This blog post will walk you through: vitamins are organic compounds they.
What Are Vitamins?
Fat-Soluble And Water-Soluble Vitamins
Vitamins are either soluble, or dissolvable, in fat or water. Dietary fats help the body absorb fat-soluble vitamins through the intestinal tract. They leave the body via the urine.
Vitamin C and all the B vitamins are water-soluble . A balanced, varied diet that contains plenty of fruits and vegetables should be the primary source of vitamins. The Department of Health and Human Services provide up-to-date guidelines detailing the best ways to get enough nutrients from the diet.
Fortified foods and supplements may be appropriate in some cases, however, such as during pregnancy, for people with restricted diets, and for people with specific health issues. Anyone taking supplements should be careful not to exceed the maximum dose, as research shows that taking too much of any vitamin can lead to health problems. Also, some medications can interact with vitamin supplements.
Understanding Our Natural Universe
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Biological Significance Of Vitamins
Some of the first evidence for the existence of vitamins emerged in the late 19th century with the work of Dutch physician and pathologist Christiaan Eijkman. In 1890 a nerve disease (polyneuritis) broke out among his laboratory chickens. In 1897 he demonstrated that polyneuritis was caused by feeding the chickens a diet of polished white rice but that it disappeared when the animals were fed unpolished rice.
In 1906–07 British biochemist Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins observed that animals cannot synthesize certain amino acids and concluded that macronutrients and salts could not by themselves support growth. Funk proposed that the polyneuritis arose because of a lack in the birds’ diet of a vital factor (now known to be thiamin) that could be found in rice bran. Funk believed that some human diseases, particularly beriberi, scurvy, and pellagra, also were caused by deficiencies of factors of the same chemical type.
Because each of these factors had a nitrogen-containing component known as an amine, he called the compounds “vital amines,” a term that he later shortened to “vitamines.” The final e was dropped later when it was discovered that not all of the vitamins contain nitrogen and, therefore, not all are amines.