Vitamins are any organic compounds that your body cannot synthesize and must obtain from food. Iron is a major trace mineral that plays a significant role in oxygen delivery in your bloodstream. However, any overdose or deficiency in any vitamin or iron can cause harmful effects in your body. Biologist George Mateljan, author of "World's Healthiest Foods," recommends that you consume foods that contain heme iron, such as braised beef or fish, because heme iron is more absorbable than nonheme iron, which your body cannot easily absorb.
Carbohydrate and Fat Metabolism
Many B-vitamins, such as thiamine, niacin, and riboflavin, play important roles in carbohydrate and fat metabolism. Although vitamins do not provide you directly with energy, they are coenzymes that initiate and trigger processes that liberate energy from food. For example, when glucose enters the cell's cytoplasm, thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, and pantothenic acid are some of the vitamins needed to produce energy from glucose and enter the cell's mitochondrion--your cell's energy-producing factory. With glucose available in your cell, it can use it to initiate fat metabolism.
Since these vitamins are water-soluble, which dissolves in water, your body cannot store them. Former nutrition professor Gordon Wardlaw from Ohio State University recommends that you get enough B-vitamins daily from a variety of foods or you could develop long-term deficiencies. Having enough of these metabolic vitamins can help you avoid fatigue, muscle cramps, weakness, nausea, anemia, and other dysfunctions.
Oxygen Delivery
Iron is a vital component in hundreds of different enzymes and proteins, including hemoglobin and myoglobin. These proteins are involved in transport and delivery of oxygen to all cells in your body. Other functions of iron include acting as an antioxidant, DNA synthesis, and ATP synthesis, which is a high-energy compound that all cells need to function.
If you do have enough iron in your diet, or if you are at risk of iron loss due to menstruation, pregnancy or disease, then you can develop chronic lethargy, iron deficiency anemia, muscle weakness and rapid heartbeats and breathing.
Antioxidants
Many vitamins help you prevent or minimize the risks of cancer, heart disease and secondary infections. Vitamins C and E and iron combat free radicals in your body, which are unstable molecules that lack an electron and are formed by oxygen reactions that damage cell membranes. According to the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University, vitamin E donates one of its electrons to make a free radical stable, and vitamin C seeks out free radicals in your lungs, white blood cells and body fluids and neutralizes them. Iron is a component of heme-containing enzymes that protects cells from hydrogen peroxide accumulation.
Prevent Diseases and Disorders
Many vitamins prevent diseases that are common in developing countries. Thiamine prevents beriberi, which causes weakness and irregular heartbeat. A lack of niacin causes pellegra, which causes dermatitis, red skin lesions and other mental and skin disorders. Folate prevents spina bifida in newborns, which is underdevelopment of the spinal column.
References
- "World's Healthiest Foods"; George Mateljan; 2006
- "Perspectives in Nutrition"; Gordon M. Wardlaw; 2002
- "Linus Pauling Institute"; Iron; January 2006
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