Vitamins
By Jens Allmer
What is a vitamin? A vitamin is an organic compound that the human body requires in small amounts to carry out essential biochemical functions, such as metabolism, immune support, and cellular repair. Unlike other nutrients, vitamins cannot be synthesized by the body and must be obtained through diet or supplementation. This reliance on external sources highlights their crucial role in maintaining health and well-being.
Many vitamins have been found, with vitamin D being a historical misinterpretation. Deficiencies in vitamins do not necessarily equate to imminent death, but there will be some health repercussions. Below is a list of vitamins that you can follow once I add some information, which will take some time. Let’s first have a look at a very crude classification of vitamins into fat- and water-soluble ones.
Fat-soluble vitamins
This is a very rough categorization. Remember, chemically, anything is soluble in anything. Hydrogen in steel? Yes! The question then is: “How soluble is it?”. It means that some vitamins are better soluble in fats than water. An example is the solubility of Vitamin D in fat and water. The vitamins generally classified as fat-soluble are A, D, E, and K. Vitamin D is essential for our well-being; however, is it a vitamin, and what is its real name?
Water soluble vitamins
They are better soluble in water than in fats. Does that mean that the body cannot store them? Not really. There may be dedicated storage mechanisms for specific molecules that we need but may not encounter frequently (evolutionarily thinking).
Vitamin Toxicity
Can vitamins be toxic? Anything can be toxic, and it depends on the dose, so if you were to drink 10 liters of water in a short period of time, you would most certainly die. Other molecules kill you in much smaller amounts. The lethal dose of botulinum toxin (a compound from Mycobacterium botulinum) is only two nanograms (ng) per kilogram bodyweight (e.g., 140 ng for a person with 70 kg ~ 154 lbs). Think about this next time you go to get Botox. 140 ng sounds like a lot? That is 0.00000014 grams. Compare this to the 1 to 3 grams of dust we inhale daily (7 million times the lethal amount of Botox). So there you have it. Everything is toxic in a dose-dependent manner (Yes! Even oxygen will kill you! It may take some time, though.).
Some vitamins, such as the fat-soluble ones, are considered more toxic than the water-soluble ones. When writing about any vitamin, I will also comment on its toxicity. I value direct evidence, but if there is no direct evidence, I will settle for molecular mechanisms that explain the toxicity. If neither is available, that presents a challenge and prevents us from establishing true safety margins. In that case, I’ll point you to the recommended daily allowance (US or Europe).
List of Vitamins
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
