Vitamin C for colds? Get plenty of vitamin D on sunny days? We all know the vitamin is important for our health, but how did it get its name, and is it even more important? Especially when were vitamins discovered in the first place?
before vitamins
Humans have always understood that there is a link between diet and health, but it took thousands of years before modern nutritional research emerged, supported by advances in chemistry, physics, and biology. It took. Early nutritional experiments focused on the element nitrogen. First discovered in 1772and whether its presence or absence in the food caused health or disease in animals or humans.
In 1839, Dutch chemist Gerardus Mulder was suggested The presence of molecules he called proteins, “animal substances” that he considered necessary for human nutrition. For decades, Historian Kenneth Carpenter writes:, protein was thought to be the only nutrient for human health, despite new knowledge that fruits, vegetables, and milk alleviate conditions such as scurvy and rickets. These symptoms were more common in people with restricted diets, but researchers argue that other factors are to blame, including infections, contaminated food, and even sea air. .
lack of food
Meanwhile, sailors on long voyages were plagued by other illnesses for a long time. beriberiwhich can cause heart failure and loss of sensation in the legs.
Japanese naval surgeon Kanehiro Takagi theory: In the 1880s, he noticed that poor civilians were more likely to develop beriberi than wealthy civilians, and suspected that their diet and lack of protein played a role.
Meanwhile, Dutch military doctor Christian Eikman developed his own theory about beriberi after conducting experiments on chickens. Similar symptoms were observed in chickens that ate white rice commonly used on Japanese Navy ships. On the other hand, poultry that ate brown rice provided by cooks who “refused to feed ‘military rice’ to civilian chickens” remained healthy.
Aikman conducted research in this direction and discovered that people in prison who were forced to eat white rice also contracted beriberi. Was the white table staple part of the problem?
“Vitamins” for health
Polish chemist Casimir Funk began his research by examining the husk and bran polished from processed rice. his own experiments with pigeons in early 20’sth Century: Pigeons fed only white rice became ill, but their symptoms improved when fed rice bran and yeast. This finding supports Takagi’s theory that diet and beriberi are linked, but not protein deficiency. Funk theorized in 1912 that another substance was missing. It is a nitrogen-containing compound that he called a “vitamin,” combining the Latin word for “life” and the name of a nitrogen-containing compound, amine.
The discovery of vitamins shocked the scientific community and suggested that diseases could be caused by nutritional deficiencies and could be cured by consuming just the right amount of newly discovered compounds. “Monotonous diets should be avoided,” Funk declared.
Researchers rushed to isolate other micronutrients associated with diseases such as rickets, scurvy and goiter. Around the time that Funk coined the term “vitamin,” American nutritionist Elmer McCallum was conducting a variety of feeding experiments on different animal populations, and discovered that “auxiliary” substances found in some fats were found in rats. We have discovered that it is essential for growth. The fat-soluble substance became known as vitamin “A,” meaning “accessory.”
McCallum and his colleagues also conducted further experiments with nutrients from Funk’s rice bran, which they named vitamin B after beriberi. Ultimately, the substance known as vitamin B was found to be a complex of eight water-soluble vitamins, each given a separate name such as thiamine and numbered in the order of their discovery. .
The “e” used in Funk’s new terminology was eventually dropped after scientists realized that not all compounds are nitrogen-containing amines. However, the practice of naming vitamins alphabetically in the order in which they were discovered continued. Currently, there are four fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E, K) and nine water-soluble vitamins (vitamin C, and eight B vitamins, B1). [thiamin],B2 [riboflavin],B3 [niacin],B5 [pantothenic acid],B6 [pyridoxine],B7 [biotin],B9 [folate],B12 [cobalamin]-Considered essential for human growth and health.
Vitamin…F?
There is only one vitamin that defies this logical naming system. It is vitamin K, discovered in 1929 by Danish researcher Karl-Peter Henrik Damm. Considering the date of its discovery, this substance should have been called vitamin F. However, Damm’s research revealed that this vitamin is essential for blood clotting. coagulation The abbreviation for vitamin somehow stuck in the German journal that published his research.
It has been several decades since the last essential vitamin, vitamin B12, was discovered in 1948. Since then, researchers have focused on the substances’ health benefits, learned more about the link between vitamin deficiencies and disease, and used them to treat conditions such as pellagra and anemia. . However, what is currently displayed is unlikely One day, scientists will discover new essential vitamins.
But even if vitamin F and vitamin G no longer exist in our future, that doesn’t mean that nutritional discoveries have stopped. In fact, research in nutrition has never been more advanced, allowing scientists to delve into the secrets of the tiniest amounts of micronutrients that affect human health. If the golden age of vitamin discovery was an appetizer of sorts, scientists are preparing for the rapidly evolving main course of understanding how food shapes our lives, one microscopic substance at a time. We are working hard towards this.
