Should We Be Taking Vitamin Supplements?

Wow! This subject can be very complex. Our bodies need certain vitamins in specific quantities to stay healthy. The vitamin is described as an organic compound that cannot be blended by an organism in large enough quantities and must be obtained from our diet. To understand, it may help to know the definition of some terms.

1. Compound... More than one
2. Organic... refers to an organism, (living entity)
3. Chemical... substance having a specific molecular composition
4. Molecular composition... mixture of molecules

So for those of us who are not chemists a vitamin might be defined as a mixture of living substances that cannot be found in the human body in large enough quantities. So we must get sufficient quantities from the food we eat. And you thought we eat because food tastes good. Sorry, but we must eat in order to get the vitamins, minerals and nutrients that our bodies cannot make or cannot make in large enough quantities. Our bodies require vitamins to join with the complex chemical dance that takes place within our bodies in order to regulate cell and tissue growth, regulate mineral metabolism, and prevent scurvy and other deficiency diseases.

Vitamins are classified as either water soluble or fat soluble. There are 9 water soluble and 4 fat soluble, totaling 13 vitamins in the human body. Eight B vitamins and vitamin C are water soluble, meaning they dissolve readily in water, and do not stay in the human body in sufficient quantities. Vitamins A, D, E, and K are fat soluble and are absorbed through the intestinal tract. Fat soluble vitamins are more likely to accumulate in the body and can lead to hypervitaminosis more often that water soluble vitamins.
Some diseases require vitamins to be closely regulated for this reason.

At the moment of conception, a fetus begins to develop from the nutrients it absorbs from the mother. If certain vitamins and minerals are not present when needed, the chemical reactions that produce skin, bone, muscle, etc. cannot happen and a deficiency disease may develop.

Vitamins continue throughout our lives to be essential for the maintenance of healthy tissue, organs, and cells. Vitamins help us use chemical energy provided by our food we eat, and to process the proteins, fats and carbohydrates needed for respiration.

So, to the question, "Are Supplement Vitamins Necessary"? In a perfect world the answer is "NO". We should be able to get our necessary vitamins from the food we eat. However, if our diet does not include those foods that contain the necessary vitamins for us to stay healthy, then supplement vitamins could be an option. Most doctors would agree that we should change our diet before using supplement vitamins, therefore it would make sense to consult our doctor with a list of our health needs in order to decide if supplements are right for us, and which ones would benefit us the most.

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