What Types Of Vitamins Are There?

There are many different types 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 nutritional 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.

There are 13 basic vitamins. Four of them are fat-soluble and nine of them are 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 fat-soluble vitamins are

• Vitamin A

• Vitamin D

• Vitamin E

• Vitamin K

Fat-soluble vitamins are stored in the body for long periods of time. These dissolve in lipids (or fat cells) and require bile in order to be absorbed. They are also stored in tissues, and if you have a large supply of them they could be toxic.

The water-soluble vitamins are:

• C

• B1 – Thiamine

• B2 – Riboflavin

• Niacin

• B6 – Pyridoxine

• B5 – Pantothenic acid

• Vitamin B12

• Biotin and

• Folic acid.

The B vitamins are water-soluble, so if you are cooking or washing, the vitamins might actually be washed out of the food. They are easily absorbed and excreted, and minimum levels are stored in your tissues. These vitamins are seldom going to reach toxic levels.

All of these vitamins can be found in food, but if you aren’t able to get the food that you need in order to get the vitamins, such as eating a well balanced diet then you will require nutritional supplements.

Supplementing your diet with vitamins and minerals helps to ensure that you are getting what your body needs for basic repair and prevention of disease.