What Are Vitamins?

Vitamins and minerals are essential when it comes to maintaining a healthy body. Your body is carrying out various functions throughout the day, from producing skin, bone, and muscle, as well as sending signals and chemical messages through our nervous system to our brain. To do this, it needs materials to help. This is where vitamins come in. They are nutrients that our bodies cannot operate efficiently without. They can be found in a range of different foods, which is why having a balanced diet is crucial, as well as being formulated into supplements that we can take in the form of tablets or capsules.

Why Are They Important?

Vitamins are important because they help our bodies to work as they should. They help to build strong bones and boost your immune system to help you fight off illness and disease. Vitamins can also repair damaged cells in the body, as well as convert your food into energy over the course of the day. Vitamins and minerals are so important when it comes to living a healthy lifestyle, which is why we need to make sure that we’re getting enough of them into our systems as necessary.

Where Do We Find Them?

Your intake of vitamins is vital to helping you fight off disease and keep your body functioning. Ensuring that you have a balanced diet is the best way of making sure you have enough of these substances for your body to stay healthy.

Adding foods like fruit and vegetables, whole grains, low-fat protein, and dairy products can allow you to meet your body’s needs every day.

Here are a few examples of vitamins and where you will find them:

• Vitamin C – Citrus fruit, tomatoes, spinach, and potatoes
  
• Vitamin D – cereals and fatty fish
  
• Vitamin B12 – Meat, milk, cheese, and poultry
  

A lot of common foods are packed with vitamins, so if your diet is varied and includes fruit, veggies, meat, and fish, you’re likely to get everything you need from your meals each day.

What Is A Deficiency?

If you have a poor diet, vitamin deficiencies can occur. A deficiency simply means that you are not getting enough of the vitamins your body needs to function properly and this can lead to your body struggling to fight off illness.  Various medications can also cause vitamins to not be absorbed into the body effectively.

Depending on the vitamin that your body is missing, you may find that you suffer from a range of different symptoms, which could point to a deficiency – some of these include brittle hair and nails, which can indicate a deficiency of Biotin in the body. Hair loss is another common symptom that a deficiency in iron or zinc can cause or small bumps on the skin that can be caused by a vitamin C deficiency.