why do B vitamins have various numbers? Are they chemically related?
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Vitamins are biological molecules that are not able to be created by the human body and which you need in small quantities for proper health. Inorganic compounds like iron, calcium, etc. as well as macronutrients (proteins, carbs, fats, etc) are excluded.
The vitamins were classified by letter during the early 1900s, before we knew what the chemicals physically looked like. At first, we mainly figured them out by looking at the different diseases caused by deficiency (for example, scurvy is caused by lack of Vitamin C).
Over time, we discovered that some vitamins were actually multiple very different compounds, so we started creating sub-assignments under the letter. That’s how we got some of the B’s.
There were also some vitamins that we later discovered weren’t actual vitamins, or were so similar to other vitamins that they didn’t really deserve their own letter. Vitamin H was renamed to B7. Vitamin F ended up being a type of fat. That’s why there are so many weird holes in the vitamin naming system nowadays.
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