Vitamins — Chemical Names, Deficiency Diseases and the ADEK Trick

Two Groups, and Everything Follows From That

Vitamins are organic substances the body needs in tiny amounts but cannot make in sufficient quantity, so they must come from food. Casimir Funk coined the word "vitamine" in 1912.

The single most useful division is by solubility:

• ›Fat-soluble: A, D, E, K. Remember them as ADEK. They are stored in the liver and fatty tissue, so a deficiency takes months to appear — and an overdose is genuinely possible.
• ›Water-soluble: the B-complex and C. They are not stored (vitamin B12 in the liver is the exception), the excess is passed out in urine, so they must be supplied almost daily and deficiency shows up fast.

That one split explains why an overdose of vitamin A is dangerous while an overdose of vitamin C mostly is not. General science papers test this split directly, and then test the deficiency table around it.

1. The chemical name of Vitamin C is —

2. Rickets in children is caused by the deficiency of which vitamin?

3. Which vitamin contains a metal atom in its molecule?

4. Pellagra, marked by dermatitis, diarrhoea and dementia, is caused by a deficiency of —

5. Which group of vitamins is fat-soluble?

6. Vitamin K is required in the human body mainly for —

7. Beriberi results from a lack of which vitamin?

8. Goitre, the swelling of the thyroid gland, is caused by the deficiency of —