If someone were to ask you what vitamins are, what would you answer? To the vast majority of people, the first thing that probably comes to mind is "your body needs them to stay healthy". And that is true, our mothers didn't insist on us taking them just for fun after all. But how much do we really know?
The term vitamins comes from the expression 'vital amins', meaning vital organic compounds. Our bodies are able to synthetize these compounds from the foods we eat. Everybody, for instance, knows that fresh fruit are great for vitamin C. There are, however, 12 others, most of them belonging to the B-vitamin-family.
Vitamins are divided into two major categories:
Fat-soluble: this category contains only 4 (A,D,E,K), which are stored in fatty tissue.
Water-soluble: vitamin C and all of the B-ones belong to this category.
They are so important to the correct functioning of our bodies, that a vitamin deficiency can cause serious and even deadly diseases. You may probably have heard of scurvy, the disease caused by vitamin C deficiency. Scurvy was common especially among sailors or soldiers, who had a diet based mainly on grains and meat, but no fresh fruits or vegetables.
A healthy and varied diet should, of course, be able to assure the vital compounds in sufficient quantity. Fortunately, you can also find vitamin supplements in any drug-store nowadays, so diseases linked to low levels of certain types of vitamin can easily be avoided or treated. But is there really no risk in taking vitamin-supplements?
How We Decide What to Take
We should understand, that although vitamins are supposed to be 'harmless', they too can cause serious health issues if we take them in too high doses. Of course, the risk of overdosing is quite low, but we should be aware of it.
Any vitamin supplements should be taken after seeking medical advice, because the way they get processed by our bodies differs and the risk of overdosing is greater, for instance, with the ones from the first category (fat-soluble vitamins). Each vitamin has its own organic role, and that is why taking the right vitamin is so important.
For example, we all know that vitamin A is great for maintaining the health of our eye muscles, but vitamin A is a fat-soluble vitamin, which means our bodies can store it for a long time; an overdose of vitamin A can cause skin discoloration, osteoporosis and liver problems among others. There used to be many stories of former World War I prisoners, who after living on a carrot-based diet for a few months, had noticed that their skin had started turning slightly yellow at first and later on that their vision had gotten worse.
So, while vitamins are essential for our bodies, we shouldn't just buy any vitamin-supplement that we find just because "it's only vitamins" or "taking them won't harm you"; talk to your general practitioner and do some research on your own before deciding to take them, because in the end... they too are drugs.
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