The people’s way of life has changed so much nowadays, including their career life and their daily life. Sadly but true, these changes lead to many health problem, either by stress, not eating on time, not rest enough or even not have time to exercise. One of the solutions to solve these problems is to take supplementary food in order to compensate things that the body is missing. I mentioned about supplementary food a while ago in the aspect that I would not recommend/support my patient to take supplementary food as I think it is not the right solution to solve the problem at the end of the line. Do you agree with that? However, if it becomes necessary to take supplementary food, it is important that we know how to take supplementary food properly and for the best benefit. But today I’m not going to talk about supplementary food; instead I will talk about vitamins and minerals which are the nutrients that our body cannot live without.

First, we will talk about vitamins. Vitamins are the nutrient which our body needs and requires to work properly but our body only needs vitamins in the quantity of micronutrients. The need of vitamins in micronutrients means the need in a smaller quantity than other nutrients such as fat, protein or carbohydrate. We will receive vitamins from the food that we take and from the synthesis system within our own body. The main utility of vitamins is to be the element in creating or transporting other nutrients for the body to use. For example: vitamin D is one of the vitamins which pass on the calcium for our body to build a bone, vitamin K is a part of the process of blood clotting when our body has any wound. Therefore, the deficiency of vitamins will cause our body to be malfunction. Now we will talk more in details as there are 3 kinds of vitamins, the vitamins can be divided into 2 types. The first type is the Fat Soluble Vitamins which are vitamin A, D, E and the last is vitamin K. These vitamins are fat soluble, therefore, it can be save and store in our body. The second type is the Water Soluble Vitamins which are vitamin B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B7, B8, B9, B11, B12, B15 and vitamin C. These vitamins are excreted from the body quickly causing the problem of lacking these vitamins very easily as it cannot be save and store in our body.

Now, let’s talk about minerals. Minerals (or inorganic compound) are the element in the rest of the food. Minerals play many important parts and roles in our body e.g. being a body structure; an element of cells, tissues and nerves; an element of enzyme, hormone and vitamins. Besides all these, minerals also control the operation of every muscle in every organ of our body. However, same as vitamins, minerals are only needed in the quantity of Micronutrients. If we do not receive enough minerals, our body will not grown properly which might cause some disorders/malfunctions. The most basic source of minerals is food. The example of minerals which are important for our body are calcium, iodine or iron. Minerals can be divided into a Macro minerals type and Trace minerals type which both have the difference as follows:

Macro minerals are the minerals that our body needs in a big quantity or in a quantity of more than 100 mg per day. These minerals are calcium, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, sodium, sulphur and chloride. Calcium is the mineral which can be detected the most in our body as it’s the composition of our bones, and the next minerals to be detected are phosphorus, potassium, magnesium and sodium as in order.

Trace minerals are the minerals that our body needs in a small quantity or in a quantity of less than 11 mg per day. These minerals are iron, zinc, selenium, manganese, copper, iodine, chromium, cobalt, fluoride, molybdenum and vanadium. Even though our body only needs these minerals in a small quantity, we still have to pay attention about it as it is still important to our body.

This is all I would like to talk about vitamins and minerals in this article. The details of the benefit, the sources or the type of food which consist of vitamins and minerals will be share in the next article. Thank you very much and good bye