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What are Vitamins?
Vitamins are nutrients required for essential metabolic reactions in the body [1]. Vitamins can act both as catalysts and substrates in chemical reactions. The role of a catalyst is to facilitate a chemical reaction without being altered itself. In essence, catalysts function like knitting needles, which are capable of converting yarn into mittens, but do not undergo any change themselves. The body typically assembles a vitamin-dependent catalyst from a variety of building blocks including amino acids, sugars, phosphates, and other vitamins. Each vitamin is typically used in multiple reactions and therefore, most have multiple functions[2]. Until the 1900's, vitamins were obtained solely through food intake. Many food sources contain different ratios of vitamins. Therefore, if the only source of vitamins is food, a seasonal, yearly or even daily change in diet also alters the ratio of ingested vitamins. Many vitamins can be stored by the body over a range of dosages and short term deficiencies (e.g. during a particular food growing season), does not always result in disease. |
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