Vitamin Shoppe Industries, Inc. Business Information, Profile, and History

Related information about Vitamin

Vitamins are nutrients required for essential metabolic reactions in the body catalysts and substrates in chemical reactions. 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.

Vitamins are classified as either water soluble, meaning that they dissolve easily in water, or fat soluble, and are absorbed through the intestinal tract with the help of lipids.

As mentioned above, for the most part we rely on food sources to meet our vitamin needs. However, there are a few vitamins that we obtain by other means: for example, microorganisms in the intestine - commonly known as "gut flora" - produce vitamin K and biotin, while one form of vitamin D is synthesized in the skin with the help of natural ultraviolet sunlight.

Some vitamins can also be obtained from precursors which can be obtained in the diet. Examples include vitamin A, which can be produced from beta carotene and niacin from the amino acid tryptophan.

The term vitamin does not encompass other essential nutrients such as dietary minerals, essential fatty acids, or essential amino acids. The ancient Egyptians knew that feeding a patient liver would help cure night blindness, now known to be caused by a vitamin A deficiency. In 1747, the Scottish surgeon James Lind discovered that citrus foods helped prevent scurvy, a particularly deadly disease in which collagen is not properly formed, and is characterized by poor wound healing, bleeding of the gums, and severe pain. Lind's discovery, however, was not widely accepted by individuals in the Royal Navy's Arctic expeditions in the 19th century, where it was widely believed that scurvy could be prevented by practicing good hygiene, regular exercise, and by maintaining the morale of the crew while on board, rather than by a diet of fresh food, so that Navy expeditions took all the amenities of 'sophisticated' society, like silk sheets, spices, expensive food and drink, and almost nothing of any use beyond the Arctic Circle. At the time Robert Falcon Scott made his two expeditions to the Antarctic in the early 20th century, the prevailing medical theory was that scurvy was caused by "tainted" canned food.

In 1881, Russian surgeon Nikolai Lunin studied the effects of scurvey while at the University of Tartu (in present day Estonia). He fed mice an artificial mixture of all the separate constituents of milk known at that time, namely the proteins, fats, carbohydrates, and salts. One difference was that he had used table sugar (sucrose), while other researchers had used milk sugar (lactose) which still contained small amounts of vitamin B.

In 1905, William Fletcher discovered that eating unpolished rice instead of the polished variety helped to prevent the disease beriberi. Casimir Funk was the first to isolate the water-soluble complex of micronutrients, whose bioactivity Fletcher had identified, and Funk proposed the complex be named "Vitamine". The name soon became synonymous with Hopkins' "accessory factors", and by the time it was shown that not all vitamins were amines, the word was already ubiquitous. In 1920, Jack Cecil Drummond proposed that the final "e" be dropped, to deemphasize the "amine" reference, after the discovery that vitamin C had no amine component, and the name has been "vitamin" ever since.
Throughout the early 1900s, the use of deprivation studies allowed scientists to isolate and identify a number of vitamins. Initially, lipid from fish oil was used to cure rickets in rats, and the fat-soluble nutrient was called "antirachitic A". The irony here is that the first "vitamin" bioactivity ever isolated, which cured rickets, was initially called vitamine A, this bioactivity is now called vitamin D, which is itself subject to the semantic debate that it is not truly a vitamin because it is a steroid derivative. What we now call "vitamin A" was identified in fish oil because it was inactivated by ultraviolet light. Most of what we now recognize as the water-soluble organic micronutrients were initially referred to as just one entity, "vitamin B".

The reason the alphabet soup of vitamins seems to skip from E to the rarely-mentioned K is that most of the "letters" were reclassified, as with fatty acids, discarded as false leads, or renamed because of their relationship to "vitamin B", which became a "complex" of vitamins. four fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E and K), and nine water-soluble vitamins (eight B vitamins and vitamin C).

The Vitamins Controversy

Use of vitamin supplements is controversial. Seventeen percent of American children are overweight (triple the percentage in 1980), and increasing numbers of children are developing high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and Type 2 diabetes.IDonline www.ldonline.org/ldbasics/whatisld and these numbers are also trending upward." target=_blank rel=nofollow class=elnk>psychservices.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/56/1/56#SEC3 It is a reasonable hypothesis that providing vitamin supplements to pregnant women and children can help prevent the rising rates of childhood diseases and disorders." target=_blank rel=nofollow class=elnk>www.healthier-kids.com

A large enough number of people believe that supplements are required for optimal health to support a small group of physicians to provide them with guidance. A number of physicians in this group are obstetricians or pediatricians, and have been prescribing vitamin supplements to prevent and/or treat childhood physical and nervous disorders. ISBN 1-897025-10-6 Treating childhood obesity, neurological disorders, or any other child health problems with vitamins is outside of mainstream practice despite the positive clinical reports continuously published by orthomolecular physicians.The Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine provides a peer-reviewed format for orthomolecular physicians to publish results that are rejected by more mainstream medical journals

The credibility of orthomolecular physicians is buttressed by their use of vitamin C supplements to combat colds. 804 (1996) Reports from physicians have provided ample clinical confirmation that vitamin C reduces the duration and severity of colds (but not the frequency).Robert Cathcart Interviewing 10 Americans with post graduate educations is usually sufficient to find one who takes 5g per day or more of vitamin C to ward off an incipient cold.

The credibility of orthomolecular physicians is harmed by their tendency to underplay the side effects of vitamins. For these reasons, vitamin levels that are tolerated in food often cause side effects when consumed from supplements." target=_blank rel=nofollow class=elnk>lpi.oregonstate.edu/infocenter/vitamins.html Because the benefits of vitamins are imperceptible, and the side effects feel bad immediately, this understandably leads many people who have trouble with side effects to commit to never taking extra vitamins again and to recommend that others follow their example. If there is serious deficiency, a child develops a deficiency disease and the genetic plan is completed so poorly that the results are obvious - malformed limbs in the case of rickets, or the mental retardation of iodine deficiency. When a cold or other virus invades, a child's body often reacts with an inflammatory response which can damage the child's body in addition to eliminating the virus.www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;305/5691/1736

Once growth and development are completed, adults remain dependent upon vitamins to maintain good health. Vitamins are also involved in building cells, tissues, and organs - vitamin C, for example, helps produce healthy skin.

Vitamins are classified as fat-soluble or water-soluble based on how they are absorbed by the body. Vitamins A, D, E, and K are fat soluble, while the water-soluble vitamins include vitamin C and the B-complex vitamins (thiamine (B1), riboflavin (B2), niacin (B3), pantothenic acid (B5), vitamin B6, vitamin B12, biotin and folate.

Research has shown that foods rich in antioxidants are particularly beneficial for health.

Vitamin deficiencies

An organism can survive for some time without vitamins, although prolonged vitamin deficit results in a disease state, often painful and potentially deadly. an adult may be deficient in vitamins A or B₁₂ for a year or more before developing a deficiency condition, while vitamin B₁ stores may only last a couple of weeks.

Deficiencies of vitamins are either primary or secondary. Vitamin deficiencies may also be due to an underlying problem, such as an intestinal disorder, that prevents or limits the absorption or use of the vitamin.

Well-known vitamin deficiencies are thiamine Beriberi niacin Pellagra, vitamin C Scurvy and Vitamin D Rickets. In North America today, however, such deficiencies are rare due to an adequate food supply for most people, and food fortification programs that add vitamins and minerals to common foods.

Scientists now have shifted their focus to discovering ways in which vitamins can promote health, prevent disease, boost the body's protection against infection and even slow down the aging process. Water-soluble vitamins are not stored in the body, with the exception of vitamin B₁₂, which is stored in the liver.

The likelihood of consuming too much of any vitamin from food is remote, but overdosing from vitamin supplementation often occurs. and against Stephen Lawson What About Vitamin C and Kidney Stones?

Vitamin side effects

All vitamins have well documented side effects.lpi.oregonstate.edu/infocenter/ Common awareness of vitamin side effects is small because side effects are largely confined to the minority of people taking vitamin supplements. This dosage is known as the tolerable upper intake level (UL).

Vitamin advocates tend to confuse vitamin side effects and vitamin safety. www.healthier-kids.com Vitamin tolerance has also been claimed to increase during periods of intensive physical activity, and to slowly increase with age.www.healthier-kids.com Confirmation of these observations from clinicians is needed. These names are written after the vitamins in brackets.
Vitamin B₂ is also referred to as vitamin G.
Vitamin B₇, or biotin is also referred to as "vitamin H."
Vitamin B₉, or folic acid and other folates such as "vitamin M" (monkey antianemia factor, pteryl-tri-glutamic acid) are referred to as folicin.
Vitamin B₃ is also referred to as "vitamin PP", a name derived from the obsolete term "pellagra-preventing factor". These include:

• carnitine (meat, fish, dairy)
  
• DMAE (fish, eggs, soy, brains)
  
• lipoic acid (liver)
  
• folinic acid (liver)
  
• bioptrin (fish, liver)
  
• PPQ (below)
  
• coenzyme Q (meat, yogurt, soy)
  

Still others are on the borderline, either candidates for classification as vitamins, or recently classified but widely accepted.

• Ergadenylic acid
  

Pseudo-vitamins

• Vitamin F was the designation originally given to essential fatty acids that the body cannot manufacture. Fatty acids are a major component of fats which, like water, are needed by the body in large quantities and thus do not fit the definition of vitamins which are needed only in relatively small amounts.
  
• Herbalists and naturopaths have named various therapedic chemicals "vitamins", even though they are not, including vitamin T, S-Methylmethionine (vitamin U) and vitamin X.
  
• Some authorities say that ubiquinone, also called coenzyme Q₁₀, is a vitamin. Ubiquinone is manufactured in small amounts by the body, like vitamin D.
  
• Pangamic acid, vitamin B₁₅; the related substance dimethylglycine is quite wrongly referred to as vitamin B₁₅ but also labeled B₁₆.
  
• The toxins laetrile and amygdaline are sometimes referred to as vitamin B₁₇. Both pangamic acid and laetrile were first proposed as vitamins by Ernst T. neither are recognized by the medical community as vitamins and their claimed anticancer activities have been disproven by many experiments.
  
• Flavonoids are sometimes called vitamin P.
  
• Animal, bird, and bacterial growth factors have been designated vitamins such as para-aminobenzoic acid (PABA) which is the chicken feathering factor vitamin B₁₀, the folacin (see folic acid) pteryl-heptaglutamic acid is the chicken growth factor vitamin B₁₁ or vitamin Bc-conjugate and orotic acid as vitamin B₁₃ for rats.
  
• A few substances were once thought to be B-complex vitamins and are referred to as B-vitamins in older literature, including B₄ (adenine) and B₈ (adenylic acid), but are no longer recognized as such.
  
• An antitumor pterin phosphate named Vitamin B-14 by Norris but latter abandoned by him as further evidence did not comfirm this. Most mammals need, with few exceptions, the same vitamins as humans. One notable exception is Vitamin C, which can be synthesized by all other mammals except other higher primates and guinea pigs. For example, some bacteria need adenine. Pyrroloquinoline quinone (PQQ) found in yogurt was reported as a vitamin for mice in 2003.

  See also

  • Nutrients
    
    • Dietary minerals
      
    • Essential amino acids
      
    • Nootropics (cognitive enhancers)
      
  • Dietary supplement
    
  • Illnesses related to poor nutrition
    
  • Pharmacology
    
  • Vitamin poisoning (overdose)
    
  • Health freedom
    

  References

  
  
  
  
  

  • Stedman's Medical Dictionary.