Posted in Vitamins on Jun 1st, 2008
Vitamin K Vitamin K helps make four of the 13 proteins needed for blood clotting. Its role in maintaining the clotting cascade is so important that people who take anticoagulants such as warfarin (Coumadin) must be careful to keep their vitamin K intake stable. Lately, researchers have demonstrated that vitamin K is also involved in [...]
Posted in Vitamins on Jun 1st, 2008
Vitamin E For a time, vitamin E supplements looked like an easy way to prevent heart disease. Promising observational studies, including the Nurses’ Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-up Study, suggested 20 to 40 percent reductions in coronary heart disease risk among individuals who took vitamin E supplements (usually containing 400 IU or more) for [...]
Posted in Vitamins on Jun 1st, 2008
Vitamin D Getting vitamin D from the sun: Correctly applied sunscreen reduces our ability to absorb vitamin D by as much as 90 percent; sunscreen takes a few minutes to have this vitamin D-dampening effect, however, so if you put it on just before you go outside, you will be able to get enough sun [...]
Posted in Vitamins on Jun 1st, 2008
Vitamin C Vitamin C has been in the public eye for a long time. Even before its discovery in 1932, nutrition experts recognized that something in citrus fruits could prevent scurvy, a disease that killed as many as two million sailors between 1500 and 1800. In the 1970s, Chemistry and Peace Nobel laureate Linus Pauling [...]
Posted in Vitamins on Jun 1st, 2008
Three of the Bs: Folate, Vitamin B6, and Vitamin B12 One of the advances that changed the way we look at vitamins was the discovery that too little folate, one of the eight B vitamins, is linked to birth defects such as spina bifida and anencephaly. Fifty years ago, no one knew what caused these [...]