the.com/vitamin
Tiny molecules your body can't make but absolutely refuses to live without.
means Any of various organic compounds your body needs in small amounts for normal function but mostly can't synthesize, so you have to get them from food.
from Coined in 1912 by Polish-born biochemist Casimir Funk as 'vitamine' — from Latin 'vita' (life) plus 'amine,' because he believed these life-giving substances were all amines (nitrogen-containing compounds). When it turned out many of them aren't amines at all, the embarrassing 'e' was quietly dropped, leaving 'vitamin' — a word that's literally half-wrong but too useful to fix.
- alphabet gaps
- Vitamins skip from E to K — debunked ones got deleted
- original spelling
- Coined vitamine, the e dropped when not all were amines
- sun-made
- Vitamin D is a hormone your skin builds from sunlight
- deadly overdose
- Polar explorers died eating too much vitamin-A-rich liver
- scurvy cure
- Vitamin C deficiency rotted gums and reopened old wounds
vitamin c — ascorbic acid discovered by albert szent-gyorgyi in 1932, prevents scurvy
vitamin b12 — cobalamin, only vitamin with a metal atom (cobalt), essential for nerve function
vitamin d — calciferol, synthesized in human skin from sunlight, critical for calcium absorption
vitamin a — retinol, first vitamin discovered in 1913, essential for vision and immune function