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Knowledgebase: Nutritional Information
 What do vitamins do in the body?
Posted by Stephan Mackenzie on 22 April 2011 11:18 AM
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| In order to accomplish all of the thousands of day-to-day functions of your body, the food you eat every day must be converted into energy and raw materials (building blocks for muscles, bones, ligaments enzymes, hormones, and so on). To do all this, vitamins are required. Since we humans lack the ability to manufacture these critical nutrients in our bodies, we have to get them in our diet.Generally, vitamins perform three major functions:1. They are required for the enzymes to do their jobs. The B-complex vitamins B1 and B2, for example are required for every function in the body that requires production of energy (which means every function!)2. They act as antioxidants, which means they prevent highly reactive molecules called free radicals from damaging delicate cell membrane structure. Vitamins C and E are powerful antioxidants, protecting cell membranes from free radicals.3. They act as "pre-hormones." For example, vitamin D functions as a hormone to facilitate calcium uptake and utilization. | |
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