diet, about half in the form of pre-synthesized niacin and half as tryptophan.

About 50% of the pre-synthesized niacin is derived from meat and fish, which also provide about 30% of the dietary tryptophan. About 25% of the tryptophan comes from milk and eggs.

Vitamin B6
The following foods contribute significantly or are rich vitamin B6;
Meat and liver
Certain types of fish (e.g. sardine, mackerel
Milk and its products
Certain types of cheese (e.g. camembert)
Whole grain products
Some types of vegetables (cabbage green beans)
Potatoes

Folic acid
Folate rich foods,, and those which contribute significantly to the dietary requirements are for example, certain types of vegetables (tomatoes, cabbage family, spinach, beets, cucumbers) bread and baked goods (especially those from whole grain flour). Potatoes, meat, liver, milk and milk products, some kinds of cheese, and eggs.

Wheat germs and soy beans are specially rich in folate.
Food Source of Niacin, Vitamin B6, and Folic Acid

Vitamin K

2010-07-14T06:14:00.000-07:00

Vitamin K
Vitamin K also fat soluble. It is essential for the synthesis of prothrombin a compound involved in the clotting of blood.

Vitamin K is mostly needed to help to stop bleeding, but it has some other jobs as well.

The most important is the crucial role vitamin K, plays building bones. Vitamin K is needed to help hold onto the calcium in bones and make sure it’s getting to the right place.

It actually comes in three different forms:
First, there’s vitamin K1, or phylloquinone. This is the form of vitamin K found in plant foods.

Next, there’s Vitamin K2, also called menaquinone. This the form friendly bacteria in the intestines make.

The last form would be called vitamin K3. This is the artificial form, also called menadione. All your vitamin K ends up in liver, where it’s used to make some of the substance that make blood clot.

Cabbage, spinach, cauliflower, and liver are good source of vitamin K, although moderate amounts are found in many other vegetables, as well as in cereals.

The significant symptom of vitamin K deficiency in humans and in animals is the loss of the ability of the blood to clot which is, of course, a dangerous condition that can result in death whenever bleeding from cuts occurs.

It is believed that humans ordinarily receive adequate amounts of vitamin K in the diet.

As a rule, vitamin K deficiency is rare – almost everyone gets more than enough from their own bacteria and from their food.

Sometime newborn babies don’t have enough vitamin K because they don’t yet have any bacteria to make it in their intestine.

To make up for them, most newborns are given an injection of a tiny amount of vitamin K soon after birth.

When adults get vitamin K deficiency, it’s generally because they eat very few green vegetables or because they have been taking oral antibiotics for a long time.

The antibiotics kill off the intestine bacteria that make vitamin K. Sometimes vitamin K deficiency is caused by liver disease or a problem digesting fat.

The major symptom of vitamin K deficiency is that blood clot very slow, so it will bleed for along time even from minor injuries.

Vitamin K deficiency causes bug black and blue marks from very slight bruises or even for no reason, nosebleeds, blood in your urine and intestinal bleeding.
Vitamin K

Sources and Functions of Vitamin E

2010-07-13T16:04:00.000-07:00

Sources and Functions of Vitamin E
Vitamin E, of which there are four different forms (the tocopherols), is fat soluble.

The four have the same name except with the prefixes alpha-, beta-, gamma-, and delta-, (the first four letters of the Greek alphabet).

The four compounds are closely related, with some difference in the molecular weight and in the position and number of certain molecular constituents.

This vitamin is an antioxidant that serves to prevent the oxidation of some body components, such as unsaturated fatty acids, and is necessary for reproduction.

The richest dietary sources of vitamin E are the vegetable oils. Safflower and olive oil contain the highest proportion of alpha-tocopherol, followed by soybean oil.

Curiously enough, these oils are also the richest sources of polyunsaturated fatty acids, which vitamin E protects from oxidation.

Other food sources include nuts and certain vegetables and fruit with only small amounts found in cereals, dairy products and meats.

While the symptoms for vitamin E deficiency in humans are not clearly established, experiments with various animals have shown that vitamin E deficiency has an adverse effect on reproduction with apparent irreversible injury to the germinal epithelium.

Other symptoms noted in animal studies include injury to the central nervous system, growth retardation, muscular dystrophy, and interference with normal heart action.

The primary functions of vitamin E is as an oxidant, which is important in our present day society with widespread pollution, processed food diets, and chemicals exposure.

Vitamin E helps reduce oxidation of lipid membranes and the unsaturated fatty acids and prevents the breakdown of other nutrients by oxygen.

Some scientists compare the function of vitamin E on the cell membrane to a lightening and nullifying the damage that occurs of lightening strikes.

This function of vitamin E is also performed and enhanced by other antioxidants, such as vitamin C, beta-carotene, glutathione (L-cysteine), coenzyme Q and the mineral selenium.

In fact, there is a direct recycling process for vitamin E that requires the immediate presence of beta-carotene, vitamin C, flavonoids, and coenzyme Q to work.
Sources and Functions of Vitamin E

Vitamin A Deficiency

2010-07-11T16:14:00.000-07:00

Vitamin A Deficiency
Vitamin A is a fat soluble vitamin. It is found only in animals, although a number of plants contain carotene, from which vitamin A can be produced in the body once the plants contain carotene are eaten.

Vitamin A may be formed in the body from the yellow pigments (containing carotene) of many fruits and vegetables, especially carrots.

Vitamin A is required for vision. Epithelial cells (those cells present in the lining of body cavities and in the skin and glands) require vitamin A.

This vitamin also required for resistance to infection.

Where it is the limiting nutrient, vitamin A deficiency causes anemia, growth retardation and xerophthalmia; increases the incidence and/or severity of infectious episodes.

Reduced survival is the most severe and potentially the most widespread consequence of vitamin A deficiency, and the one that has generated the most interest.

Vitamin A deficient animals die much earlier and at a far higher rate than vitamin A sufficient controls.

Under experimental conditions of gradual progression deficiency, mortality begins to take its toll even before the appearance of xerophthalmia.

The situation in humans is far more complex. Vitamin A deficiency rarely occurs as an isolated disturbance; when it does, it is rarely recognized in the absence of severe xerophthalmia, a condition long associated with increased mortality.
Vitamin A Deficiency

Vitamin Nomenclature

2010-05-29T02:39:00.000-07:00

Vitamin Nomenclature
When the vitamins were originally discovered, they were isolated from certain foods. During these early years, the chemical composition of the essential factors was unknown; therefore factors were assigned letters of the alphabet.

The system of alphabetizing became complicated when it was discovered that activity attributed to a singles vitamin was instead the result of several of the essential factors.

In this way, the designation of groups of vitamins appeared (e.g., the vitamin “B” group). Additional chemical studies showed that variation in chemical structure occurred within compounds having the same vitamin activity but in different species.

To overcome this, a system of suffixes was adopted (e.g., vitamin D2 and D3). The original letter system of designation this became excessively complicated.

With the determination of the chemical structure of the individual vitamins, letter designation were sometimes replaced with chemical structure names (e.g., thiamin, riboflavin and niacin).

Vitamin have also been indentified by describing a function or its source. The term vitamin H (biotin) was used because the factor protected the ‘haut’, the German word for skin.

Likewise, vitamin K was derived from the Danish word koagulation (coagulation).

The vitamin pantothenic acid refers to its source as it is derived from Greek word ‘pantos’, meaning “found everywhere”.

Vitamin A: Functions and Properties

2010-04-28T23:42:00.001-07:00

Vitamin A: Functions and Properties
Vitamin A is the moisturizing nutrient that keeps your skin and mucous membranes (the slick tissue that lines the eyes, nose, mouth, throat, vagina and rectum) smooth and supple.

Vitamin A is also the vision vitamin, a constituent of 11-cis retinol a protein in the rods (cells in the back of your eye that enable you to see even when the lights are low) that prevents or slows the development of age related macular degeneration, or progressive damage to the retina of the eye, which can cause the loss of central vision (the ability to see clearly enough to read or do fine work).

Finally, vitamin A promotes the growth of healthy bones and teeth, keeps your reproductive system humming, and encourages your immune system to churn out the cells you need to fight off infection.

Two chemicals provide vitamin A: retinoids and carotenoids. Retinoids are compounds whose names all start with ret: retinol, retinaldehyde, retinoic acid and so on.

These fat soluble substance are found in several foods of animal origin: liver and whole milk, eggs, and butter.

Retinoids give you preformed vitamin A, the kind of nutrient your body can use right away.

The second form of vitamin A is the vitamin A precursor, a chemical such as beta-carotene, a deep yellow carotenoid found in dark green and bright yellow fruits and vegetables.

Your body transforms a vitamin A precursor into a retinol-like substance. So far, scientists have identified at least 500 different carotenoids. Only 1 in 10 – about 50 altogether are considered, like beta-carotene, to be sources of vitamin A.

Traditionally, the recommended dietary allowances of vitamin A are measured in IU. However, because retinol is the most efficient source of vitamin A, the modern way to measure the RDA for vitamin A is as retinol equivalents, abbreviated as RE.

One microgram (meg) RE = 3.3 IU.
Vitamin A: Functions and Properties

Vitamin C Content of Orange Juice

2010-04-08T18:50:00.000-07:00

Vitamin C Content of Orange Juice
There are many bioactive components present in citrus fruits, including vitamins, ascorbic acid (vitamin C), and folic acid; phytochemicals, flavonoids and limonoids; citric acid and dietary fiber.
The antioxidant capacity of citrus is attributed to vitamin C and flavonoids.

Fresh orange juice (248 mL) is a concentrated source of vitamin C, containing 50% more than a single orange.

Similarly, the antioxidant capacity of fresh orange juice is higher than that of a single orange.

Orange juice processing (pasteurization and storage), however reduces its vitamin C content (frozen reconstituted juice > chilled juice in plastic jugs > chilled juice in cartons), as well as its antioxidant capacity.

Orange juice is the leading dietary source of vitamin C for Americans; hence the consumption of highly processed orange juice may affect Americans’ vitamin C status.

Interestingly, the prevalence of vitamins C deficiency in Americans has increased from 5% to 11-16% during the last 20 year.

Because Americans consumes more fruits and vegetables today than they did 20 years ago, the increased prevalence of vitamin C deficiency is likely a reflection of food choices and perhaps, food processing notably orange juice processing.

As a side note, orange juice is also an important source of folic acid, and similar to vitamin C, folic acid levels in chilled orange juice are reduced 50% compared to fresh orange juice.

However, as of 1998, grain products in the United States have been fortified with folic acid; these foods include enriched flours, breads, rolls, buns, rice and noodle products.
Vitamin C Content of Orange Juice

Occurrence of vitamins in foods

2010-04-08T04:37:00.001-07:00

Occurrence of vitamins in foods
In spite of the considerable and still rapidly increasingly commercial production of vitamins, the daily diet is and will long remain the major source of vitamins for human beings.

The vitamins are very unevenly distributed among the various foods however so that knowledge of the occurrence of the vitamins in the most important foods is important for provision of a balanced supply.

Meat and meat products are excellent source of thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, vitamins B6 and B12, pantothenic acid and biotin.

Liver is rich in vitamins A, D, E B12 and folic acid. Meat generally contains little vitamin K, which occurs mainly in vegetables.

An exception is pork liver, which can contain 115-230 ug/100 g. With the exception of liver and kidneys, meats contain much less folic acid than many vegetables.

Meat is generally not a good source of vitamin C.

Milk and milk products are among the most important sources of vitamins. An infant younger than one year consumes about 800 g milk daily; children and youth under 18 years of age consume 600-700 g milk daily.

Milk products supply about 40% of the required riboflavin and they are also an important source of vitamin A, B6, B12 and thiamin.

The enrichment of milk with irradiated ergosterol has practically eliminated dietary rickets in the USA.

Vitamin D occurs only in relatively small amounts in most foods. Skim milk should, as a rule, be enriched with vitamins A and D.

Cheese ahs been an important source of nutrients for thousands of years.
Occurrence of vitamins in foods

Antioxidant Function of Beta-carotene

2010-04-02T18:47:00.001-07:00

Antioxidant Function of Beta-carotene
In addition to preventing free radical formation resulting from reactions involving single oxygen Beta-carotene can react with or scavenge free radicals directly and thus act as antioxidant.

The mechanism by which Beta-carotene halts thus damaging process has been examined and found that Beta-carotene is a chain breaking antioxidant.

Unlike antioxidants that prevent the initiation of lipid peroxidation, Beta-carotene stops the chain reaction by trapping free radicals.

Beta-carotene is an unusual type of lipid antioxidants in that it is most effective at the low oxygen concentrations found in capillary beds in tissues far removed from direct exposure to oxygen.

The antioxidant function of Beta-carotene might complement the action of other antioxidant protective molecules, such as catalase, gluthathione peroxidase, vitamin C and vitamin E, which are not as effective at lower oxygen concentrations.

Vitamin A, in contrast, is a very weak antioxidant and does not quench singlet oxygen.
Antioxidant Function of Beta-carotene

Isolation of Vitamin A

2010-03-06T01:33:00.000-08:00

Isolation of Vitamin A
In nature vitamin A is largely found as an ester and, consequently is highly soluble in organic solvents but not in aqueous solutions.

The major pro-vitamin carotenoid, B-carotene has similar solvent properties.

One of the richest sources of vitamin A is liver tissue, in particular the river oils of marine fish and mammals.

The esters can be directly isolated from these oils by molecular distillation at very low pressure, a procedure that has been used extensively for the commercial preparation of vitamin A-rich oils.

Alternatively, vitamin A might be directly extracted with chloroform or with some other solvent combination, such as hexane together with ethanol, followed by purification of vitamin A by chromatographic means.

To hydrolyze esters not only of vitamin A and carotenoids but also of triglycerides and other lipids, saponification with KOH is commonly used, followed by extraction with organic solvents.

Retinal or its esters can be readily crystallized at low temperature from a variety of organic, solvents, including ethyl formate, propylene oxide and methanol.
Isolation of Vitamin A

Classification of Vitamins

2010-02-22T16:58:00.000-08:00

Classification of Vitamins
Classically, vitamins have been divided into two groups based on their solubilities in fat solvents or in water.

Thus, fat-soluble vitamins include A, D, E and K, while vitamin of the B-complex and C are classified water soluble.

Fat soluble vitamins are found in foodstuffs in association with lipids.

The fat soluble vitamins are absorbed along with dietary fats, apparently by mechanisms similar to those involve in fat absorption.

Conditions favorable to fat absorption, such as adequate bile flow and good micelle formation, also favor absorption of the fat-soluble vitamins.

Water soluble vitamins are not associated with fats, and alterations in fat absorption do not affect their absorption.

Three of the four fat-soluble vitamins (vitamins A, D and E) are well stored in appreciable amounts in the animal body. Except for vitamin B12, water soluble vitamins are not well stored, and excesses are rapidly excreted.

A continual dietary supply of the water soluble vitamins and vitamin K is needed to avoid deficiencies.

Fat-soluble vitamins are excreted primarily in the feces via the bile, whereas water soluble vitamins are excreted mainly in the urine.
Classification of Vitamins

Fat Soluble Vitamins

2010-01-26T17:12:00.001-08:00

Fat Soluble Vitamins
Vitamins A, vitamin D, vitamin E and vitamin K are relatives that have two characteristics in common: All dissolve in fat, and all are stored in fatty tissues.

But like members of the family, they also have distinct personalities. One keeps the skin moist. Another protects bones. A third keeps reproductive organs purring happily. And the fourth enables to make us special proteins.

Vitamin A
Vitamin A is the moisturizing nutrient that keeps your skin and mucous membranes smooth and supple.

Vitamin A is also the vision vitamin, a constituent of 11-cis retinol, a protein in the rods (cells in the back of your eye that enable you to see even the lights are low) that prevents or slows the development of age related macular degeneration, or progressive damage to the retina of the eye, which can cause the loss of central vision (the ability to see clearly enough to read or do fine work).

Finally, vitamin A promotes the growth of healthy bones and teeth keeps your reproductive system humming and encourages your immune system to churn out the cells you need to fight off infection.
Fat Soluble Vitamins

Deficiency of vitamin D

2010-01-12T17:15:00.000-08:00

Deficiency of vitamin D
Severe deficiency of vitamin D can cause rickets on children and osteomalacia, a similar disorder, in adults.

Lesser degrees of deficiency may be characterized by loss of appetite a burning sensation in the mouth and throat, diarrhea insomnia, visual problems and weight loss.

In one study, there are indications that vitamin D deficiency is much more wide spread than previous thought, especially in older adults.

In a group of people of whom few had risk factors of vitamin D deficiency, 57 percent were found to have below normal levels of vitamin D.

Sixty seven percent of those reporting a vitamin D intake below the RDI had deficiencies categories as moderate to severe.
Deficiency of vitamin D

History of Vitamins (Part II)

2010-01-06T16:59:00.000-08:00

History of Vitamins (Part II)
Around 1900, the idea had been widely accepted that human beings and animals require very small amounts of additional nutritional factors (“accessory growth factors”), the lack of which leads to disease.

In 1912, C. Funk coined the vitamin. Funk experimenting in the area of dietary disease, and worked on the isolation of the anti-beriberi factor. Because he assumed that this and the other curative factors contain nitrogen, that is, are mines, he named them “vitamins” (vital amines).

In 1929, C. Eijkman and F. G Hopkins shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine for their discoveries in the area of vitamins.

Eijkman’s discovery that polished rice leads to polyneuritis in birds and beriberi in human beings prepared the way for the isolation of thiamin.

Hopkins showed, by experimenting on rats, that milk contains substances which, in very small amounts, make growth possible. In this way he extended the insights of Lunin and confirmed them with more complete experiments.

Almost none of the vitamins is a single substance. Instead, there are whole families of close chemical relatives which, however may differ greatly in their biological activity.

The substances which we call vitamins must usually be converted within the living cell to their coenzyme or hormone forms in order to become biological active. Fore example vitamin D is hydroxylated and aquacobalamin is methylated or adenosylated.

Vitamin deficiencies were formerly one of the main causes of illness and death. Pellagra, scurvy and beriberi are best known vitamin deficiency diseases.
History of Vitamins (Part II)

Hypervitaminosis

2009-11-17T06:36:00.000-08:00

Hypervitaminosis
Acute hypervitaminosis A results from ingestion of very large amounts of the vitamin during a relatively short period of time.

The symptoms, which resolve after supplementation is stopped, include irritability, headache, vomiting, bone pain, weakness, blurred vision, and peeling of the skin.

Chronic hypervitaminosis A can result from high intakes of vitamin A over long period of time and/or in connection with liver or kidney disease.

Some of the signs of chronic hypervitaminosis A are dry skin, hair loss, weakness, headache, bone thickening, enlarged, liver and spleen, anemia, abnormal menstrual periods, stiffness and joint pain; most of these symptoms are reversible, but bone changes and liver damage may be permanent.

Vitamin A in very large doses is known to be teratogenic in many animals. Excessive intake of vitamin A has also been associated with human congenital abnormalities in some cases reports although a causal relationship has not been established.

High intakes should be avoided by pregnant women.

Levels of vitamin A intake associated with hypervitaminosis A varies according to the health and size of the person.

As little as 12,000 IU/day, given to small children for an extended period, has reportedly led to toxicity symptoms.

Hypervitaminosis A may result from acute ingestion of about 500,000 IU of vitamin A by an adult, or from a chronic daily intake of about 100,000 IU.
Hypervitaminosis

Vitamin in Fruit Juice

2009-10-26T00:26:00.000-07:00

Vitamin in Fruit Juice
Fruit juice is important in human nutrition for beyond its use as a refreshing source of liquid. Many fruits contain a variety of minor ingredients, particularly vitamins and minerals, as well as carbohydrates which are the predominant solid component.

Although fruit contains small amounts of protein and fat, these are not important ingredients of juices.

Nutrients frequently consumed in sub-optimal concentrations by humans are protein, calcium, iron, vitamin A, thiamin (vitamin B1), riboflavin (vitamin B2) an ascorbic acid (vitamin C).

Some of these nutrients occur in higher concentrations in fruit juices than in other foods.

There is experimental evidence that indicates that ascorbic acid of natural origin is apparently superior to that of synthetic origin.

It has been established that the above phenomenon is caused by the presence of certain flavonoids compounds in fruit juice that influence blood circulation, increasing the permeability and elasticity of capillaries.

This action is known as vitamin P activity, but the flavonoids showing this property are not classified as vitamins, because there several substances with is activity and no serious deficiency diseases occur if they are not consumed.

There are indications that these flavonoids have a useful protective action, in particular against some respiratory diseases, but they are readily decomposed in the body, and it is impossible to maintain an effective concentration.

Apart from the more obvious benefits of fruit juice, such as being a source of potassium, it contains other substances that have or are claimed to have useful pharmacological activity. Sorbitol, which occurs in many fruit juices, has a laxative effect.

Several components with antioxidant activity are found in fruit juices. These are including ascorbic acid, tocopherols (vitamin E), beta carotene and flavonoids.

Beta carotene has antioxidant activity that can quench the singlet oxygen that can induce precancerous cellular changes.

Whatever the nutritional interest, it should be noted that changes occur during storage, particularly to the minor components of juices and particularly under adverse conditions (e.g., light, increasing temperature, time).
Vitamin in Fruit Juice

Vitamins in Milk

2009-09-11T12:24:00.000-07:00

Vitamins in Milk
The vitamins found in milk include vitamins A, D, E and K, ascorbic acid, thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, pantothenic acid, pyridoxine, folic acid, and cyanocobalamin.

Ruminant derived all the water soluble vitamins via synthesis by rumen microbial flora, but are dependent on an exogenous supply of the fat soluble vitamins.

The quantities of water soluble vitamins and of vitamin K in milk are little affected by feed, season, breed or stage of lactation, whereas the quantities of vitamins A, D and E are influenced by feed.

All the vitamins appear to be well absorbed from milk products and make important contributions to human diets.
Vitamins in Milk

Casimir Funk: the Father of Vitamins

2009-08-28T22:25:00.001-07:00

Casimir Funk: the Father of Vitamins
Vitamins are s much a part of modern life you may have a hard time believing they are first discovered less than a century ago.

Of course, people have long known that certain food contain something special.

For example, the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates prescribed liver for night-blindness (the inability to see well in dim light).

By the end of the 18th century (1795), British Navy ships carried a mandatory supply of limes or lime juices to prevent scurvy among the men, thus earning the Brits once and forever nickname limeys.

Later on, the Japanese Navy gave its sailors whole grain barley to ward off beriberi.

Everyone knew these prescriptions worked, but nobody knew why – until 1912, when Casimir Funk (1884 – 1967), a Polish biochemist working first in England and then in the United States, identified “something” in food that he called vitamins (vita – life; amines – nitrogen compounds).

The following year, Funk and a fellow biochemist, Briton Frederick Hopkins, suggested that some medical conditions such as scurvy and beriberi simply deficiency diseases caused by absence of a specific nutrient in the body.

Adding a food with the missing nutrition to one’s diet would prevent or cure the deficiency disease.
Casimir Funk: the Father of Vitamins

History of Vitamins (Part I)

2009-08-07T23:49:00.000-07:00

History of Vitamins (Part I)
The development of the modern concept of vitamins can be roughly divided into three (broadly overlapping) periods:

Empirical healing of some diseases by administration of certain foods
Experimental induction of dietary disease in animals
Administration of synthetic diets to discover essential nutritional factors.

The first phase began many centuries ago, and gradually led to the recognition that night blindness, scurvy, beriberi and rackets are dietary diseases.

The ancient Greeks, Romans and Arabs healed night blindness with liver. In the 16th century, scurvy was healed using extracts of spruce needles, and in the 18th century, oranges and lemons were used; the issue of lemon juice to sailors in the English navy was required by law by the beginning of the 19th century.

At the end of the 19th century, the Japanese navy realized that beriberi was in someway connected with a diet of rice; the disease was successfully combated by replacing the rice with barley or by increasing the rations of meat and vegetables.

In the same period, it was learned that rickets could be prevented and cured by administration of fish liver oil.

The second phase was characterized by the used of experimental animals, in which dietary disease were deliberately induced and then healed.

The animal experiments made possible systematic study of diet related disease in human beings and animals.

In 1890, C. Eijkman discovered that polished rice, when given to chickens as their main food, caused polyneuritis (degeneration of the peripheral nerves).

This disease is similar to human beriberi.

Eijkman then demonstrated that non-polished rice or polished rice +rice bran, when given as feed, healed the polyneuritis.

These experiments led to the postulate that beriberi was caused by the lack of a nutritional substance.

Similarly, in 1907, A. Holst and T. Frohlich reported experimentally induce scurvy in guinea pigs and the healing of the condition by the same agents which are effective in human beings.
History of Vitamins (Part I)

Vitamin A – Reduced Cancer Risk

2009-07-08T18:47:00.000-07:00

Vitamin A – Reduced Cancer Risk
In epidemiological studies, a low intake intake of vitamin A has consistently been associated with increased risk of developing certain cancers.

However, the role vitamin A in cancer etiology is confused by the failure, in many studies to differentiate between preformed vitamin A (retinol) and carotenoids, which may have anticancer effects unrelated to their provitamin A function.

Another difficulty in interpreting epidemiological data on vitamin A is that serum retinol and RBP (retinol binding protein) do not necessarily reflect vitamin A status or intake.

In addition, retinol status can be affected by protein malnutrition, liver diseased and infection.

There are several theorized mechanisms to explain cancer risk reduction by vitamin A. It is well established that vitamin A is required for the maintenance of epithelial tissues, where man cancers are seen.

Vitamin A status must therefore be adequate to allow normal epithelial growth.

Immune system function, including tumor surveillance has also been shown in animal models to depend on sufficient levels of vitamin A.

In addition, vitamin A and retinoid (vitamin A derivatives) may directly influence gene expression.
Vitamin A – Reduced Cancer Risk

Vitamin A

2009-06-14T21:20:00.001-07:00

Vitamin A
Vitamin A (retinol) functions in reproduction, growth, the maintenance of skin and mucous membranes and the visual process.

Vitamin A is normally transported in the blood linked to a specific protein, retinol binding protein (RBP).

Specific proteins on cell surfaces and within cells are also involved with intracellular transport of the vitamin.

Vitamin A is fat soluble and is primarily stored in the liver, where RBP is synthesized. In a well nourished person, vitamin A stores are generally sufficient to last many months on a vitamins A-deficient diet before signs of deficiency appear.

The initial symptoms of vitamin A deficiency are night blindness and keratinization of hair follicles.

Continued deficiency leads to damage to eye tissue and irreversible blindness.

The US recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) of vitamin A for adults is 5000 IU (1000 retinol equivalents).

Rich dietary sources of retinol (preformed vitamin A) include dairy products, eggs and organ meats.

Some carotenoids (found in deep-yellow and dark green vegetables) can be converted to vitamin A during digestion.

In the US diet, approximately half of the vitamin A activity is derived from B-carotene and other carotenoids.
Vitamin A

Isolation of Vitamin A

2009-05-06T18:29:00.001-07:00

Isolation of Vitamin A
In nature vitamin A is largely found as an ester and, consequently, is highly soluble in organic solvents but not in aqueous solutions.

The major provitamin carotenoid, B-carotene, has similar solvent properties.

One of the richest sources of vitamin A is liver tissue, in particular the liver oils of marine fish and mammals.

The esters can be directly isolated from these oils by molecular distillation at very low pressure, a procedure that has been used extensively for the commercial preparation of vitamin A-rich oils.

Alternatively, vitamin A might be directly extracted with chloroform or with some other solvent combination, such as hexane together with ethanol, followed by purification of vitamin A by chromatography means.

To hydrolyze esters, not only of vitamin A and carotenoid but also of triglycerides and other lipids, saponification with KOH is commonly used, followed by extraction with organic solvents.

Retinol or its esters can be readily crystallized at low temperature from a variety of organic solvents, including ethyl formate, propylene oxide, and methanol.
Isolation of Vitamin A

Coenzyme Q10

2009-04-15T16:03:00.001-07:00

Coenzyme Q10
Coenzyme Q10 is a vitamin substance found in all parts of the body the action of which resembles that of vitamin E.

It may be an even more powerful antioxidant. It is also called ubiquinone.

There are ten common substances designated coenzyme Qs, but coenzyme Q10 is the only one found in human tissue.

This substance plays a critical role in the production of energy in every cell of the body.

It aids circulation, stimulates the immune system, increases tissue oxygenation, and has vital anti-aging effects.

Deficiencies of coenzymes Q10 have been linked to periodontal disease, diabetes and muscular dystrophy.

Supplemental has ability to counter histamine and therefore beneficial for people with allergies, asthma or respiratory disease.

Coenzyme Q10 is used by many health care professional. To treat anomalies of mental function, such as those associated with schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease.

It is also benefiting in fighting obesity, candidiasis, multiple sclerosis and diabetes.
Coenzyme Q10

Absorption and Transport of Thiamin

2009-03-04T16:54:00.000-08:00

Absorption and Transport of Thiamin
The bioavailability of thiamin occurring naturally in foods is believed to be high. Foods containing the highest concentration of thiamin are listed below:
Yeasts
Pork
Sunflower seeds
Legumes

Occasionally, however, anti-thiamin factor may be present in the diet. For example, thiaminases present in the raw fish catalyze the cleavage of thiamin, thereby destroying its activity.

These thiaminases are thermolabile, however and cooking of fish rendered the enzymes inactive. Other anti-thiamin factors that are thermostable may be found in tea and certain fruits and vegetables such as blueberries, black currents, Brussels sprouts and red cabbage.

Absorption of thiamin can be both active and passive, depending upon the amount of the vitamin presented for absorption.

At low physiologic concentrations, thiamin absorption is an active process. This Na+ dependent, carrier mediated absorption occurs primarily in the jejunum but can occur in other portions of the small intestine as well.

When intakes of thiamin are high, the absorption route is predominantly passive. The rate of thiamin absorption is always quite high except in the case of ethanol ingestion and/or folate deficiency.

Ethanol ingestion interferes with active transport of thiamin, and folate deficiency prevents the normal duplication of enterocytes, thereby decreasing absorption, both active and passive.

Within the mucosal cells, thiamin is converted into a phosphate ester, in which form it move into the plasma. To be active as a coenzyme, thiamin must be converted to its pyrophosphate (diphosphate) form.

Conversion to the active coenzyme form requires adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and thiamin pyrophosphokinase, an enzyme found in the liver and brain (and perhaps in other tissue as well).

Another form of thiamin (thiamin triphosphate, or ATP) is synthesized in the brain by action of a thiamin diphosphate (ADP) – ATP phosphoryl-transferase.
Absorption and Transport of Thiamin

Thiamin

2009-02-07T21:34:00.000-08:00

Thiamin
Thiamin (vitamin B1), the structural formula of which appears below, consists of a pyrimidines ruing and a thiazole moiety.

This vitamin is found widely distributed in foods, but the only foods considered good sources of thiamin are pork and whole grain or enriched grain products.

Persons who diets are made up primarily of refined, unenriched grain products are at extreme risk for becoming thiamin deficient and perhaps developing beriberi.

Beriberi is rare in United States because grain products that are not whole grain are routinely enriched.

Beriberi puzzled medical experts for years as it ravaged people of all ages in Asia. Doctors thought it was caused by something in food.

Not until the early 1900s did scientists discover that rice bran, the outer covering that was removed to create the polished white rice preferred by Asians, actually contained something that prevented the disease.

Thiamine was the first vitamin identified. In the 1920s, extracts of rice polishing were used to treat the disease.
Thiamin

Tocopherols

2009-01-17T03:17:00.000-08:00

Tocopherols
Seven closely related tocopherol compounds are known to occur in nature; they are identified by the prefix alpha, beta, gamma, delta, etc.

Tocopherols are the most widely distributed antioxidants in nature, and are the principal antioxidants in vegetable oils. Small amounts may be detected in animal fats, originating from the vegetable components of the animal’s diets.

As a result of their long alkyl chain, tocopherol are fat soluble, and are easily dispersed in fats and oil.

Vitamin E physiological activity decreases from alpha to delta homologs, while antioxidant activity increases in this order.

All naturally occurring tocopherols occur in the D form, whereas synthetic tocopherols contain a 50/50 mixture of the D and L isomers.

Synthetic D,L-alpha-tocopherol is marketed as an acetate ester for its increase stability to light and air. The physiological activity of D,L-alpha-tocopherol acetate, D,L-alpha-tocopherol, D-alpha-tocopherol acetate and D-alpha-tocopherol is 1.0, 1.1, 1.36 and 1.49 IU/mg, respectively.

Naturally occurring tocopherols are easily oxidized under adverse conditions. Tocopherols are heat sensitive and thus may be lost during processing operations.

Tocopherols functions as free-radical chain terminators by donating hydrogen atoms to free radicals, subsequently becoming oxidized to their corresponding quinone forms.

Tocopherols exert their greatest effect in protection of animals fats (such as tallow) carotenoids, and vitamin A. Tocopherols also functions as antioxidants in bacon, baked goods, butterfat, lard, margarine, rapeseed oil, safflower oil, and sunflower seed oil.
Tocopherols

Antioxidant Function of Vitamin

2009-01-03T06:26:00.000-08:00

Antioxidant Function of Vitamin
Oxidation and Free Radical Damage
Although oxygen is absolutely essential to metabolism, it can play a role in damaging cells. Most of the damaging effects of oxygen result from oxygen – containing free radicals.

Free radicals contain atoms with one or more unpaired electrons. A free radical is unstable and tends toward stabilization by pairing the electron; this can destabilize a neighboring molecule through the removal of one of its electrons. This sets up chain reaction as each seceding molecule is made reactive and then seeks to stabilize itself.

During these reactions, free radical oxidative damage can destroy cells. The basic process may be compared to the damage done to food as it becomes rancid.

Antioxidants
The destructive chain reaction started by free radicals can be broken by antioxidants, which are converted by the process into harmless derivatives.

Antioxidants help to maintain a stable internal environment in plants and animals. The body has many natural protective mechanisms to contain oxidative damage:

Antioxidant nutrients such B-carotene, vitamin C and E
Other small molecules with antioxidant properties, for example, glutathione and uric acid
Enzymes such as superoxide dismutase and glutathione peroxidase.

Antioxidants, Free Radicals and Cancer
If free radical damage occurs in the nucleus cell and damages DNA, it can cause mutations. If certain segments of the DNA are affected it may initiate malignant change, potentially leading to caner.

Since antioxidants can protect cells from free radical damage, it is possible that antioxidants may protect against carcinogenic agents.
Antioxidant Function of Vitamin

Vitamin A in History

2008-12-17T17:49:00.000-08:00

Vitamin A in History
Probably the first nutritional deficiency to be clearly recognized was night blindness. The ancient Egyptians, as indicated in the Papyrus Ebers and later in the London Medical Papyrus, recommended that juice squeezed from cooked liver topically applied to the eye to cure night blindness.

This writings date from 1500 BC, but the observations probably are of much earlier origin. The Greeks, who depended heavily on Egyptian medicine, recommended both the ingestion of cooked liver and its topical application as a cure for night blindness, a tradition that has persisted in many societies to his day.

Although interesting references to vitamin A deficiency and their cure can be found throughout history, the modern science of nutrition is only about a century old. The observation that experimental animals lose weight and die on purified diets was noted by many investigations toward the end of the nineteenth century.

In the early part of this century, specific factors necessary for growth and survival were beginning to be identified. Frederick Gowland Hopkins in England, for example, during the period 1906-1912 found that a growth stimulating principle from milk was present in an alcoholic extract of milk rather than in the ash.

During the same period, Stepp in Germany identified one of these “minimal quantitative factors” as a lipid. Soon thereafter, E. V. McCollum and Marquerite Davis in Wisconsin showed that butter or egg yolk, but not lard, contained a lipid soluble factor necessary for the growth of rats. In 1913 they coined the term “fat soluble A” and thereby attributed for the first time the growth stimulating property of these extracts to a single compound.

Approaching the problem is a very different way, Osborne and Mendel at Yale concomitantly found that cod liver oil or butter was an essential growth-promoting food for rats. The year 1913, therefore, was the beginning of the modern age of vitamin A exploration.
Vitamin A in History

Toxicity of Ascorbic acid

2008-12-09T00:35:00.000-08:00

Toxicity of Ascorbic acid
Many potentially harmful effects have been attributed to excessive intakes of ascorbic acid, but the frequency of recorded toxicity is quite low.

The fear of megadoses of vitamin C would lead to excessive oxalate excretion in the urine, thereby increasing the possibility of calcium oxalate kidney stones, has abated. Although massive doses of vitamin C do increase somewhat the amount of oxalate excreted, the amount usually remains within a normal (and safe) range. Only those persons pre disposed to urolithiasis are likely to be troubled by oxalate stones.

Large doses of ascorbic acid (approximately 4g) will increase the amount of uric acid excreted in the urine. The resulting urine acidification along with the excessive amount of urate being excreted could cause precipitation of urate crystals. However, the actual clinical importance of uricosuria with regard to urolithiasis is unknown.

Because ascorbic acid when ingested with sources of nonheme iron increases iron absorption, chronic high doses of vitamin C may be unsafe for those persons unable to regulate absorption of iron: individuals with hemochromatosis, thalassemia and sideroblastic anemia.

Excessive doses of vitamin C can cause diarrhea but the effect is not long lasting. The effect of excessive ascorbate excretion in the urine and feces, however can interfere with a variety of clinical laboratory tests: false negative tests for fecal occult blood may generated, occult blood in the urine may not be detected; tests for glucose in the urine can be rendered invalid.

Based upon the ratio of toxic reactions recorded to the number of persons mega-dosing with vitamin C, one must conclude that, despite all the postulated potential problems, a high intake of ascorbate is relatively harmless.
Toxicity of Ascorbic acid

Vitamins in Fruits

2008-11-23T16:12:00.000-08:00

Vitamins in Fruits
Fresh fruits and vegetables contribute about 91% of vitamin C, 48% of vitamin A, 27% of vitamin B6, 17% of thiamin and 15% of niacin to Americans diet.

The following fruits are important contributors (based on their vitamin content and the amount consumed) to the supply of indicated vitamins in the U.S diets:

Vitamin A: apricot, peach, cherry orange, mango, papaya, persimmon, pineapple, cantaloupe, watermelon

Vitamin C: strawberry, orange, grapefruit, kiwifruit, pineapple, banana, apple, cantaloupe

Niacin: peach, banana, orange, apricot

Riboflavin: banana, peach, orange, apple, avocado

Thiamin: orange, banana, grapefruit, apple
Vitamins in Fruits

Bioflavonoids – Functions and Sources

2008-11-10T19:12:00.000-08:00

Bioflavonoids – Functions and Sources
Although bioflavonoids are not true vitamins in the strictest sense, they are sometimes referred to as vitamin P. Bioflavonoids are essential for the absorption of vitamin C, and the two should be taken together. There are many different bioflavonoids, including citrin, eriodictyol, flavones, hesperetin, hesperidin, quercetin, quercetrin, and rutin. The human body cannot produce bioflavonoids, so they must be supplied in the diet.

Bioflavonoids are used extensively in the treatment of athletic injuries because they relieve pain, bumps and bruises. They also reduce pain located in the legs or across the back, and lessen symptoms associated with the prolonged bleeding and low serum calcium. Bioflavonoids act synergistically with vitamin C to protect and to preserve the structure of capillaries. In addition, bioflavonoids have an antibacterial effect and promote circulation, stimulate bile production, lower cholesterol levels, and treat and prevent cataracts. When taken with vitamin C, bioflavonoids also reduce the symptoms of oral herpes.

Peppers, buckwheat, blackcurrants and the white material just beneath the peel of citrus fruits contain flavonoids. Sources of bioflavonoids include apricots, blackberries, cherries, grapefruit, grapes, lemons, oranges, plums and prunes. Herbs that contain bioflavonoids include chervil, elder berries, hawthorn berry, horsetail, rose hips and shepherd’s purse.
Bioflavonoids – Functions and Sources

Vitamin K

2008-11-01T03:12:00.000-07:00

Vitamin K
Vitamin K is needed for the production of prothrombin which is necessary for blood clotting. It is also essential for bone formation and repair; it is necessary for the synthesis of osteocalcin, the protein in bone tissue on which calcium crystallizes. Consequently, it may help prevent osteoporosis.

Vitamin k plays important role in the intestine and aids in converting glucose into glycogen for storage in the liver, promoting healthy liver function. It may increase resistance to infection in children and help prevent cancers that target the inner linings of the organs. It aids in promoting longevity. A deficiency of this vitamin can cause abnormal and/or internal bleeding.

These are three forms of vitamin K. The first is vitamin K1 (phylloquinone or phytonadione), which comes from plants and makes up your dietary vitamin K. The second is vitamin K2, a family of substances called bacteria and also found in butter, cow liver, chicken, egg yolks, fermented soybean products, and some cheese. Third, there is vitamin K3 (menadione), which is synthetic, man made substance.

Vitamin K deficiency can be caused by any of the following:

A poor diet
Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis
Liver disease that interferes vitamin K storage
The use of antibiotics, cholesterol-lowering drugs, mineral oil, aspirin and blood thinners

Low blood levels of vitamin K are associated with insulin release and glucose regulation problems, and may lead to low bone density in women. Supplementing the diet with this vitamin enhances then bone building process by attracting calcium to the bone. Supplemental vitamin K also reduces the amount of calcium in the urine and frees up more calcium to be used by the bone-building process.
Vitamin K

Vitamin C: Function and Action

2008-10-21T02:42:00.000-07:00

Vitamin C: Function and Action
Despite its uncomplicated structure, vitamin C apparently has a very complex functional role in the body. Although the respond of susceptible organisms to a deficiency and replenishment of vitamin C has been carefully observed and the biochemicals reactions in which vitamin C may participate have been identified, no unequivocal mechanisms of action have been established.

The only functional role of the vitamin to be categorically established is its ability to prevent and or cure scurvy. In this role, however, it must affect in some degree every bodily function because the vitamin is needed literally to hold the body’s cell together. Normal development of cartilage, bone, and dentine is dependent upon an adequate supply of vitamin C. Additionally, the basement membrane lining the capillaries, the intracellular cement holding together the endothelial cells, and the scar tissue responsible for wound healing all require the presence of vitamin C for their formation and maintenance.

Although ascorbate is a powerful reducing agent and may be the preferred reductant in certain oxidation-reduction reaction, its action appears to be nonspecific. There are suggestions that the function of ascorbate in the cells may be to balance or to set the redox potential of other cellular, water soluble substances. The oxidized form of vitamin, dehydroascorbate (DHA), is readily reduced by glutathione; therefore it is possible that the main biological role of DHA is to maintain some glutathione in its oxidized form in the tissue. Glutathione serves as a sulfhydryl buffer in animal cells, cycling between its reduced form and its oxidized form.
Vitamin C: Function and Action

Absorption and Transport of Vitamin C in Human Body

2008-10-14T00:41:00.000-07:00

Absorption and Transport of Vitamin C in Human Body
Humans are one of the few animals unable to synthesize ascorbic acid (vitamin C). Other primates, flying mammals, guinea pigs, and birds belonging to Order Passeriformes make up the additional animals to whom ascorbic acid is a vitamin.

Ascorbic acid (vitamin C) is synthesized from glucose. Animals that require an exogenous source of ascorbic acid are unable to synthesize gulonolactone oxidase, the last enzyme needed for the conversion of glucose to ascorbic acid.

The ascorbic acid contained in foods appears to be readily available and absorbed. Absorption of ascorbate occurs primarily via an active transport system, but simple diffusion may also contribute somewhat to uptake of the vitamin. Most of absorption occurs in the distal portion of the small intestine with degree of absorption decreasing with increased intake of the vitamin. Absorption rate can vary from 16% at very high intakes (approximately 12g) to 98% at low intakes (<20mg). But over a range of usual intakes from food (20 to 120mg/d), the average for overall absorption is around 90%.

The degree of absorption as suggested by the urinary excretion of the vitamin appears to be adversely affected by pectin, zinc, copper, and iron. At present it is unknown whether the decreased urinary ascorbic acid caused by the presence of the above three minerals reflects a less efficient absorption or an increased oxidation of the vitamin before it can be absorbed.

Absorbed ascorbic acid is transported in the plasma as a free anion, and it readily equilibrates with the body pool of the vitamin. The size of the pool therefore varies with the intake. Ascorbate moves freely into the cells, but the concentration is much greater in some tissues than in others. The highest concentration of the vitamin is found in the adrenal gland (30 to 40 mg/100g wet tissue), with the cortex having higher concentration than the medullar. Other tissues with particularly high concentration are the pituitary gland and the retina. An intermediate level of the vitamin is found in the liver, lungs, pancreas and leukocytes, while smaller amounts occur in the kidneys muscles and red blood cells. Tissue concentration of the vitamin usually exceeds the plasma level by three to ten times, the degree of concentration depending upon the specific tissue.
Absorption and Transport of Vitamin C in Human Body

Fat Soluble and Water Soluble Vitamins

2008-10-04T21:31:00.000-07:00

Fat Soluble and Water Soluble Vitamins
Vitamins can be defined as essential organic micronutrients that are involved in fundamental functions of the body, such as growth, maintenance of health and metabolism. Because of these substances must be supplied wholly or partially by the diet. Although the clinician should be able to recognize the syndrome caused by a lack of the vitamin in the case of a deficiency, it is more relevant in this country of abundant and varied food supply for the nutrition professional to think in terms of what a specific vitamin does rather than what disease it [prevents. Unfortunately, at the present time it is often impossible to relate directly the function of the vitamin to its deficiency syndrome.

Vitamins for the most part are not related chemically and differ in their physiologic roles. The broad classifications of water soluble vitamins and fat soluble vitamins are made because of certain properties common to each group. For instance, absorption and transport of fat soluble vitamins are closely associated with the absorption and transport of lipids; optimal absorption requires the presence of bile slats, these vitamins can also be stored in body lipids, although the amounts stored varies widely among the four fat soluble vitamins.

The water soluble vitamins are handled quite differently by the body. Their absorption requires no formation of micelles and with the exception of cyanocobalamin (vitamin B12), they cannot be retained by the body for long periods. Any storage occurring, results from their binding to enzymes and transport proteins. Water soluble vitamins are excreted in the urine wherever plasma levels exceed renal thresholds.
Fat Soluble and Water Soluble Vitamins

Vitamins in General

2008-09-26T08:40:00.000-07:00

Vitamins in General
20th century marks the most exciting era in the history of nutrition science. It was during this time that the discovery of vitamins or “accessory growth factors,” began. Researchers found that for life and growth animals required something more than a chemically defined diet consisting of purified carbohydrate, protein, and aft, the essential mineral, and water.

The first of these dietary essentials discovered was and antiberiberi substance isolated from rice polishing by Funk, a Polish biochemist. Because the substance was an amine and necessary for life, Funk gave it the name vitamine. Very shortly thereafter McCollum and Davis extracted a factor from butter fat that they called fat soluble A to distinguish it from the water soluble antiberiberi substance. These two essential factors became known as vitamine A and vitamine B. As each additional vitamin was discovered, it was assigned a letter; the e on vitamine was dropped to give the general name vitamin because only a few of the essential substances were found to be amines.

As the chemical structure of the vitamin became known through its isolation and synthesis; it was given a chemical name. When the chemical name was assigned, it was assumed that the name applied to one substance with one specific activity. Now it is evident that a vitamin may have a variety of functions and that vitamin activity may be found in several closely related compounds known as vitamers. An excellent example of this is vitamin A, which has several seemly unrelated functions and encompasses not only retinol but also retinal and retinoic acid.
Vitamins in General

Ascorbic Acid

2008-09-09T21:31:00.000-07:00

Ascorbic Acid
Ascorbic acid or vitamin C is required for the formation of intercellular substance in the body, including dentine, cartilage, and the protein network of bone. Hence, it is important in tooth formation, the healing of broken bones, and the healing of the wounds. It may be important to oxidation-reduction reactions in the body and to the production of certain hormones.

Deficiency of vitamin C cause scurvy (spongy gums, loose teeth, swollen joints, hemorrhages in various tissues, etc.) and impaired healing of wounds. Orange juice is an excellent source of vitamin C. Tomato juice, if it has been processed properly, is a fair source of this vitamin. Green pepper, cabbage, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts are excellent to good sources of this vitamin C, while other vegetables such as peas, spinach, and lettuce are good to fair sources. Many fruits contain fair amounts of vitamin C.
Ascorbic Acid

Folic Acid and Cobalamin

2008-09-03T23:14:00.000-07:00

Folic Acid and Cobalamin
Folic Acid
Folic acid is required for the formation of blood cells by the bone marrow and is involved in the formation of the blood pigment hemoglobin. It is also required for the synthesis of some amino acids. Deficiency symptoms involve pernicious anemia. Nuts, dried beans, turnips, lentils, corn and shredded wheat are good sources of this vitamin, while liver and wheat bran are excellent.

Cobalamin
B12 or cobalamin is a very complex chemical compound. This vitamin is required for the normal development of red blood cells, and a deficiency in it causes acute pernicious anemia and a variety of other disorders. The exact requirement of vitamin B12 is yet unknown, since some B12 is synthesized by bacteria in the intestine. The organs of animals are excellent sources of vitamin B12 and the muscles of warm-blooded animals and fish are good sources.
Folic Acid and Cobalamin

Pantothenic acid

2008-08-27T20:31:00.000-07:00

Pantothenic acid
Pantothenic acid, a vitamin required for normal growth, nerve development and normal skin is a component of enzyme systems involved in metabolism (e.g., acetylation processes). It is believes and there is evidence, that Pantothenic acid is intimately related to riboflavin in human nutrition.
Deficiencies symptoms can be successfully treated with either compound. Deficiencies of this vitamin cause degeneration of nerve tissues with resulting muscular weakness, numbness and malaise.

Scaling skin and dermatitis, diarrhea with bloody stools, and ulceration of the intestine are also deficiency symptoms. The organs of animals (liver, heart, kidneys) and eggs, whole wheat products and peanuts are excellent sources of Pantothenic acid. The muscular tissue of animals, cheese, beans, cauliflower, broccoli, mushrooms and salmons are very good sources of this vitamin.
Pantothenic acid

B Vitamins – Niacin, Pyridoxine and Biotin

2008-08-08T02:38:00.000-07:00

B Vitamins – Niacin, Pyridoxine and Biotin
Niacin (nicotinic acid) is one of vitamin B. This compound is part of an enzyme system regulating reduction reactions in the body. It is also a compound that dilates blood vessels. Deficiency of niacin causes pellagra (a disease that causes diarrhea, dermatitis, nervous disorders, and sometimes death). The requirement for niacin is about ten times that for thiamin. Beef, hog and lamb livers are excellent sources of niacin. Other organs and the musculature of these animals are good to fair sources.

Pyridoxine (Vitamin B6) is part of the enzyme system that remove CO2 from the acid group (COOH) of certain amino acids and transfers amine groups (NH2) from one compound to another in the body. It is also needed for the utilization of certain amino acids. Deficiency manifestations are dermatitis around the eyes, eyebrows, and angles of the mouth. They may so be a sensory neuritis and a decrease in certain white blood cells and increase in others. Bananas, barley, beef and beef organs, cabbage, raw carrots, yellow corn, lamb and the organs of lamb, malt ,molasses, peanuts, pork and the organs of hogs, potatoes, rice, salmon, sardine, tomatoes, tuna, wheat bran and germ, flour and yams are goods to excellent source of pyridoxine.

Biotin is reported to be a coenzyme in the synthesis of aspartic acid, which plays a part in a deaminase system and in other processes involving the fixation of carbon dioxide. Deficiency of this compound is unusual, but can be demonstrated by the feeding of raw egg white, which contains the substance, avidin, which ties up biotin. Deficiencies of biotin cause scaling skin, skin lesion and a deterioration of nerve fibers. Due to the production of biotin by microbiological flora of the intestine, the requirement for this compound is not known, Liver is an excellent source of biotin, and peanut, peas, beans, and whole cooked eggs are good sources.
B Vitamins – Niacin, Pyridoxine and Biotin

B Vitamins – Thiamin and Riboflavin

2008-07-29T19:46:00.000-07:00

B Vitamins – Thiamin and Riboflavin
Thiamin
The B vitamins are water soluble. Thiamin – vitamin B1 is involved in all bodily oxidations that lead to the formation of carbon dioxide. It is necessary for nerve function, appetite, and normal digestion. It is also required for growth, fertility, and lactation. The symptoms of vitamin deficiency are retardation of growth, palpitation and enlargement of the heart, hypertension, and beriberi. The various effects of a disturbance of the nerve centers such as forgetfulness or difficulty in thinking are other manifestations of vitamin B1 deficiency. The vitamin is often lacking in the diet because much of the naturally occurring amounts of it in food are destroyed during the processing of the food. The adult requirement of vitamin B1 is related to the food (calorie) intake. Fresh pork is an excellent source of vitamin B1 and the heart, liver, and kidneys of pork, beef and lamb are fair sources.

Riboflavin
Riboflavin – vitamin B2 is water soluble. This vitamin makes up a part of enzyme systems involved in the oxidation and reduction of different materials in the body. Deficiency of riboflavin generally results in growth retardation and may result in vision impairment, sealing of the skin, and lesions on mucous tissue. Neuritis is another deficiency effect. The minimum intake of riboflavin for an adult is about 2.0mg per day. The liver and kidney of pork, beef, and lamb are excellent sources of riboflavin, and the heart of these animals is a good source. Fair amounts of riboflavin are found in the muscular tissues of pork, beef, and lamb, while more is found in veal.
B Vitamins – Thiamin and Riboflavin

Ascorbic acid function as antioxidant

2008-07-15T01:26:00.000-07:00

Ascorbic acid function as antioxidant
L-ascorbic acid, its salts (sodium-L-ascorbic and calcium-L-ascorbate), and its isomers (D- and L-isoascorbic acid) are classified as generally recognized as safe substances by FDA. The L stereoisomer of ascorbic acid is the only from which carries significant vitamin activity. The vitamin activity of D-ascorbic is only one-tenth that of the L-form. The activity of D- and L-isoascorbic acid is only one twentieth that of L-ascorbic acid. FDA requires that label declaration if D-isoascorbic acid be made using the common name erythorbic acid to prevent potential misleading of consumers.

Ascorbic acid’s function in food systems is complex and depends on a number of factors. Its antioxidants activity is affected by the oxidation-reduction potential of the food system, time, PH, oxygen, trace metals, enzymes, other oxidants, and the concentration of the vitamin in comparison to the concentration of other reactants in the oxidation process. Other than bisulfites, ascorbic acids, its salt and its fatty acid ester (ascorbyl palmitate) are the only antioxidants permitted in foods which are capable of scavenging oxygen out of solution. Ascorbic acid is therefore, commonly used in canned or bottled products, particularly in beverages with headspace of air.

As an oxygen scavenger, ascorbic acid serves as a reducing agent. It transfers its hydrogen atoms to oxygen, making the oxygen unavailable for further reaction. In the process, the ascorbic acid is oxidized to dehydroascorbic acid, which in turn can function as an oxidizing agent by removing hydrogen from reducing agents such as sulfhydryl groups. Ascorbic acid and dehydroascorbic acid are thus reversible forms of vitamin C and both have physiological activity. Further, ascorbic acid may exert a chelating action, binding heavy chemical, if present will promote oxidation. When chelated with heavy metals, ascorbic acid loses its physiological vitamin activity.
Ascorbic acid function as antioxidant

Vitamins as antioxidants in processed foods

2008-06-29T02:31:00.000-07:00

Vitamins as antioxidants in processed foods
Oxidation, a series of chemical reactions yielding undesirable and products (off odors, colors, and flavors), may occur in many fruits and vegetables and foods high in fat and oil during exposure to air, light, heat, heavy metals, certain pigments or alkaline conditions. Enzymatic browning may occur in some fruits and vegetables, particularly apples, banana, peaches, pear, and potatoes, which contain phenolase enzymes. When these fruits and vegetables are cut or sliced and exposed to air, the phenolases catalyze oxidation of phenolics compounds to ortho-quinone compounds, which then polymerize, forming brown pigments.

Oxidation in lipids (autoxidation) and in fat and oil containing foods, on the other hand, occurs as a result of the susceptibility of fatty acids (building blocks of fats and oils) to oxidations and subsequent formation of reactive compounds referred to as “free radicals”.

The free radicals promote the development of a series of chemical reactions which lead to the production of off-flavors, colors, odors, and rancidity. While both saturated and unsaturated fatty acids are susceptible to oxidation, unsaturated fatty acids are significantly more susceptible than their saturated counterparts at room temperatures and at elevated temperatures.

Antioxidants, as defined by Food and Drug Administration are “substances used to preserve food by retarding deterioration, rancidity or discoloration due to oxidation.” Some oxidations have more than one function. For example, Ascorbic acids may function as a free-radical chain terminator, and oxygen scavenger, or a metal chelator. Under certain conditions, it may act as a promoter for oxidation.
Vitamins as antioxidants in processed foods

Vitamin K and Its Role in Our Body

2008-06-10T21:43:00.000-07:00

Vitamin K and Its Role in Our Body
Vitamin K denotes a group of lipophilic, hydrophobic vitamins that are needed for the posttranslational modification of certain proteins. Chemically they are 2-methyl-1,4-naphthoquinone derivatives.

Vitamin K is fat soluble. It is essential for the synthesis of prothrombin, a compound involved in the clotting of blood. Cabbage, spinach, cauliflower, and liver are especially good sources of vitamin K, although moderate amounts are found in many other vegetables, as well, as in cereals.

Although vitamin K is a fat-soluble vitamin, the body stores very little of it and its stores are rapidly depleted without regular dietary intake. Perhaps, because of its limited ability to store vitamin K, the body recycles it through a process called the vitamin K cycle. The vitamin K cycle allows a small amount of vitamin K to function in the gamma-carboxylation of proteins many times, decreasing the dietary requirement.

The significant symptom of vitamin K deficiency in humans and in animals is the loss of the ability of the blood to clot which is, of course, a dangerous condition that can result in death whenever bleeding from cuts occurs. It is believed that humans ordinarily receive adequate amounts of vitamin K in the diet.
Vitamin K and Its Role in Our Body

What is Vitamin E?

2008-05-24T22:50:00.000-07:00

What is Vitamin E?
Vitamin E, of which there are four different forms (the tocopherol), is fat soluble. The tocopherols have the same name except with the prefix alpha-, beta-, gamma-, and delta- (the first four letters of the Greek alphabet). The four compounds are closely related, with some difference in the molecular weight and in the position and number of certain molecular constituents.

Function of Vitamin E
The vitamin is an antioxidant that serves to prevent the oxidation of some body components, such as unsaturated fatty acids, and is necessary for reproduction. Almost all foods contain some vitamin E, although corn oil, cottonseed oil, margarine, and peanut oil are especially good sources of this vitamin.

Vitamin E deficiency
While the symptoms for vitamin E deficiency in humans are not clearly established, experiments with various animals have shown that vitamin E deficiency has an adverse effect on reproduction with apparent irreversible injury to the germinal epithelium. Other symptoms noted in animal studies include injury to the central nervous system, growth retardation, muscular dystrophy, and interference with normal heart action.
What is Vitamin E?

Gene Behind Devastating Vitamin B12-Related Disorder Discovered By Researchers

2008-04-16T22:49:00.000-07:00

Gene Behind Devastating Vitamin B12-Related Disorder Discovered By Researchers
Swiss, British and Canadian researchers have identified the gene responsible for a rare but serious genetic disorder and have simultaneously provided more clues as to how vitamin B12 works in the body. Their results will be published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Scientists at the University Children's Hospitals of Basel and Zurich in Switzerland, Brunel University in West London, England and McGill University and the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) in Montreal, Canada, have discovered the MMADHC gene, the role it plays in the metabolism of vitamin B12, and its relationship to the vitamin B12-related disorder, isolated and combined homocystinuria and methylmalonic aciduria (MMA) of the cblD variety..

Authors of the study include Dr. David Coelho, Dr. Terttu Suormala and Dr. Brian Fowler of the University Children's Hospital, Basel, Dr. David Rosenblatt and his graduate student Jordan Lerner-Ellis of McGill and the MUHC and colleagues at the University Children's Hospital, Zurich, the University of Zurich and Brunel University. In 2005, Dr. Rosenblatt and his McGill and MUHC colleagues made a related breakthrough involving another gene, called MMACHC.

Isolated and combined homocystinuria and MMA of the cblD variety is a rare genetic inability to process vitamin B12, which is usually diagnosed in infancy or childhood. Patients may suffer from a range of debilitating health problems, including serious developmental delay, psychosis and anemia. Despite the variety of symptoms presented by the disorder, this research shows all of them are caused by mutations in different parts of the same gene.

Vitamin B12 is an essential water-soluble vitamin found in animal-based foods -- including dairy, eggs, meat, poultry, fish and shellfish -- but not in plants. It is vital for the synthesis of red blood cells and the healthy maintenance of the nervous system, and also helps control homocysteine levels.. Excess homocysteine is associated with increased risk of heart disease, stroke and dementia.

"Most patients with B12 problems have difficulty absorbing the vitamin, or may be vegans who don't get it in their diet," said Dr. Rosenblatt, Chair of McGill's Department Human Genetics, Director of Medical Genetics in Medicine at the MUHC, and Chief of Medical Genetics at the Jewish General Hospital. "However, this select group of patients becomes extremely sick because their bodies cannot transform the vitamin into its active forms."

The research relied heavily on the expertise developed at McGill and Basel as world referral centres for the diagnosis of B12-related genetic diseases, Dr. Rosenblatt said. The study was funded in part by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).

"This important paper - published in the world's highest impact medical journal - is on-going testimony to the international leadership of Dr. Rosenblatt and his colleagues at McGill in their studies of vitamin B12 and the genetic diseases that disrupt the ability of the body to use vitamin B12," said Dr. Roderick McInnes, Scientific Director of CIHR's Institute of Genetics. "This research also exemplifies the outstanding genetics research done by Canadian scientists."

"This discovery offers earlier diagnosis and treatment options for this serious disease, and also helps explain the mechanism of how vitamin B12 works in everyone," said Dr. Rosenblatt.
Gene Behind Devastating Vitamin B12-Related Disorder Discovered By Researchers
Source: medicalnewstoday.com

Vitamin D and heart disease

2008-02-06T22:03:00.000-08:00

Vitamin D deficiency has been shown to lead to cardiovascular problems in mice. Might that occur in people as well?

A study analyzed data on 1739 men and women (average age, 59) without cardiovascular disease. About 40% had high blood pressure.

In a five year period, 120 people developed a heart- related problem such as heart attack, stroke, angina or heart failure. Based on blood tests, people moderately deficient in vitamin D were 62% more likely to have had heart trouble than were those with higher vitamin D levels. If they also had high blood pressure, their risk increased to twice that of others. Overall, the greater the vitamin deficiency, the higher the risk of heart problems.

Who may be affected? People with vitamin D deficiency, which affects n estimate third to half of otherwise healthy people of middle age and older. Food sources of vitamin D include milk, fortified cereal, salmon, mackerel, sardines, and tuna, Sunshine is another source.

Vitamin D

2008-01-19T05:59:00.000-08:00

Vitamin D (calciferol or activated ergosterol) is fat soluble. This vitamin is necessary for normal tooth and bone formation.

Deficiencies in vitamin D result in rickets (deformities of bones, such as bow-legs and curvature of the spine) and teeth defects. Fish oils, and especially fish liver oils, are excellent sources of vitamin D.

The human body also able to synthesize this vitamin form components of the skin exposure to ultraviolet light or sunlight. Vitamin D is routinely added to milk.

History of vitamin D

Man is reported to have been aware since early antiquity of the substance we now know as vitamin D. The first scientific description of a vitamin D-deficiency, namely rickets, was provided in the 17th century by both Dr. Daniel Whistler (1645) and Professor Francis Glisson (1650). The major breakthrough in understanding the causative factors of rickets was the development in the period 1910 - 1930 of nutrition as an experimental science and the appreciation of the existence of vitamins.

Considering the fact that now we accept that the biologically active form of vitamin D is a steroid hormone, it is somewhat ironic that vitamin D, through a historical accident, became classified as a vitamin. It was in 1919/20 that Sir Edward Mellanby, working with dogs raised exclusively indoors (in the absence of sunlight or ultraviolet light), devised a diet that allowed him to unequivocally establish that the bone disease, rickets was caused by a deficiency of a trace component present in the diet. In 1921 he wrote, "The action of fats in rickets is due to a vitamin or accessory food factor which they contain, probably identical with the fat-soluble vitamin." Furthermore, he established that cod liver oil was an excellent antirachitic agent.

Shortly thereafter E.V. McCollum and associates observed that by bubbling oxygen through a preparation of the "fat-soluble vitamin" they were able to distinguish between vitamin A ( which was inactivated) and vitamin D (which retained activity). In 1923 Goldblatt and Soames clearly identified that when a precursor of vitamin D in the skin (7-dehydrocholesterol) was irradiated with sunlight or ultraviolet light, a substance equivalent to the fat-soluble vitamin was produced. Hess and Weinstock confirmed the dictum that "light equals vitamin D". They excised a small portion of skin, irradiated it with ultraviolet light, and then fed it to groups of rachitic rats. The skin that had been irradiated provided an absolute protection against rickets, whereas the unirradiated skin provided no protection whatsoever; clearly, these animals were able to produce adequate quantities of "the fat-soluble vitamin", suggesting that it was not an essential dietary trace constituent. In parallel studies, Steenbock and Black found that rat food which was irradiated with ultra violet light also acquired the property of being antirachitic. However, because of the rapid rise of the science of nutrition -- and the discovery of the families of water-soluble and fat-soluble vitamins -- it rapidly became firmly established that the antirachitic factor was to be classified as a vitamin.

Vitamin A

2007-11-11T07:15:00.000-08:00

Vitamin A is a fat soluble vitamin. It is found only in animals, although a number of plants contain carotene, from which vitamin A can be produced in the body once the plants containing carotene are eaten.

Vitamin A may be formed in the body from the yellow pigments (containing carotene) of many fruits and vegetables, especially carrots. Vitamin A is also found in the fats and especially in the liver oils many saltwater fish.

Vitamin A is required for vision. Epithelial cells (those cells present in the lining) of body cavities and in the skin and glands) require vitamin A. This vitamin also required for resistance to infection. Deficiency of vitamin A may cause impairment in bone formation, impairment of night vision, malfunction of epithelial tissues, and defects in the enamel teeth.

Vitamin and Food Processing

2007-05-26T20:32:00.000-07:00

Vitamin
Modern food processing preserve food quality, controls food spoilage and disease-causing microorganisms, preserve desirable sensory qualities such as flavor, odor, texture, and appearance, preserve nutrients content, and in many case enhances the nutrient value as well.

Vitamins are organic compounds that are necessary in very small amounts for the maintenance of life. Most vitamins can be synthesize by the body and must be supplied by the diet. Vitamin functions in biochemical reactions within all living cells, and are necessary for metabolism.

Moreover, vitamins play an important role as functional additives in food processing. The chemical properties of certain vitamins provide significant functional benefits in processed foods.
The technical used for vitamins and their various application are as below.
Antioxidants
Colorants
Inhibitions of can corrosion
Protection pf taste, flavor and clarity
Prevention of black spot prevention
Prevention of nitrosamine formation
Flour dough improvement
Maintenance of color in meat package in controlled atmosphere.
Vitamin

Water soluble Vitamins

2007-04-27T18:42:00.000-07:00

Vitamin
Vitamin are chemically unrelated organic substances that are grouped together because each is essential in the diet in minute amounts and is required for specific metabolic reactions within the cells. Traditionally they are classified according to their solubility water and fat solvents and, from a physiological standpoint; this property determines the pattern of transport excretion and storage within the human body.

Several of the vitamins, while conveniently considered as a single substance, actually are a group of structurally related compound that tend to behave alike physiologically. In general however, physiologically function tends to be limited to one active form to which the related forms are converted.

Whether a substance must be supplied intact to the cell or can be synthesized by the cell depends on the assortment of enzymes peculiar to the cell species. A substance, therefore, may be a vitamin for one species but not for another. The difference lies whether the substances is required in the diet or whether it can be synthesized by human body.
Vitamin

Vitamin D Deficiency

2007-03-03T05:49:00.000-08:00

Vitamin

Our skin evolved to create vitamin D when it's exposed to the sun's ultraviolet (UV) rays. So, when most of the world's population lived in or near equatorial regions, people had no shortfall of the nutrient, with their bodies making from 10,000 to 20,000 international units (IUs) of this vitamin each day.
However, over the millennia, more and more people moved to high latitudes, where up to half the year, solar-UV exposure isn't enough to fuel vitamin D production in skin. More recently, justifiable concerns about sunburns and skin cancer have prompted increasing shares of people—even at high latitudes—to don sun-blocking clothing. Unfortunately, what's good for skin protection is bad for natural vitamin D production.

It also can be bad for health, a host of studies has recently indicated. For decades, vitamin D was appreciated largely for its role in boosting the absorption of calcium, important for bone health. However, over the past decade and especially the past 5 years, research has linked a broad range of additional benefits to having ample vitamin D. It's shown that the nutrient fights cancers and diabetes, is the pivotal feedstock for a hormone that protects muscle, and inhibits autoimmune disorders from multiple sclerosis and lupus to inflammatory bowel disease.

Moreover, many of these newly recognized benefits of vitamin D rely on blood concentrations of the nutrient far higher than those needed to protect bone. Although high by dietary standards, these aren't really megadoses. Rather, they reflect amounts typical of what people can naturally generate within their skin if they spend a lot of time outdoors in a low latitude.
However, with modern habits and work routines, few of us create these higher doses of vitamin D in our bodies throughout the year. So, we rely on our diets for most of this essential nutrient, even though few foods are naturally rich sources of vitamin D and only a few, such as milk, are supplemented with anything more than meager amounts.

Although vitamin pills can provide much or all of the U.S. recommended daily intake (RDI) of D for children and adults—200 to 600 IU, depending on age—bone and mineral researchers have lately been recommending that people get much, much more. In fact, some scientists have advised the federal government to boost the vitamin D RDI up to at least 1,000 IU and to bump up the certified-safe limit beyond the current 2,000 IU.

Vitamin

The Vitamin Definition

2007-01-20T19:20:00.000-08:00

Vitamin
The vitamin known to be essential for human being for human growth, maintenance, and health are listed below.

Vitamin B1
Vitamin B2
Vitamin B3
Vitamin B5
Vitamin B6
Vitamin B12
Biotin
Choline
Inositol
Lipoic acid
PABA (p-amino benzoic asid)
Vitamin C
Vitamin A
Vitamin D
Vitamin E
Vitamin K

It may noted that, by definition, a vitamin is a complex, a vitamin is a complex organic substance, required a very small quantities in the diet relative to all other nutrients save the trace of elements.

Vitamins are essential in that they cannot produced by our own tissues at all or in sufficient quantities to supply our needs under normal circumstances. There are afew vitaminlike substances that are not considered essential, as they are usually produced by our own tissues in sufficient amounts or are part of other vitamins or nutrients we ingest (vitamin D, choline, lipoic acid, p-aminobenzoic acid, and inositol.
Vitamin

Vitamin A

2006-12-12T05:25:00.000-08:00

Whole eggs, whole milk, and liver are among the few foods that naturally contain vitamin A. Vitamin A is present in the fat portion of whole milk, so it is not found in fat-free milk. Most fat-free milk and dried nonfat milk solids sold in the US are fortified with vitamin A.

There are many other fortified foods such as breakfast cereals that also provide vitamin A. It is important to regularly eat foods that provide vitamin A or beta-carotene even though your body can store vitamin A in the liver. Stored vitamin A will help meet your needs when your intake from food is low.

When can vitamin A deficiency occur?
Vitamin A deficiency is rare in the US, but it is still a major public health problem in the developing world. It is most often associated with protein/calorie malnutrition and affects over 120 million children worldwide.

It is also a leading cause of childhood blindness. In countries where immunization programs are not widespread and vitamin A deficiency is common, millions of children die each year from complications of infectious diseases such as measles.

Signs of vitamin A deficiency include night blindness, dry skin, and decreased resistance to infections.

In ancient Egypt it was known that night blindness could be cured after eating liver, which was later found to be a rich source of vitamin A. Vitamin A deficiency contributes to blindness by making the eye very dry, damaging the cornea of the eye (called xerophthalmia), and promoting damage to the retina of the eye.

Extremely dry skin, dry hair, sloughing off of skin, and broken fingernails are other common signs of vitamin A deficiency. Vitamin A deficiency also decreases resistance to infections, and may contribute to the pneumonia associated with vitamin A deficiency.

There is increased interest in subclinical forms of vitamin A deficiency, described as low storage levels of vitamin A that do not cause overt deficiency symptoms.

This mild degree of vitamin A deficiency may increase children's risk of developing respiratory and diarrheal infections, decrease their growth rate, slow bone development, and decrease their likelihood of survival from serious illness.

Children living in the United States who are considered to be at increased risk for subclinical vitamin A deficiency include:
*toddlers and preschool age children
*children living at or below the poverty level
*children with inadequate health care or immunizations
*children living in areas with known nutritional deficiencies
*recent immigrants or refugees from developing countries with high incidence of vitamin A deficiency or measles, and
*children with diseases of the pancreas, liver, intestines, or with inadequate fat digestion/absorption.
Vitamin A