What Are Vitamins?

Vitamins are one of the most important things that you feed your body on a daily basis. With only two exceptions, your body is unable to produce vitamins and must rely on getting them through diet alone. Though they provide no calories to you, your body would be rendered useless without them. A lack of vitamins can make you tired, weak, short of breath and in some cases, even colorblind.

Vitamins are what aid your bodily functions such as your metabolism, growth and energy production. For example, you probably know that most milk is fortified with vitamin D, but did you know why? It is an important tool in balancing your bloods calcium and phosphorus levels. Without vitamin D, your body can't absorb and use calcium. For this reason, it is always important if you are taking calcium supplements to make sure it also contains vitamin D to ensure your body has an adequate amount of vitamin D to process the calcium.

Water and Fat Soluble Vitamins
There are two main categories of vitamins, water-soluble and fat-soluble. Fat-soluble vitamins can be stored in your body's fat reserves until you need them. Fat-soluble vitamins include E, D, K and A. However, because you don't flush these through your system, these four vitamins in particular have a higher risk of ill side effects when overdosed.

Water-soluble vitamins, such as vitamin C cannot be stored by your body for great lengths of time and require a much more regular intake to keep you healthy. These types of vitamins are passed to your blood stream directly from your intestine. Most of these are stored only on a daily basis and excreted in your urine. There is one exception to this rule, B12, which is excreted through feces. The water-soluble vitamins in particular help your vision, digestive system and skin among other important functions.