I was in a thrift shop the other day, and a little book caught my eye.  The title of the book was "How Did We Find Out About Vitamins?" by Isaac Asimov.  This little book is circa 1974, and was geared toward grades 5 - 8.  I found myself so attracted to this little book that I broke down and spent $2.49 on it and took it home.  That night, I read through it in about an hour.  Wow, what a wealth of information.  It brought to light many things that even I as an herbalist had not thought of in a long time.


I know that science has discovered in the past that many different types of disease were caused by deficiencies in vitamins.  This was discovered early on during the days of Christopher Columbus.  When small ships set sail from Europe, they were often on voyages for many weeks or even months.  Many of the sailors would become sick on those long trips.  They had problems with bleeding gums and muscle aches and pains.  Many acutally got so weak that they died.  This dreaded disease became known as "scurvy."  Scurvy struck in many places, on ships, in hospitals, in prisons, and even in military troops - and these places all had one thing in common, the same types of cheap low quality foods were eaten day after day.  Finally, people began to realize that there was a connection between diet and scurvy.  In fact, after careful observation, it became quite clear that scurvy was seen only in those who were commoners and did not have access to fruits and green vegetables, and not in the higher classes where these foods were more available. 

In the 1700's the British government was the leader of trades and exports, so it was extremely important to keep their sailors in healthy condition so that their jobs could be done effectively.  At this point, they began to look for the cause of scurvy.  James Lind, a Scottish doctor began to research, and found that in 1537 when French explorer Jacques Cartier landed in Canada, with a crew that was almost dead from the debilitating disease, the local Indians gave them water that had been infused with evergreen needles.  To everyone's surprise they recovered.  After reading this, Lind began to realize that scurvy could be stopped by the right diet.

Lind began to experiment with diet.  He added cider vinegar to some diets, and fruit juices to others.  He found that those who recovered the fastest were those who drank citrus juices from lemons, limes and oranges.  This research was passed on to the British government, who then ordered that limes be carried on all ships for crew members to drink the juice if they became ill.  In fact, the use of these limes became so common on British warships that the sailors were refered to as "limeys."

A similar situation plagued Japanese sailors.  A disease called "beriberi" caused them to become weak and paralyzed, and death was the end result.  Beriberi was not exactly the same as scurvy, and can occur even when some fruits and vegetables are in the diet.  Admiral K. Takake knew that the British had beaten scurvy by changing the diet of their sailors, so he began to research the differences in the British and Japanese sailor's diets.  He found that the British soldiers never got beriberi.

The Japanese soldiers had a diet of white rice, fish and vegetables.  The British soldiers did not eat rice, but they did eat barley.  When barley was added to the Japanese soldier's rice, the beriberi disappeared!  Dr. Lind and Admiral Takake had no idea why changing the diet was working to prevent these dreaded diseases, nor did anyone else in those days.  All they knew is that it worked.

These successes began to spawn studies by chemists in the 1800's to find out what food was made of.  They discovered five main ingredients:

1. Carbohydrates (sugar and starch)
2. Lipids (fats and oils)
3. Proteins
4. Minerals
5. Water

This in turn spawned attempts to create an artificial food that could keep people healthy.  Many attempts were made by the scientists of the time, but all failed.  It seemed that there was something else in food that was essential to life - something they hadn't discovered yet.

Now, keep in mind that back in those days they believed that all disease was caused by germs.  They believed that the changes in diet that helped scurvy and beriberi were due to simply helping the body fight off these germs.  Scientists looked for these beriberi and scurvy germs to no avail.

A Dutch doctor named Christian Eijkman, while looking for these germs, accidentily happened upon a flock of chickens that had a nerve disease similar to beriberi, which was called polyneuritis.  He found that the person in charge of the chickens had been giving them white rice that was left over from hospital patients.  As rice grows, a brown husk is formed.  This oil containing husk causes stored rice to get rancid after a short time, so it was common practice to polish the husk off, which enabled the rice to stay good for long periods of time.  When the man who had been feeding the chickens was transferred, the chickens were fed the cheaper brown rice in the husk - and surprisingly, they all got better.

Since it was believed that all disease was caused by germs or some sort of poison, Eijkman believed that the white rice must have had a poison in it that the brown husk neutalized.  But what if there was something in the husks that was not present in the white rice that the body needed, and it wasn't due to a poison or germ, but rather to a lack of something?  Could it be the oil in the rice husk?

In the early 1900's, scientists began to understand that there were substances in foods that were present in very small quantities, and that the human body was not able to make these substances.  If these substances were missing - the result was illness.  They found that if a specific substance was lacking - a certain type of deficiency disease would arise. 

Scientists began to study rice husks, and found that they could soak them, and some of the substances in the husk would dissolve into the water.  In 1906, they found that this water would cure pigeons with polyneuritis.  This is what is met by the term "water-soluable."

Scientist's then learned how to isolate various different substances in foods.  This led to the discovery of the fact that every substance there is, is made up of identical small objects called "molecules", and that these were made up of still smaller objects called "atoms," and that each molecule is made of different numbers of atoms that are connected in a particular way (the chemical structures).  These atom structure combinations became known as "amines."  They found that it actually took very small abouts of these chemical combinations to cure illnesses like scurvy, beriberi and even rickets.

A Polish chemist named Casimir Funk discovered that there were a whole series of these amines. He began calling them "vitamines" derived from the Latin word for life which is "vita."  We have been calling them "vitamins" ever since.  The very first vitamin to ever be studied by science was the beriberi substance.

In a study done in 1913 by two American chemists, Elmer Vernerer McCollum and Marguerite Davis, they found that if they added sugar, proteins, and minerals only to the diet of rats, the rats would stop growing; but if they added egg-yolk or butter, they grew and became healthy.  They found that there was an oil substance that was necessary.  This substance was not water-soluable, but rather became known a a "fat-soluable" substance.  They also found that the rats that lacked this substance had eye problems.

Since there were now two different vitamins, one that was fat-soluable that cured night-blindness in rats, and one that was water-soluable that cured beriberi, they deserved to have two different names.  At this time, the chemical structures of these were unknown, so they called the fat-soluable vitamin "Vitamin A," and the water-soluable one "Vitamin B."  This is how letters began being used to represent different vitamins.  Soon, the anti-scurvy substance became known as "Vitamin C," and the anti-rickets substance became known as "Vitamin D."  Soon "Vitamin E" was discovered and lastly, "Vitamin K."  There were others that were thought to be helpful that were Vitamin F - J, but those were found to be mistakes, as many of these were the forms of Vitamin B that we know of as Vitamin B1, B2, B6 and B12.  The original "Vitamin B" was then referred to as "Vitamin B complex," which contained all forms.

So why does the body require such tiny amounts of these vitamins?  What can it possibly do with so little?  Here is where "enzymes" come into play.  Enzymes help to make chemical reactions in the body take place.  Each chemical reaction has it's own type of enzyme.  Enzymes are made of proteins which have giant molecules that the body can acutally make.  Vitamins have much smaller molecules that the body is unable to make.  Science has found that enzymes in the body cannot work unless they make use of smaller molecules called co-enzymes.  So in order for vitamins to work, they also needed enzymes and co-enzymes, and vice-versa.  If vitamins are missing from food then, the co-enzymes could not build up and be used in the body.

After 1934, chemists figured out the atomic chemical structures right down to the last atom, which resulted in the vitamins getting chemical names such as thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, pyridoxine, cobalt, biotin, ascorbic acid, folic acid, pantothenic acid etc.

People began to realize that just because you ate and felt full, that wasn't enough.  Food had to be eaten that contained vitamins every day/  For example, leafy vegetables, liver, milk, butter and eggs are high in Vitamin A.  Cod-liver oil and sunshine are high in Vitamin D.  B-complex Vitamins are found in milk, meat, eggs, liver, grain, and vegetables, and tomatoes and citrus fruits contain Vitamin C.

So what if you eat a diet of processed, dead foods that have little or no nutritional value?  What if you are too busy to eat the proper diet?  What if the quality of the food we have is less nutritional due to depleted soils?  You guessed it!  Supplementing with vitamins and minerals is the key to staying well.  Do nutritional supplements work?  Just ask the people who are a part of this "up and coming" trillion dollar industry of the "Health and Wellness Revolution!"  Read some of the wealth of information by the famous health, fitness and wellness gurus like Paul Bragg, Jack LaLanne, Robert Adkins, Denise Austin, Gary Null, or Andrew Weil, and you will see that they all have one thing in common - nutrition and supplementation as necessary.

With so many supplements out there in the marketplace, how do you know which company has the best supplements?  Another common question is, "Which vitamins do I need?"  My advise is to always go with the ones that have the most experience and quality control measures.  That is why I recommend very few nutrutional supplement companies - most simply cannot live up to my standards.  There is one however, that has been around for almost 40 years - a company that has tried and true supplements that are not just the latest "fad" supplements.  You might also be interested in taking the Brilliant Body Assessment to see which supplements your body requires specifically.