This isn’t an easy topic to write about nor is it an easy topic to find information about since it’s quite complex, however, we will share with you as much information as possibly can about this subject so that you no longer have any questions left un-answered by the end of this article.
Function
There are 13 essential vitamins. This means that these vitamins are required for the body to work properly. The four fat-soluble vitamins are vitamins A, D, E, and K. These vitamins are absorbed more easily by the body in the presence of dietary fat.
Water-soluble vitamins are not stored in the body. The nine water-soluble vitamins are vitamin C and all the B vitamins. Any leftover or excess amounts of these leave the body through the urine.
They have to be consumed on a regular basis to prevent shortages or deficiencies in the body.
Water-Soluble Vitamins
Vitamin C and all of the B vitamins, such as thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, B-6, B-12, biotin, folate and pantothenic acid, are water-soluble vitamins. Because water-soluble vitamins do not have a storage place in the body, you need to get them from your daily diet.
B vitamins come from meats, seafood, eggs, dairy, whole grains and legumes, to name a few.
Fat-Soluble Vitamins
Vitamin A, from dairy, dark leafy greens and eggs, includes a series of carotenoids and phytochemicals that protect your eyes and vision. You need vitamin D for bone health, while vitamin K makes blood clot and aids in wound healing.
Additionally, vitamin E protects vitamins A and C so that your system can utilize them before they are destroyed. Toxicity
Because water-soluble vitamins escape through urine if they are not absorbed, they are generally non-toxic. Even at high doses water-soluble vitamins do not cause adverse effects in healthy adults.
Mineral Interactions.
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. He noticed that the disease was similar to the polyneuritis associated with the nutritional disorder beriberi.
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. In 1912—the same year that Hopkins published his findings about the missing nutrients, which he described as “accessory” factors or substances—a Polish scientist, Casimir Funk, demonstrated that polyneuritis produced in pigeons fed on polished rice could be cured by supplementing the birds’ diet with a concentrate made from rice bran, a component of the outer husk that was removed from rice during polishing. 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.