Eli5: [ELI5] What qualifies a chemical or mineral as a “vitamin?” Are all vitamins good for you in proper dosages?
In: Biology
Short version, it is a molecule your body needs, but cannot make itself.
The exception to the rule is D vitamin, which is synthesized in your liver in an unfinished state. It is then transported to your skin, where sunlight drives the reaction that turns it into functional D vitamin.
Further chatting along; you need all vitamins in proper doses, to function optimally. Dark winters in the North for example, leads to D-vitamin deficit, which then again plays a part in so called Vinter Depression. We are all affected by the dark, but people with darker skin are hit harder, because their dark skin produces less D-Vitamin. They are adapted to sunshine, while we light skinned northerners, get serious sunburns if we are too much in the sun. But we lost our skin color, to make the most of the light there is, up north.
Lack of C Vitamin led to scurvy, for sailors and pirates alike. It was cured/prevented with lemons. Too much C Vitamin does not harm, the excess goes straight through your body.
While too much A-Vitamin can cause serious damage to you eyesight.
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