Vitamin B Complex
Beriberi is a disease that
affects the nervous, cardiovascular, and gastroin-testinal systems. The legs
feel heavy, the feet burn, and the muscles degener-ate. The patient is
irritable and suffers from headaches, depression, anorexia, constipation,
tachycardia (rapid heart rate), edema, and heart failure.
Toward the end of the
nineteenth century, a doctor in Indonesia discovered that chickens that were
fed table scraps of polished rice developed symptoms much like those of his
patients suffering from beriberi. When these same chickens were later fed brown
(unpolished) rice, they recovered.
Some years later, this
mysterious component of unpolished rice was rec-ognized as an essential food
substance and was named vitamin B. Subsequently, it was named vitamin B complex because the vitamin was found
to be composed of several compounds. The B-complex vitamins are listed in Table
7-1.
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