Talk:Vitamin

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Please add new sections at the END. If content is added in the wrong place, it might be moved, or, worse, it might never be seen.

Contents 1 Adding Choline to the list of vitamins 2 Reasons for partial revert of TimVickers edits 3 More problems with Vitamin template 4 Mind control? 5 Discussion About The Controversy Related to Vitamin Supplements/Vitamins 6 Folic acid deficiency symptoms 7 IUs? 8 wording is confusing

[edit] Adding Choline to the list of vitamins

I would like to add Choline to the chart of vitamins on this page, and to the Vitamin template Template:Vitamin which produces the box at the bottom of each vitamin page. --Coppertwig 08:42, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

According to most of the articles I could find, choline is referred to as "vitamin-like" and is not essential at all stages of development, although deficiency can result in disease, and it is listed on most RDA charts. Here is an example of one "neutral" reference I found UNC at Chapel Hill: News release. Therefore, although it is a bit of a gray area, I don't think that it should be classified here as a vitamin at this time. Cheers--DO11.10 18:27, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

On the Choline Wikipedia page, it says " In 1998 choline was classified as an essential nutrient by the Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine (U.S.A.) and Adequate Intakes (AI) have been established." That sounds pretty definitive to me. The other sources are probably using out-of-date information. I think it should just be added to the vitamin template -- a navigational aid. --Coppertwig 22:33, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I think it is probably safe to list it in the template. Between biotin and folic acid(?).--DO11.10 00:45, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

I put "Choline (vitamin-like)" into the template. The situation is complex. See my comments on Template talk:Vitamin. --Coppertwig 12:52, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Choline nutrition is discussed here. Choline can be made in the body, and not all people require this in the diet, so i don't think this is a vitamin. TimVickers 18:42, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Water is also made in the body as a byproduct, but is nevertheless an essential nutrient IMO. The link you give calls it an essential nutrient. Maybe it's an essential nutrient according to some definitions but not others, or in some opinions but not others. Maybe some ingredient the body needs to make choline also tends to be in short supply. The Choline page also calls it an essential nutrient. I think it's fair to say that if it's an essential nutrient, then it's a vitamin -- it doesn't fit into any of the other categories of essential nutrients and making a whole category for Choline doesn't seem appropriate. So, if there's a gray area as to whether it's an essential nutrient, then there's a gray area as to whether it's a vitamin.

My main concern here is providing links so people can navigate around the pages and find what they want to find. I have a suggestion: How about putting Choline into the Vitamins template but with a marker: it can appear in parentheses, or with (vitaminlike) after it, or something like that to indicate that it isn't exactly a vitamin. I wouldn't want someone on a restricted diet to forget to consider choline just because it doesn't happen to appear in any of the categories. --Coppertwig 03:06, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reasons for partial revert of TimVickers edits

Thank you for contributing to the Nutrition category of the English Wikipedia. Many people working together are producing some excellent pages. I'm sorry to revert some of your edits; I don't want to discourage you. Some of your edits are helpful and good. I left in your square brackets around vitamin K and the disambiguated link to metabolism. I agree that the word "encompass" is a little awkward; you changed it to "cover", and now I've changed it to "include". The first sentence I find less wordy and more clear the way it was, so I changed it back. Many people would say it's incorrect to call anything "a chemical"; that you need to say "a chemical substance" and even that isn't very scientific; after all, everything is a chemical substance, isn't it? Feel free to discuss what you don't like about the first sentence and we can try to find something we all agree on. --Coppertwig 20:53, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Definition of "Chemical" - Noun, a substance produced by or used in a chemical process. I added the material to the root article "nutrition" and tried to clean the page up a little. TimVickers 21:19, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] More problems with Vitamin template

I added "Choline (vitamin-like)" and just noticed two other problems:

First of all, there are two templates. Template:Vitamin and Template:Vitamins. The second one of these is used on only 6 pages (as opposed to 25 pages for Template:Vitamin). It says "Vitamins and Cofactors" on top and in addition to the vitamins it lists some, but not all, of the essential minerals at the bottom. The overall appearance of this template is very similar to Template:Vitamin. I think Template:Vitamins should be deleted.

The other problem: vitamin D2 and vitamin D3 are listed separately in the vitamin template. I would like to see only one mention of vitamin D. It says on the vitamin D page that ergocalciferol (vitamin D2) does not occur naturally in the human body. I think of it as a poor substitute that we used in supplements before we learned how to synthesize real vitamin D. I read that vitamin D2 (ergocalciferol) is much more toxic than vitamin D3. Listing them separately gives the impression that people need both, (as with the B vitamins where each one is needed), whereas people just need some form of vitamin D. I suggest changing it to "Cholecalciferol (Vitamin D3)" or "Cholecalciferol (Vitamin D)" or just "Vitamin D". --Coppertwig 13:05, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi, Coppertwig, the intended emphasis of the two templates seems quite different; whereas the focus of Template:Vitamin seems to be on human nutrition, Template:Vitamins is more centered on enzymatic cofactors, regardless of what species the enzyme happens to belong to. Although the deprecated vitamins template is indeed imperfect, it is part of a larger series of navigational templates for biochemistry, which would have to be refactored if this one got deleted. Perhaps a better solution might be to rename the deprecated template (say, to Template:Enzyme cofactors) instead of deleting it altogether; what do you think? Willow 22:45, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Renaming it might be a good solution. That would reduce the confusion with the Vitamin template. I'm not familiar with the whole series of templates. It could be renamed to Enzyme cofactors as you suggest or to Vitamins and cofactors or to something else. Actually, the heading at the top of the template doesn't look very logical to me: "Vitamins and cofactors" -- shouldn't it be "Vitamins and other cofactors"? Maybe changing the heading and name to just "Enzyme cofactors" would be best. Thanks for your input. I was checking whether anyone cared about that template. --Coppertwig 03:42, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I agree renaming is a much better idea.--DO11.10 18:22, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi all, thanks for your suggestions! They really helped to clarify the intended use of the biochemical template, now called Template:Enzyme cofactors. See you around, Willow 19:51, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mind control?

I have trouble with this sentence: "Supplements are, as required by law, not intended to treat, diagnose, mitigate, prevent, or cure disease". First of all, it doesn't state what jurisdiction it's talking about. Secondly, I doubt the law actually requires people not to intend that supplements do those things. That would be mind control. Probably the law requires that certain statements be printed on the packages. Thirdly, if the law does require that people not have those intentions, I doubt that everyone follows it, as this sentence seems to be claiming. --Coppertwig 03:33, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Coppertwig - I noticed the same thing. When I edited the page last weekend I fixed this problem. The text of the act is "Supplements are not intended to treat, diagnose, mitigate, prevent, or cure disease." This text, or something like it, is required language on bottles of supplements. I just took out a vitamin supplement bottle. The label reads "This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease."

shbrown 03:42, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion About The Controversy Related to Vitamin Supplements/Vitamins

Continued from archived Supplement controversy section

Summary of new points (28 November 2006) by shbrown I just reread the page, and I'll need to reread more carefully again, looking for clarification of when a vitamin is a vitamin, and when it is a supplement. If this is a fact, it is an important one and should be added to the end of the first paragraph where the manufacture of vitamin supplements is first mentioned. Editing to make this point clear is also needed in the vitamin side effects section.

I agree this is an important point, that should be included in the supplement section. According to the FDA the definition of dietary supplement is "a product (other than tobacco) that is intended to supplement the diet that bears or contains one or more of the following dietary ingredients: a vitamin, a mineral, an herb or other botanical, an amino acid, a dietary substance for use by man to supplement the diet by increasing the total daily intake, or a concentrate, metabolite, constituent, extract, or combinations of these ingredients. is intended for ingestion in pill, capsule, tablet, or liquid form. is not represented for use as a conventional food or as the sole item of a meal or diet. is labeled as a "dietary supplement". IMO a vitamin is a collection of elements arranged in a certain way that facilitates a function, and a supplement is a) a "processed" (for lack of a better word) form of a vitamin, i.e. not a food that happens to have vitamins in it, and b)is intentionally used to supplement the diet. Thoughts??

I think there should be a link to megavitamins in the main text of the vitamin article (where is the threshold between vitamins and megavitamins?)

No at the bottom with the other links is a more reasonable place, and that question should be answered on the megavitamin page, not here.

I believe that any side effects from vitamin supplements can be experienced by eating foods rich in vitamins. For example, eating 1 to 2 pounds of green peppers a day gets a vitamin C dose over 2000 mg. 1 lb of liver can contain as much as 100 mg of niacin. Polar bear liver contains more than 500,000 IU vitamin A in a quarter pound.

Besides probably having some serious gastrointestinal issues, I doubt that someone who is eating that kind of diet has an Internet connection in their Unabomber-esqe cabin (kidding). Seriously, I doubt that anyone eats 1 to 2 pounds of peppers, a pound of (Cow??) liver or any fraction of a polar bear liver (holy crap BTW) on a daily basis, pretty much the only way a person would ingest the amounts of vitamins described in your proposed edit is by the ingestion of supplements.

Your statement "the use of high dosage supplementation specifically, is obviously contentious" requires qualification.

I meant that to mean YOU feel it is obviously contentious (or controversial), based on your proposed edits which I think serve as my "qualification".

And then this one "You will notice that nowhere in this article is there a mention of "So-and-so think that vitamins....". In addition to being facts, the RDA's and UL's are the consensus opinion of groups of physicians.

Well no those are the reported findings of studies done by physicians, not exactly the same as an "opinion".

Concerning your cautionary statement, I need more feedback. Could you be more specific about what you perceive my point of view to be, and what it is I am attacking?--shbrown

I would rather not discuss that here, please contact me individually.--DO11.10 19:14, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

I think of vitamins by their chemical structures. Every vitamin page has a graphic with the chemical structure of its most common form. IMO, a vitamin extracted from a plant or synthesized in a lab, and then pressed into a tablet is still a vitamin. IMO wikipedia is expressing a point of view by breaking the topic of vitamin into two parts - the vitamin page and the megavitamins page. And then there is the vitamin poisoning page - hmm - obviously a point of view. IMO the point of wikipedia is to be an evergreen document that works to develop consensus through debate and transparency.

These discussions are concentrating my mind. You state that the RDA's are "the reported findings of studies done by physicians". Is this true? What studies? What is the history of the RDA's? Where is the rationale? What is the purpose of the RDA's?

Why are you so quick to dismiss my comments about foods rich in vitamins? How many RDA's would an athelete eating mostly meats and fresh fruits and vegetables consume on a daily basis? What about hunter gatherer societies? Wild foods tend to have much higher vitamin/calorie ratio than agricultural foods. How many RDA's in these diets? Why aren't simple questions like this easily answered?

I am not happy about the megavitamin page. IMO anything written on that page will be considered less credible than what is written on the vitamin page. I'm not in a hurry. I am probably going to start by trying to answer some of my own questions. Once I've got a factual answer to the history of the RDA's, I'm going to add to the history section. shbrown 03:19, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is some kind of place. Wikipedia has a page "Recommended Daily Intake" which pops up from a search on RDA. The vitamin page needs to link to this page in its discussion of the RDA. shbrown 03:30, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Vitamin U is not Allantonin but a methionin derivative Cabagin see "Merk Index"

Although this has been suspected in the past Vitamin B10 and B11 can not posibly be Vitamin R and Vitamin S. B10 and B11 are soluble in ethanol. vitamin R and Vitamin S are NOT soluble in ethanol. (some folates are not soluble in alcohol like folinic acid and PGA; some folates are soluble in alcohol like PHGA) Bertei

[edit] Folic acid deficiency symptoms

An earlier version said "Heart disease, cancer, and neural tube defects.". User DO11.10 edited it, removing mention of these three conditions, stating in the edit summary that "While potentally linked to, heart diseases and cancer are not CAUSED by folic acid deficiency". I've put the three conditions back into the table, modifying the way they are presented so that they're mentioned as "linked" rather than "caused". I think it's useful information. I hope this way of presenting it is acceptable to user DO11.10. Please feel free to discuss it here. --Coppertwig 00:11, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

No, Not really. While I have no problem with the neural tube defect part of the addition, I have a serious problem with including "heart disease" and "cancer" for a number of reasons. First and foremost, those diseases are not CAUSED by folic acid deficiency, the header of the table column, as well as all of the other diseases listed are directly caused by vitamin deficiency. Second, the research on the relationship of folic acid and these diseases is mostly speculative and in several instances is quite contradictory. Third, the terms "cancer" and "heart disease" are far too broad to be the least bit informative here (i.e. what kind of cancer, under what circumstances, what stages of heart disease?) In my view, the point of the table here is to: a)summarize the vitamins b)provide links to other, more detailed articles c)show that deficiency of even single vitamins is directly related to very specific and detrimental diseases. In light of this I am going to remove the potential linkage to heart disease and cancer, but will leave the neural tube defect.--DO11.10 04:18, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't dispute at this time the removal of heart disease and cancer here, although the word "caused" does not have a simple definition. Perhaps for many vitamins, it can be shown that supplements of the vitamin reduce the rate of diseases such as heart disease and cancer. Depending on the definitions of "deficiency" and "cause", it can then be said that deficiency of the vitamins caused those diseases in many people.

"Mostly speculative" sounds as if there are some studies which are not merely speculative but have actual evidence; and when you say "contradictory" I wonder whether you're talking about a common situation where some studies establish, with statistical significance, that there are effects, and other studies fail to establish that. I would like to point out that there is nothing contradictory in such results; it simply means that some studies contain evidence and other studies do not contain evidence -- they don't disprove anything. To get a contradiction, you have to have one study establishing with statistical significance that if there is any effect then it is less than a certain percentage, and another study establishing with statistical significance that there is an effect greater than that percentage. It's relatively rare for statistical studies to have enough data to make these sorts of statements, as opposed to the usual "we established that there is a correlation" or "we failed to establish that there was a correlation." Even so there is no logical contradiction, only proof that if the two studies are studying the same measurables in the same population then at least one of them involves a statistical fluke. --Coppertwig 14:19, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] IUs?

Wouldn't it be a good idea to quote IUs in this article? I was thinking of possibly modifying the table to add it.WolfKeeper 05:35, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Sure, have at it!--DO11.10 04:18, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] wording is confusing

This paragraph is pretty hard to follow, anyone understand what it is trying to say?: Throughout the early 1900s, the use of deprivation studies allowed scientists to isolate and identify a number of vitamins. Initially, lipid from fish oil was used to cure rickets in rats, and the fat-soluble nutrient was called "antirachitic A". The irony here is that the first "vitamin" bioactivity ever isolated, which cured rickets, was initially called "vitamin A", the bioactivity of which is now called vitamin D,[6] What we now call "vitamin A" was identified in fish oil because it was inactivated by ultraviolet light.