The discovery of vitamins is a significant scientific accomplishment in health and disease awareness. The key exploration era started in the early 19th century and concluded in the mid-20th. Physiologists, epidemiologists, chemists, and physicians tried to overcome the vitamin mystery.
According to https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23798048/, clinicians soon described beriberi, pellagra, xerophthalmia, scurvy, and rickets, as resulting from particular deficits in vitamins instead of toxin-related or infections. Animal model laboratory physiology played an integral role in dietary science and dramatically decreased human vitamin deficiency duration.
The Prelude Before the Vitamin Era
Thomas Christie was a physician working in Sri Lanka in 1804. He stated that the beriberi disease was highly likely caused by a desire for a more nourishing and stimulating diet. Beriberi is a condition that first displays fatigue and sensation loss in the legs and feet, then various symptoms, including trunk oedema, and eventually respiratory problems and heart failure.
In the 1890s, a Dutch physician assigned to the military, Christiaan Eijkman, was given the assignment to grow the microbe claimed to be responsible for causing beriberi. He used rice for his experiments. He discovered that the high starch levels in white rice were toxic. Still, the effects could be counteracted by an antidote found in the polishings of brown rice.
Due to the analysis of the structure of food and human and animal nutritional requirements, scientists discovered that the diet required additional multifaceted nitrogenous amalgams known as “protein.” Additionally, starch, sugars, and fats were needed. All these components were claimed to supply usable energy as they oxidised in the body.
Bones were also seen to have high concentrations of phosphate salts and lime (calcium oxide). The body was found to have numerous other essential mineral salts, and mixed diets usually supplied ample amounts without unusual precautions.
The Vitamin Era
A biochemist from Poland, born in 1884, Kazimierz Funk, frequently anglicized as Casimir Funk, was responsible for the first vitamin formulation in 1912 while at the London Lister Institute. At the time, Funk researched beriberi, a disease common to predominantly Asian peoples who lived on polished white rice diets. Funk concluded that the outbreak was not caused by a toxin, as commonly thought, but by the lack of an essential nutrient in the rice. He invented the word “vitamine” and suggested that related essential vitamins could prevent rickets, pellagra, and scurvy diseases.
Oscodal, a sugar-coated vitamin A and D tablet made out of cod-liver fat, was the first vitamin pill using a Funk procedure in the early 1920s to receive the American Medical Association approval.
Present Day
Over the years, nutritionists have adjusted their commendations and reflected on the different nutritional requirements of infants, youth, pregnant and breastfeeding women, and sedentary and competitive occupations. With that in mind, to determine the right multivitamins for you INESSA would be the most reliable source.
According to https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6130165/, studies conducted indicate that Vitamin D was the most widely used supplement. The rate of vitamin and mineral supplements use among those who participated in the study was 44.6 percent. Statistically important was the connection between supplement use, a significantly high family income, and a regular workout.
As referenced by https://www.statista.com/statistics/521735/market-size-vitamins-minerals-and-supplements-worldwide/, the global vitamin supplements market, in 2017, was sized at USD 48.5 billion and continues to grow rapidly.