If you’re like me you’ve probably taken a vitamin supplement at some point in your life and asked yourself “what even are vitamins?”. Or maybe you haven’t thought about it and you’ve just been told that vitamin supplements are a good thing for everyone to take in order to stay on top of your health. Either way I’m here to answer the question I personally didn’t understand until after I entered the healthcare profession.
In the very beginning there was a cell. Your cell. One of many hundreds of millions that make you up. In order for this cell to work it needs organic compounds called vitamins to be present in your body. Your body doesn’t typically make enough of these compounds to support healthy optimal function so you have to get them from other sources like… FOOD.
Now there are a huge variety of these important organic molecules out there and you have to eat a wide variety of foods to get enough of all the different types. When scientists first noticed that certain groups of people that ate particular foods didn’t get diseases that other people contracted regularly they reasoned that there was something in the foods we ate that prevented disease. For example, many sailors used to regularly develop the disease Scurvy when embarking on long journeys. It was eventually found that other sailors who brought oranges with them on long trips didn’t develop scurvy which we know now is due to a lack of Vitamin C. It was discoveries like this that contributed to the founding of Nutrition as a field of study.
It was now clear that certain nutrients present in our food were absolutely necessary to prevent the development of many diseases; these were caused by not having enough of a certain nutrient.
Together with the building blocks present in the body vitamins are used in essential biochemical and physiological tasks like making energy and removing waste products from your cells. A list of the known vitamins and minerals follows:
As the charts above show, there a few vitamins and minerals that are lacking in many of our diets, especially if you have specific dietary restrictions as in a vegan diet.
How would you rate your diet? Do you think you’ve included all of these nutrients in your daily intake? If not, you’re not alone. Next post we’ll cover what goes into a dietary supplement and why some of us choose to add supplements to our regular diet.
