How does vitamin B6 work?
We have been doing a lot of research on Vitamins lately and each one has its own strengths and weaknesses, but you have never met a vitamin that works harder than Vitamin B6. It works in your body as a coenzyme and helps over 100 processes function. It protects your heart from disease and does a myriad of other works. Just read on to find out how does vitamin B6 works to keep your body functioning at its peek and how not taking that one little vitamin a day can hard you.
Vitamin B6 is a water-soluble compound that was discovered in the 1930s during nutrition studies on rats. It is an essential nutrient required for life. Our bodies use it everyday in countless ways. The vitamin was named pyridoxine to indicate its structural homology to pyridine.
Pyridoxal phosphate (PLP) is the active form and is a cofactor in many reactions of amino acid metabolism. PLP also is necessary for the enzymatic reaction governing the release of glucose from glycogen.
Enzymes dependent on PLP focus a wide variety of chemical reactions mainly involving amino acids. The versatility arises from the ability of PLP to covalently bind the substrate, and then to act as an electrophilic catalyst, thereby stabilizing different types of carbanionic reaction intermediates. Before there can be reactions you first need to bring Vitamin B6 into your body.
Sources
Vitamin B6 is prevalent in both animal and vegetable food sources. Avocados, nuts, liver, chicken, fish, green beans, field salad, wheat germ, nutritional yeast, sea vegetables, and bananas are particularly good food sources.
The United States RDA suggests 1.3 mg for both men and women of any age, 1.9 mg for women who are pregnant, and 2.0 mg for women who are lactating.
Deficiencies
Vitamin B6 deficiency has a classical syndrome with seborrhea dermatitis, atrophic glossitis with ulceration, angular cheilitis, and conjunctivitis, neurologic symptoms of somnolence, confusion, and neuropathy.
Overdose
This can cause nausea, headache, diarrhea, a temporary deadening of certain nerves; feeling of disembodiment common with the loss of proprioception. This condition is reversible when supplementation is stopped.
When we know the burning answer to, just how does vitamin B6 work, then we are prepared to take our nutritional health to the next level.
