Vitamin B12 Folate, and cell division, vitamin B12 (in coenzyme form) stands by to accept carbon groups from folate as folate removes them from other pounds.
The passing of these carbon groups from folate to vitamin B12 regenerates the active form of folate so that it can continue its dismantling tasks. In the absence of vitamin B12, folate is trapped in its inactive, metabolically useless form, unable to do its Job.
When folate is either trapped due to a vitamin B12 deficiency or unavailable due to a deficiency of folate itself, cells that are growing most rapidly, notably, the blood cells, are the first to be affected.
Thus a deficiency of either nutrient vitamin B12 or folate impairs maturation of the blood cells and produces anemia.
The anemia is identifiable by microscopic examination of the blood, which reveals many large, immature red blood cells. Either vitamin B12 or folate will clear up the anemia.
Vitamin B12 and the nervous system, although either vitamin will clear up the anemia caused by vitamin B12 deficiency, if folate is given when vitamin B12 is needed, the result is disastrous, not to the blood but to the nervous system. The reason, vitamin B12 also helps maintain nerve filters. A vitamin B12 deficiency can ultimately result in devastating neurological symptoms, undetectable by blood test.
A deceptive folate cure of anemia in vitamin B12 deficiency allows the nerve.
Vitamin B12 absorption, vitamin B12 requires na intrinsic factor, a compound made inside the body for absorption from the intestinal tract into the blood stream. This intrinsic factor is made in the stomach, where it attaches to the vitamin; the complex then passes to the small intestine and gradually absorbed.
Inositol, Choline and Carnitine, among the non B vitamins are a trio of substances known as inositol, choline, and carnitine. Researchers are exploring the possibility that these substances may be essential.
Vitamin C, metabolic roles of vitamin C.
The best understood action of vitamin C is its role in helping to form collagen, the single most important protein of connective. Collagen serves as the matrix on which bones is formed, the material of scars, and na important parto of the glue that attaches one cell to another This latter function is especially important in the artery walls, which must expand and contract with each beat of the hearth, and in the walls of the capillaries, which are thin and fragile. Vitamin C also plays a role in the production of carnitine, important for transporting fatty acids within cells.
Potassium is the principal positively charged ion inside the body cells. It plays a major role in maintaining fluid and electrolyte balance and cell integraty. The sudden deaths that occur in severe diarrhea and in children with kwashiorkor or people with eating disorders are likely due to heart failure caused by potassium loss.
Calcium owns the distintion of being the most abundant mineral in the body. Ninety nine percent of the body´s calcium is stored in the bones, where it plays two important roles.
First, its an integral part of boné structure. Second, it serves as a calcium bank available to the body fluids should a drop calcium accur.
Calcium balance, blood calcium concentration is tightly controlled. Whenever blood calcium rises too high, a system of hormones and vitamin D promotes its deposit into bone.
Whenever blood calcium falls too low, the regulatory system acts in three locations to raise it, the small intestine absorbs more calcium, the bones release more calcium, the kidneys excrete less calcium.
Calcium and Osteoporosis, bone mass peaks at the time of skeletal maturity (about age 30), and a high peak bone mass is the best protection against later age related bone loss and fracture. Adequate calcium nutrition during the growing years is essential to achieving optimal peak bone mass.
Following menopause, women lose about 15 percent of their bone mass, as a middle aged and older men.
When bone loss has reached such na extreme that bones fracture under even common, everyday stresses, the condition is known as osteoporosis.
Osteoporosis afflicts more than 80 million people in the world, mostly women with 50 years of age. Men, however, are not immune to osteoporosis.
Each year, a million and a half people, 30 percent of them men suffer broken hips, pelvises, legs, arms, hands, and ankles to osteoporosis.
But both genetic and environmental factors can contribute to osteoporosis.
Calcium and hypertension, some evidence suggests that may protect against hypertension.
For this reason, restricting salt intake to treat hypertension is narrow advice.
Phosphorus is the second most abundant mineral in the body. About 85 percent of this is found combined with calcium in the crystals of the bones and teeth.
As part of one of the body´s buffer systems, phosphorus is also found in all body tissues.
Phosphorus is necessary for all growth.

Magnesium barely qualifies as major mineral. Only about 1 ounce of magnesium is present in the body of a 130 pound person, over half of it in the bones.
Most of the rest is in the muscles, hearth, liver, and other soft tissues, with only 1 percent in the body fluids. Bone magnesium seems to be reservoir to ensure that some will be on hand for vital reactions regardless of recent dietary intake.
Magnesium is critical to the operation of hundreds of enzymes. It acts in all the cells of the soft tissues, where it forms part of the protein making machinery and is necessary for the release of energy.
Mangnesium also helps muscles to relax after contaction.
Magnesium deficiency, magnesium deficiency can result from vomiting, diarrhea, protein malnutrition; in people who have been fed incomplete fluids intravenously for too long after surgery; or in people using diuretics. Magnesium deficiency may also be relationed to cardiovascular disease and hypertension.
Iron, most of the iron in the body is a component of the proteins hemoglobin in red blood cells and myoglobin in muscle cells. The iron in both hemoglobin and myoglobin helps them carry and old oxygen and then release it.
Myoglobin holds oxygen for the muscles to use when they contract. As part of many enzymes, iron is vital to the processes by which cells generate energy.
Iron is also needed to make new cells, amino acids, hormones, and neurotransmitters.
Iron is needed to support the added blood volume, the growth of the fetus, and the blood loss during the childbirth.
The rapid growth of adolescence, especially for males, and the blood losses of menstruation for females also demand extra iron thata typical teen diet may not provide.
Causes of iron deficiency, the big cause of iron deficiency is usually inadequate intake from ignorance of which foods to choose, from sheer lack of food altogether, or from high consumption of iron poor foods. Blood loss is the primary nonnutritional cause, especially in poor regions of the world where parasitic infections of the GI tract may lead to blood loss.
Zinc, is a versatile trace mineral required as a cofactor bymore than 200 enzymes.
These zinc requiring enzymes perform tasks in the eyes, liver, kidneys, muscles, skin, bones, and male reproductive organs. Zinc Works with the enzymes that make genetic material; manufacture heme; digest food; metabolize carbohidrate, protein, and fat; liberate vitamin A from storage in the liver; and dispose of damaging free radicals.
Zinc also interacts with platelets in blood clothing, affects tyroid hormone function, assists in immune function, and also affects behaviour and learning performance.
Zinc is needed to produce the active form of vitamin A in visual pigments and essential to wound healing, taste perception, the making of sperm and fetal development. When zinc deficiency occurs, it impairs all these and other functions.
The body´s handling of zinc differs from that of iron, but with some interesting simillarities. For example, like iron, extra zinc that enters the body is held within the intestinal cells, and only the amount needed is released into the bloodstream. As with iron, zinc status influences the percentage of zinc absorbed from the diet; if more is needed more is absorbed.
Zinc´s main transport vehicle in the blood is the protein albumin.
Selenium is an essential trace mineral that functions as part of a group of antioxidant enzymes called glutathione peroxidases. These type of enzymes prevent free radical formulation, thus blocking the damaging chain reaction before it begins.
Glutathione peroxidases and vitamin E work in concert. If free radicals do form, and chain reaction starts, vitamin E halts it. Selenium also plays roles in converting thyroid hormone to its active form.
Iodine occurs in the body in minuscule amounts, but the principal role in human nutrition is well known, and the amount needed is well established. Iodine is an integral part of the tyroid hormones, which regulate body temperature, metabolic rate, reproduction, growth, the making of blood cells, nerve and muscle function, and more.
Iodine deficiency, when the iodine concentration in the blood is low, the cells of the tyroid gland enlarge in na attempt to trap as many particicles of iodine as possible.
If the gland enlarges until is visible, the swelling is called a simple goiter.
Copper, the body contains about 100 miligrams of copper. About one fourth is in the muscles; one fourth is in the liver, brain, and blood; and the rest in in the bones, kidneys, and other tissues. The primary function of copper in the body is to serve metabolic roles, they catalyze the formation of hemoglobin, help manufacture the protein collagen, assist in the healing of wounds, and help maintain the sheaths around nerve fibers.
One of the copper´s most vital roles is to help cells use iron. Like iron, copper is needed is many reactions related to respiration and energy metabolism.
Manganese, the human body contains a tiny 20 miligrams of manganese, mostly in the bones and glands. Manganese is a cofactor for many enzymes, helping to facilitate dozens of different metabolic processes. 
 

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