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
Vitamins are defined as a group of complex organic compounds present in minute amounts in natural foodstuff that are essential to normal metabolism and lack of which in the diet causes deficiency diseases. Vitamins are required in trace amounts (micrograms to milligrams per day) in the diet for health, growth and reproduction.
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