Your body needs vitamins to grow, develop and function normally. Food can deliver the vitamins your body needs, and you can buy supplemental bottles of vitamin pills and liquids at the pharmacy. A 2006 Consumer Reports article about choosing multivitamins reports that most Americans do not consume diets that provide all the vitamins that the body needs, and suffer a modest nutritional shortage as a result. Each vitamin has specific functions in your body.
Vitamin A Retinol
The body uses vitamin A to form and maintain teeth, mucous membranes, skin and hard and soft muscle tissue. Vitamin A produces the pigment in your eye retinas. This vitamin promotes healthy vision and may have essential reproduction and breast-feeding properties.
Vitamin B1 Thiamine
Vitamin B1 is essential for heart, muscular and nervous system functioning. B1 helps convert dietary carbohydrates into cellular energy. Physicians may prescribe supplementary B1 in pill or liquid form for alcoholism-induced thiamine deficiencies.
Vitamin B2 Riboflavin
Vitamin B2 supports metabolic processes that are vital for your health. Vitamin B2 contributes to cellular functioning, growth and energy production. Substance screening tests can determine a patient's compliance with treatment for alcoholism by measuring the vitamin B2 content of the patient's urine.
Vitamin B3 Niacin and Niacinimide
Vitamin B3 reduces low-density lipoproteins or bad cholesterol and fibrinogen, which may contribute to inflammation and rheumatoid arthritis. B3 uses include treatment for atherosclerosis and pellagra and for heart disease prevention.
Vitamin B6 Pyridoxine
Vitamin B6 promotes serotonin and norepinephrine synthesis and myelin formation. B3 can treat a form of hereditary anemia called sideroblastic anemia and suppress the negative effects of the antibiotic cycloserine. Clinicians may recommend or prescribe supplementary B6 in pill, liquid or intravenous form to prevent or treat pyridoxine deficiency and neuritis.
Vitamin B7 Biotin
Vitamin B7 provides treatment for biotin deficiencies that may result from using anti-seizure medication, antibiotics or malabsorption problems such as short gut syndrome. A person with a carboxylase deficiency, a disorder preventing processing of proteins, may benefit from B7. People that practice long-term diets that contain raw egg whites may develop biotin deficiency and benefit from increasing B7 intake.
Vitamin B9 Folate and Folic Acid
Vitamin B9 treats folate-deficient anemias. The National Institutes of Health states that dietary folate intake and oral folic acid supplements during pregnancy helps reduce the risk of neural tube birth defects or cleft palate.
Vitamin B12 Cobalamin
Vitamin B12 helps maintain healthy nerve cells and red blood cells. The body uses B12 for to produce DNA. Supplementary B12 treatment improves B12 deficiencies that occur with diseases such as megaloblastic and pernicious anemia. Clinicians may prescribe or recommend B12 supplements to suppress ataxia, spasticity, incontinence, dementia, psychoses and mood fluctuations.
Vitamin C Ascorbic Acid
The body uses vitamin C for iron absorption and collagen, bone, cartilage, muscle and blood vessel formation. The U.S. Library of Medicine's Medline Plus database states that vitamin C can successfully treat scurvy and may help prevent the common cold for people that live under extraordinary conditions such as soldiers in sub-arctic exercises, skiers and marathon runners.
Vitamin D Calciferol
Vitamin D helps maintain blood calcium and phosphorus levels. Treatment for conditions such as rickets, skin plaques, psoriasis, low-back pain and low calcium levels in the blood may include this vitamin. D may protect against osteoporosis, hypertension, cancer and autoimmune diseases.
Vitamin E Tocopherol
Vitamin E, an anti-oxidant, protects body tissue from free radical substances. Free radicals are molecular substances that damage cells by steeling electrons and destroying cellular DNA. Exposure to environmental toxins such as sunlight and tobacco smoke may trigger free-radical formation in the body. The body also uses vitamin E to form red blood cells and absorb vitamin K.
Vitamin K Phytonadione
Your body stores vitamin K in fatty body tissues. Clinicians may use vitamin K to control the effects of anti-coagulant medication. This vitamin also supports healthy bone structure.
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