The Wonderful World of Vitamins
The Wonderful World of Vitamins
Laying the groundwork for the development of vitamins was James Lind,
a Scottish naval surgeon who in 1747, discovered that a nutrient in
citrus foods prevented scurvy. In 1905, an English doctor, William
Fletcher found out that when special factors were removed from food,
disease occurred. However, it was not until 1912 when Polish scientist
Cashmir Funk first came up with the word vitamin to refer to these
miraculous substances.
Vitamins do just that, they keep the body healthy and act as catalysts by
speeding up interaction between enzymes, proteins, fats, and vitamins to
produce beneficial results for the body. These results can be healthy
hair, skin, eyes, bones and teeth. To date, there are 14 identified
vitamins.
These are vitamins A, C, D, E, H, K, P and the so-called B-complex
vitamins: B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B9 and B12. Depending on the
acceleration in vitamins research, more vitamins may be added to the list
in the coming years.
Of course, it's best if the body can acquire all these vitamins from normal
food intake. Unfortunately, that only exists in a perfect world. This
explains why there's a widespread proliferation of vitamin tablets and
capsules--some are generic but most are branded. The most popular
version by far is a multivitamin which carries minimum amounts of the
most important vitamins and minerals in one capsule.
A multivitamin certainly saves modern man a lot of time. He does not even
need to figure out which vitamins he needs to take. It has been figured
out for him by science! Another key advantage of taking multivitamins is
that you only need to take one capsule a day--as opposed to several
tablets which bring undue strain to our kidneys.