Vitamins and minerals are required for the body as essential energy elements. They are important to keep the body healthy and providing it with balanced health status. A healthy person requires them as well as an ill person. People with a disease have more body requirements for the intake of vitamins and minerals than a normal healthy person.
They are not an essential element for keeping the body healthy or in an unhealthy condition, but they do hold significance for the growth of children, as well as for the athletes to provide extra energy boost. We cannot underestimate the functions of minerals and vitamins as they play an important role in almost all of them directly or indirectly.
The efficient role of vitamins and minerals has recently been known with historical references from 400 B.C., the father of modern medicine, Hippocrates. He was the first to advocate the use of liver to cure night blindness, now known occurring due to the deficiency of vitamin A.
Finding a vitamin or a mineral is not a ‘mission impossible’, as they are found in foods; vegetables, fruits and dairy products. Else they are taken through dietary supplements and medicinal formations i.e. pills and tablets. Some foods are also known as vitamin enriched, meaning thereby that they are prepared in a vitamin rich way; they become an effective source of vitamin derivative.
Vitamins are organic compounds whereas minerals are embodiments of chemical compositions. Both of these are required as nutrients in small amounts by organisms. Vitamins hold various biochemical functions such as Vitamin D is a hormone motivator, Vitamin E acts as an antioxidant, and vitamins like Vitamin A act as mediators of cell signals and regulations of tissue growth.
Vitamin B is found in the largest numbers and is efficient predecessor for cofactor bio-molecules that are coenzymes. These coenzymes are quite helpful in acting as catalysts and substrates in metabolism. Vitamins also act as carriers for chemical compounds of in between enzymes.
A body which has vitamin deficiency can house a number of diseases. Likewise minerals deficiency can harm the health too. Minerals are rich source of calcium, sodium, silicon, aluminum, lead, chlorine, magnesium, graphite, and carbon. Almost all of these have medicinal qualities and are used today to produce the best curing medicines.
Despite of their unmatched benefits for health and cure, a lot of people are unaware of the nutrients that can be derived from the intake of vitamins and minerals.