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There
are
many different kinds of vitamins that can help your body. These
vitamins, along with the essential minerals, which can also be called
micronutrients, are things that your body needs, in small amounts,
which promote good biochemical reactions within your body and within
your cells. They make you grow right, help you digest your food, make
you more mentally alert and more mentally sound, help you to be
resistant to infectious diseases, and help your body to use
carbohydrates, proteins and fats. Also, vitamins and minerals are
catalysts in your body, which speed up or initiate chemical reactions.
The difference between the vitamins and the proteins you get from food
is that you don’t burn up the vitamins, so you
can’t use them for energy.
Because
your body does not make most vitamins and minerals directly, you have
to get them from food sources or from vitamin supplements. If you
aren’t getting enough of a certain vitamin or mineral for a
long period of time you can get a specific disease or condition. This
will usually be fixed when the vitamin or mineral is re supplied to
your body.
Basically,
there are 13 vitamins. Four of them are fat-soluble and nine of them
are going to be water soluble. The ones that are fat-soluble can be
stored in your body fat and also stored in certain organs such as your
liver. The water-soluble vitamins do not get stored in your body in
large amounts.
The
vitamins that are fat soluble, which means that you can store them in
your body for a long time, include A, D, E and K. These dissolve in
lipids and require bile in order to be absorbed. They are also stored
in tissues, and if you have too many of them they can be toxic to you.
The
water-soluble vitamins are going to be C and eight of the B vitamins.
These are thiamine, which is B1, Riboflavin, which is B2, niacin,
pyridoxine, which is B6, pantothenic acid, which is B5, vitamin B12,
biotin and folic acid. These dissolve in water, so if you are cooking
or washing, the vitamins might actually be washed out of the food. They
are easily absorbed and excreted, and are not stored very much or often
in your tissues. These vitamins are seldom going to reach toxic levels
All of
these vitamins are found in food, but if you aren’t able to
get the food that you need in order to get the vitamins, you are going
to have to turn to nutritional supplements to make sure that you are
getting all of the vitamins and minerals that your body is going to
need.
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