Vitamin B - B Vitamins The Nutrition Source Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

A vitamin is an organic molecule (or a set of molecules alongside related chemically, i.e. vitamers) that is an necessary micronutrient which an organism needs in small quantities for the proper committed of its metabolism. essential nutrients cannot be synthesized in the organism, either at all or not in ample quantities, and in view of that must be obtained through the diet. Vitamin C can be synthesized by some species but not by others; it is not a vitamin in the first instance but is in the second. The term vitamin does not attach the three further groups of essential nutrients: minerals, vital fatty acids, and valuable amino acids. Most vitamins are not single molecules, but groups of connected molecules called vitamers. For example, there are eight vitamers of vitamin E: four tocopherols and four tocotrienols. Some sources list fourteen vitamins, by including choline, but major health organizations list thirteen: vitamin A (as all-trans-retinol, all-trans-retinyl-esters, as without difficulty as all-trans-beta-carotene and other provitamin A carotenoids), vitamin B1 (thiamine), vitamin B2 (riboflavin), vitamin B3 (niacin), vitamin B5 (pantothenic acid), vitamin B6 (pyridoxine), vitamin B7 (biotin), vitamin B9 (folic biting or folate), vitamin B12 (cobalamins), vitamin C (ascorbic acid), vitamin D (calciferols), vitamin E (tocopherols and tocotrienols), and vitamin K (phylloquinone and menaquinones).

Vitamins have diverse biochemical functions. Vitamin A acts as a regulator of cell and tissue growth and differentiation. Vitamin D provides a hormone-like function, regulating mineral metabolism for bones and additional organs. The B profound vitamins show as enzyme cofactors (coenzymes) or the precursors for them. Vitamins C and E appear in as antioxidants. Both deficient and excess intake of a vitamin can potentially cause clinically significant illness, although excess intake of water-soluble vitamins is less likely to attain so.

Before 1935, the by yourself source of vitamins was from food. If intake of vitamins was lacking, the upshot was vitamin nonappearance and consequent want diseases. Then, commercially produced tablets of yeast-extract vitamin B highbrow and semi-synthetic vitamin C became available.

This was followed in the 1950s by the deposit production and marketing of vitamin supplements, including multivitamins, to prevent vitamin deficiencies in the general population. Governments mandated adjunct of vitamins to staple foods such as flour or milk, referred to as food fortification, to prevent deficiencies. Recommendations for folic mordant supplementation during pregnancy abbreviated risk of infant neural tube defects.

The term vitamin is derived from the word vitamine, which was coined in 1912 by Polish biochemist Casimir Funk, who and no-one else a rarefied of micronutrients necessary to life, every of which he presumed to be amines. in the manner of this presumption was far ahead positive not to be true, the "e" was dropped from the name. every vitamins were discovered (identified) in the company of 1913 and 1948.

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