How Vitamins act and their influence in our body care?

VITAMINS

 About $1.5 billion is spent yearly for vitamins, much of it by healthy people convinced by high-powered advertising that they need extra vitamins. While essential, vitamins are required only in minute amounts, and a fully adequate supply is provided by a balanced, varied diet. To be sure, some people, relatively few, may need vitamin supplementation because they do not absorb certain vitamins properly when they are on vigorous reducing diets. In such cases, medical advice is required. 

Vitamins in excess cannot restore the vigor of youth or perform other assorted health miracles. If diet is poor, vitamin-deficiency diseases may result: scurvy, with its gum bleeding, muscle aching, general weakness caused by deficiency of vitamin C; rickets with its bone deformities from deficiency of vitamin D; pellagra with its mental deterioration from deficiency of one of the B vitamins (niacin).

Correction of a deficiency when it exists may produce near-miraculous changes. But unless there is an actual deficiency, increasing vitamin intake with supplements-adding more to what is already adequate---can be useless, needlessly expensive, and in the case of some vitamins such as A and D can be harmful, since these two vitamins can accumulate in the body to poisonous levels. Some interesting, though not definitive, reports on the possible value of large doses of vitamin C taken early during a common cold have appeared recently.

The following table lists excellent sources of principal vitamins: Vitamin E Vegetable greens: beets, kale, chard, mustard, spinach, turnips Yellow vegetables: carrots, yellow squash, sweet potatoes Beef liver Cod-liver oil, halibut-liver oil  Vitamin B (several vitamins, including niacin and thiamine, make up the B family) Liver, pork, beef, salmon Whole-wheat bread, enriched bread, oatmeal and other cereals Peanuts, peanut butter Vitamin C Citrus fruits: oranges, lemons, grapefruits, limes Tomato juice (fresh or canned) Strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries, currants Vitamin D Halibut-liver oil and other refined fish-oil preparations Vitamin D milk Exposure of the skin to sunlight