Vitamin Supplements

Although the trend in recent years has been toward low-fat diets, the truth is that fats are essential for health. Eating the wrong types of fat damages cells, causes cancer and heart disease, and speeds up the aging process. But eating healthy fats provides protection against cancer, heart disease, and other degenerative diseases, and helps to keep you young.

Unhealthy fats include polyunsaturated oils, saturated fats, and hydrogenated oils. Polyunsaturated oils such as safflower, corn, sesame, soybean, and sunflower oils are extremely detrimental to your health. They quickly oxidize when exposed to oxygen and create free radicals, mutant molecules that destroy healthy cells. Read the rest of this entry »

Vitamin C (Ascorbic Acid)

Vitamin C is the great healing vitamin of the body. It has many functions and is very important, especially when the body is under some stress, such as during a prolonged illness or when fighting a severe infection. It is needed for the cells that produce the collagen substances that hold the tissues together. It is particularly important in maintaining the walls of the smaller blood vessels. It also aids in the absorption of iron from the digestive tract. Read the rest of this entry »

At one time vitamin B was thought to be one single substance. Now we know there is a whole family of these vitamins, more than a dozen of them. We refer to them as the B complex vitamins. They are often found together in various foods. But they are all different in their effects upon the human body. Some are needed in the transfer of energy within the cells. Others are required for the formation of red blood cells. But they have other activities as well. Read the rest of this entry »

Among the most exciting findings of modern times is the discovery of vitamins. Until a few years ago no one even dreamed of their existence. For centuries it had been observed that during long ocean voyages sailors often came down with a mysterious disease called scurvy, which affected the skin, the gums and teeth, and other parts of the body. This disease usually cleared soon after the sailors reached land and began to eat fresh fruits and vegetables. Read the rest of this entry »

If you answer yes to any of the following questions, you (or your child) have an above-average risk of developing a vitamin D deficiency.

• Are you an older person? Skin production of vitamin D tends to slow down with age. Studies of older people—particularly older women—show that as many as 75 percent are at marked risk for vitamin D deficiencies.
• Are you confined indoors and not exposed to sunlight? With limited sun exposure, your skin will produce a minimal amount of vitamin D, leaving you to rely on diet alone for your vitamin D needs.
• Do you have kidney or liver disease? Vitamin D, formed in the skin, must be modified chemically in the kidney and liver before the body can use it. This process can be severely impaired if these organs are diseased. Read the rest of this entry »

In the ‘thirties the idea of such a list was very novel but it soon had a chance of being put to the test. With the coming of World War II and the rationing of food this type of information was very valuable. Vitamins were made available to mothers and babies, and the basic rations for everyone in this country included sufficient food for good health. Vitamins were added to margarine, bread and flour, and although food was limited and the diet was often monotonous we had all the food we needed and were healthier at the end of six years of war than we had ever been before.

Vitamins had proved their point. We believed in them, and the way was open for a new and thriving business. Health food shops sprang up in the ‘fifties and chemists started to sell an increasingly large range of vitamin preparations. Read the rest of this entry »

The history of vitamins as solo performers is very recent. They were not named until 1912 and did not enter the English dictionary until 1934 but their role in disease dates back some thousands of years. Early Egyptian records show that ox liver was used in the treatment of eye complaints; Hippocrates, ‘the Father of Medicine’, prescribed sensible diets in the treatment of illness; and in the Middle Ages when scurvy was the plague of sailors on long sea voyages, the cure was found in fresh fruit and vegetables, particularly citrus fruits. Today, we know that liver is a rich source of vitamin A and oranges and lemons supply vitamin C, and it is these factors which produce the cure, but in those days sickness and health belonged to religion and folklore as much as to the art of the healer. If a remedy worked and restored the sufferer to good health that was enough, and thanks were given to God and the doctor. Only a few scientists wondered why something had ‘worked’ and were prepared to search further for an answer. Read the rest of this entry »

The emergence of niacin as a specific vitamin dates back to the 1930s, but it has been known to the chemists as a substance called nicotinic acid for well over a hundred years. The vitamin occurs both as nicotinic acid (the acid) or nicotinamide (the amide), and these are the two specific names which come under the generic, or family title, of niacin. Occasionally it is written, incorrectly, as B3 and in the U.S.A. the generic term niacin is sometimes used to describe the acid form of the vitamin.

Another name for niacin found in older books on nutrition is ‘vitamin PP‘. This refers to the deficiency disease, pellagra. Niacin was found to protect against pellagra and was accordingly described as the pellagra- prevention factor, hence PP. This term is no longer in use but it does help in remembering a little of the history of this B vitamin. Pellagra is a skin disease which affects communities which live on maize as their main source of food with little or no protein foods to supplement the diet. Typical symptoms are severe dermatitis and reddening of the skin. It is summed up in textbooks as the disease of the three D’s — dementia, diarrhoea and dermatitis, but this is rather a sweeping description and can cover effects in many other deficiency diseases and illnesses. Read the rest of this entry »

Vitamin D is the joker in the pack. It masquerades as a vitamin but follows none of the rules. To begin with we don’t need it in the diet because we can make it ourselves, and secondly it doesn’t work as a coenzyme in the way that most of the other vitamins do. Vitamin D is formed from a group of chemicals which are known as sterols and react to sunlight and radiation to form the active vitamin. All animals including man possess these sterols and they are found close to the surface of the skin. When sunlight reaches the body it changes the structure of these sterols, and they are absorbed into the bloodstream as cholecalciferol and pass to the liver. Further changes occur here and the new products are transported to the kidney. Read the rest of this entry »

Vitamin B₁₂[Cobalamin]

FACTS:

Water soluble and effective in very small doses.Commonly known as the “red vitamin“, also cyanocobalamin.

Measured in micrograms [mcg.].

The only vitamin that contains essential mineral elements.

Not well assimilated through the stomach. Needs to be combined with calcium during absorption to benefit body properly.

Recommended adult dose is 3 mcg., with larger amounts suggested for pregnant and lactating women. Read the rest of this entry »