The 13 essential vitamins your body needs are vitamins A, C, D, E, K, and the B vitamins: thiamine (B1), riboflavin (B2), niacin (B3), pantothenic acid (B5), pyroxidine (B6), biotin (B7), folate (B9) and cobalamin (B12). The best way to get enough of the essential vitamins is to eat a balanced diet from a variety of healthy foods.
One of the important vitamins that your body needs is vitamin A. Your body needs it to help keep your eyes healthy and to help your body fight off infections. Vitamin A is also called retinol and is a major antioxidant that your body needs. It helps to fight inflammation, free radical damage and can even help slow down the aging process.
A lack of Vitamin A can cause huge problems for your health like bad eyesight, low immunity, skin damage, and inflammation.
The best way to get Vitamin A is from food. A few foods packed with this vitamin are sweet potatoes, carrots, mangos, dark green vegetables, and squash.
Vitamin D is a very important fat-soluble vitamin for maintaining a healthy body. The biggest benefit of vitamin D is its role in helping calcium build strong bones, but it also plays a very major function in the human body. It helps regulate the immune system and the neuromuscular system. It also plays a major role in the life cycle of human cells.
People who live in sunny places usually get enough vitamin D from sun exposure. However, it can be a huge problem for those who live in places that lack sunlight. But not to worry, you can get enough vitamin D through food consumption. In some cases, it might be recommended that people take a supplement.
Some foods that are rich in vitamin D are eggs, dairy products, fish, and cheese.
Vitamin E is a strong antioxidant, protecting cells against damage. This essential vitamin helps to maintain healthy skin and eyes.
Vitamin E deficiency is very rarely a result of a poor diet but instead caused by certain medical conditions. Dietary fat is required in order to absorb vitamin E, so people who have problems absorbing fat, such as those with liver or pancreas problems, Crohn’s disease, Cystic fibrosis can be prone to Vitamin E deficiency.
It's possible to get all the vitamin E you require through your diet. Some great foods are broccoli, nuts, spinach, avocados, and tofu.
Vitamin K refers to a group of fat-soluble vitamins that play a role in blood clotting, bone metabolism, and regulating blood calcium levels. Without vitamin K, the body cannot produce prothrombin, a clotting factor that is necessary for blood clotting and bone metabolism.
Phylloquinone, also known as vitamin K1, is found in plants. When people eat it, bacteria in the large intestine convert it to its storage form, vitamin K2. It is absorbed in the small intestine and stored in fatty tissue and the liver.
A vitamin K deficiency is very rare in adults; however, it can occur in newborn babies and small children with malabsorption problems. It is also rare to take in too much of this vitamin at once as your body will expel excess through urine.
This vitamin is found in most leafy greens like kale, broccoli, and spinach.
Vitamin C is one of the essential vitamins for the body’s production of collagen. Collagen is a part of the connective tissue through our bodies — it helps connect skin, bones, teeth, tendons, ligaments, organ tissue, and cartilage. Collagen makes up the separating layer between cells so it is important to get enough in your diet.
Vitamin C helps protect fat-soluble vitamins like vitamin A and vitamin E. Vitamin C also helps protect essential fatty acids from oxidation. This vitamin is also useful in treating iron deficiency anemia.
Lack of vitamin C can cause scurvy; this can still occur in some third world countries yet cases are still very rare. It is very hard to overdose on vitamin C, rarely someone may experience stomach issues but typically any excess will leave the body through urine.
Vitamin C is found in a wide variety of fruit and vegetables and can be easily incorporated into the diet. Some good sources include oranges, pineapples, berries, papaya, mango, kiwis, broccoli, brussels sprouts, kale, and spinach.
Vitamin B1, or thiamin, helps prevent complications in the nervous system, brain, muscles, heart, stomach, and intestines. It is also involved in the flow of electrolytes in and out of muscle and nerve cells.
Your body uses Vitamin B1 to process fats, carbohydrates, and proteins. Every one of our cells needs thiamine to make adenosine triphosphate, or ATP, which is the body's main energy-carrying molecule. The heart, in particular, has a considerable need for thiamine in order to keep up its constant work.
We all need to take Thiamine on a daily and regular basis. Vitamin B1 is very important for people over the age of 50 who consume large amounts of alcohol or lead very stressful lives. Athletes also take large amounts of Thiamine supplements to replenish their ATP energy and enhance performance, since it is a legal substance.
Fruit and vegetables that contain it include cauliflower, liver, oranges, eggs, potatoes, asparagus, and kale.
Vitamin B5, or pantothenic acid, is involved in many different functions of the body. It helps convert food into energy and it also helps the body use proteins and fats. Vitamin B5 is one of the essential vitamins for the immune, nervous, and gastrointestinal systems.
Vitamin B5 has a role in synthesizing coenzyme A.
Coenzyme A is involved in the synthesis of fatty acids and is important for converting foods into fatty acids and cholesterol.
Vitamin B5 is also known as pantothenic acid or Pantothenate. The word pantothenic comes from the Greek "pantou," meaning everywhere.
Since vitamin B5 is water-soluble, the excess is simply filtered by the body and flushed away by the urinary tract, there is very little concern about overdosing.
Nearly all foods contain small quantities of pantothenic acid. Some foods that are rich in this vitamin are whole grains, milk, salmon, sweet potato, avocado, broccoli, corn, yogurt, and fish.
Vitamin B2, commonly known as riboflavin, is part of the vitamin B complex nutrients. These essential vitamins are all related to the body's metabolic system and can work together to affect your metabolism levels throughout the day.
Riboflavin is one of the essential vitamins that play a part in a process called cellular respiration, which is part of the process where the body converts broken down food into ATP to be used as energy.
A lack of riboflavin in the diet results in vitamin B2 deficiency, a catch-all term that is used to describe a myriad of nasty symptoms ranging from inflammation and pain in and around your mouth, to itchy and irritated eyes, and even anemia, which interferes with your body's ability to transport oxygen through the blood. Along with those symptoms, lack of any B vitamin, including riboflavin, usually also leads to a sluggish metabolism and a lack of energy throughout the day.
Foods high in riboflavin include beef, tofu, milk, fish, mushrooms, spinach, almonds, avocados, and eggs.
Niacin is an incredibly important water-soluble vitamin that plays a role in many aspects of health, from brain function to heart health and beyond.
This vitamin helps convert food into energy by aiding enzymes. it is also used for treating migraine headaches, circulation problems, and dizziness, and to reduce diarrhea associated with cholera. If you take too much you can have side effects including nausea, stomach upset, abnormal liver tests, muscle breakdown.
Common foods, including certain types of meats, tuna fish, eggs, milk, seeds, mushrooms and more.
Vitamin B6 is also called pyridoxine, which was previously known as pyridoxol. Your body uses Vitamin B6 to metabolize protein into amino acids and vice versa. Pyridoxine is also an essential vitamin and crucial co-factor in most biochemical reactions in the body.
In fact, vitamin B6 is used by the body every single day and plays a major role in everything from movement to memory to energy expenditure and blood flow.
The richest sources of vitamin B6 include fish, potatoes, and other starchy vegetables, and fruit
Biotin plays a key role in the body. It supports the health of the skin, nerves, digestive tract, metabolism, and cells.
If you want to have healthy skin, strong nails, and powerful, shiny hair, there will be no way around biotin.
Biotin is a coenzyme and a B vitamin. It is also known as vitamin H. Because biotin is present in so many different kinds of foods, a deficiency is rare.
Biotin occurs naturally in many foods. Wheat germ, whole-grain cereals, whole wheat bread, eggs, dairy products, peanuts, soy, nuts, swiss chard, salmon, and chicken are all sources of biotin.
Since folic acid is different from natural folate, it must be converted into an active form before your body can use it.
Vitamin B7 is an important and essential player in our protein, fat and carbohydrate metabolism. Of remarkable significance is its function as a coenzyme. In this form, it supports enzymes in their task to supply and store energy and to convert amino acids, which are the components of proteins. They can work as neurotransmitters in the nerve system and they build body structures, such as muscles, skin, nails, and hair.
Dark green vegetables are good sources of folic acid. Asparagus, Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, Cabbage, Cauliflower, and dark leafy veggies.
Vitamin B12, also known as cobalamin, is an essential vitamin that your body needs but cannot produce. It’s found naturally in animal products but also added to certain foods and available as an oral supplement or injection. Vitamin B12 helps support healthy blood cells and body nerves. It also supports the production of DNA.
A very basic sign of low levels of Vitamin B12 is a lack of energy.
According to reliable sources, B12 is generally considered safe even at high doses as it has a low level of toxicity. The body excretes whatever B12 it doesn’t use through urine. Taking very high levels of B12 may have some negative side effects like the risk of heart disease, acne, kidney malfunctions.