Vitamins for Kids

Vitamins are essential to one's health - especially children. Children are in a constant state of growing and learning and require adequate vitamin levels to ensure proper functioning of vital cellular reactions. Vitamins serve many different functions in the human body - antioxidants (to counteract the "rusting" and "aging" of cells), regulation of cell and tissue growth, mediators of cellular signaling (communication), hormones (communication), and catalysts of metabolic reactions (causing more efficient reactions).

A vitamin is a required nutrient in the dietary intake by a human as it cannot be synthesized by other consumed nutrients. Vitamins serve as cofactors in biochemical reactions - catalyzing reactions when bound with a protein that acts as an enzyme.

Vitamins are classified by their functional activity, not by their structure; each "vitamin" may have many different vitamers (isomers of vitamins - structurally different compounds that have the same molecular formula). Thus, many types of a single vitamin are available. For example, retinal and retinol are both forms of Vitamin A. Similarly, cyanocobalamin, hydroxocobalamin, and methylcobalamin are all different forms of the vitamin B12. Vitamins many times change from one vitamer to another vitamer within the body during different biochemical reactions.

Vitamins are acquired naturally through grains, fruits, and vegetables as well as processed foods from the supermarket. Processed foods are usually "enriched" or "fortified" with vitamins, meaning that the vitamin content is added to the product after the food processing in an attempt to a restore the lost vitamins during the manufacturing of the product. Many of these "fortified" vitamins are produced as commodity chemicals and are quite inexpensive to produce. Yet, these artificially manufactured vitamers are not as valuable as the vitamins that come from whole food (non-processed) sources.

When a certain vitamin is deficient, cellular malfunction, permanent deformities, or a deficiency disease may develop. Therefore, it is extremely important that all necessary vitamins be present within the body - especially in growing children. The vitamin sources that are best absorbed and utilized are vitamins from fresh vegetables, grains, and fruits. If a supplement is desired to ensure adequate levels of vitamins, it is best to spend the extra few dollars to purchase a "pharmaceutical grade" whole food supplement. Whole food supplements ensure that the body absorbs the nutrients just as it would from food.

In my practice, I recommend NutriWest's Total Children's Chewable as it is an excellent pharmaceutical grade vitamin from whole food nutrition. It contains a wide array of vitamins to ensure a proper balance in children metabolism and also includes the benefit of probiotics - promoting a healthy digestive tract for better digestion and absorption.