Vitamins are organic compounds that are necessary in small amounts in animal and human diets to sustain life and health. The absence of certain vitamins can cause disease, poor growth, and a variety of syndromes. Thirteen vitamins have been identified as necessary for human health, and there are several more vitamin-like substances that may also contribute to good nutrition. Originally, it was thought that vitamins were particular chemical compounds called amines, but now it is known that the vitamins are unrelated chemically.
Their actions are different, and though exhaustively studied, not everything is understood about how they work and what they do. The eight B vitamins were originally thought to be one vitamin, and as more was learned about them, they were given numeral subscripts: vitamin B,, B 2 , etc. The B vitamins are now commonly called more aptly by chemically descriptive names: B, is thiamine, B 2 is riboflavin, B 6 and B 12 retain their numeral names, and the other B vitamins are niacin, pantothenic acid, biotin, and folic acid.
The vitamins are found in plant and animal food sources. They have also been chemically synthesized and so can be ingested in their pure form as nutritional supplements. It is not known precisely how much of each vitamin each person needs, but there are recommended daily allowances for 10 vitamins.
Some researchers have made extravagant claims about the benefits of large doses of specific vitamins as either preventatives or cures for diseases from acne to cancer. As new discoveries are made and old claims are either debunked or reinforced often, it is safest to say that more is understood about the consequences of lack of vitamins than what particular vitamins may do. For example, deficiency of vitamin A leads to break-down of the photosensitive cells in the retina of the eye, causing night blindness.
Absence of vitamin C in the diet leads to scurvy, a disease formerly the bane of sailors. Absence of vitamin D may lead to rickets, a bone disease.
Many researchers were responsible for piecing together the existence of vitamins as necessary components of the human and animal diets. One of the first people to study nutrition from a chemical standpoint was English physician William Prout.
In , he defined the three essentials of the human diet as the oily, the saccharin, and the albuminous, which in modern-day terms are fats and oils, carbohydrates, and proteins.
In , an English biochemist, Frederick Hopkins, discovered that mice fed on a pure diet of the three essentials could not survive unless they were given supplementary small amounts of milk and vegetables. A Polish scientist, Casimir Funk, coined the term vitamines in to describe the chemicals he believed were found in the supplementary food that helped the mice survive. Funk first believed that the vitamines were chemically related amines, thus vita life plus amines.
As other vitamins were isolated that were not amines, the spelling of the word changed. Other researchers working on diseases such as scurvy and beriberi, which are caused by vitamin deficiency, contributed to the isolation of the different vitamins.
Otherwise, the fine vitamin powder is mixed with different cellulose particles, made wet, and dried in a dryer. Once dried, the formula may be in chunks. The mill forces them down a small hole to achieve the desired granule size.
Once the vitamin ingredients are ready, they are weighed out on a scale. On a formula batch record, the required weights of each ingredient are listed down. After weighing, the ingredients are placed in a mixer for approximately minutes. Samples are then taken from different sides of the mixer and examined to ensure even distribution and proportion of all ingredients. When making a large batch, the first three or four slots in the mixer are checked and then re-checked periodically.
Once the batch in the mixer has been approved, the mixture is moved to an encapsulating machine and put into a hopper. Initially, a test batch is run through the encapsulating machine to ensure that the capsules are of proper and consistent weight. The vitamin capsules are even checked visually for splitting or dimpling. If the tests show no errors, the entire batch is run through this process.
The vitamin capsules are then circulated on a belt through a series of soft brushes. These brushes wipe out any surplus dust or vitamin powder from the exterior of the capsules. Once polished, the capsules are poured on an inspection table that has a belt of rotating rods. The rotating table may be ft 0. The vitamins fall in the grooves between the rods and rotate as the rods turn, allowing the inspector to see all sides of the vitamin.
Capsules that are too long, split, dimpled, or otherwise defective are discarded. A rotating table fitted with holes on its outer edges holds dies that are the shape of the desired tablet oval, round, animal, etc.
These dies are interchangeable, so you can choose the shape as long as the proper dies are installed. The purchasing department is informed about the manufacturing date so they can ensure the availability of raw material, packaging supplies and fulfill other requirements ahead of the manufacturing date.
The type of formulation- for example, powders, tablets, liquids, etc. Once the raw materials are purchased, the in-house Quality Control team gets to work. It inspects everything, from ingredients to packaging materials, based on the highest quality standards. At Ion Labs, the raw materials are stored in a state-of-the-art storage facility with modern surveillance and environmental controls to protect their efficacy and maintain quality until the production date arrives.
Once the date approaches, the raw material is sent to an up-to-date, cGMP-certified processing facility where cutting-edge equipment is carefully administered to convert it into vitamin supplements. The Quality Control at Ion Labs actively participates in all stages of production.
At each step of the vitamin manufacturing process, tests are carried out to ensure that no contamination has occurred. At the end of the process, once again, the product is tested for its effectiveness so that it meets the claims made on the label. Large production facilities will use an advanced system known as an automatic storage and retrieval tower, ASRT. These eliminate virtually all human error in this complex and tedious part of the manufacturing process and are necessary for very large scale operations to function safely and accurately.
Finally, the manufacturing process described above is a highly simplified version of what goes on in a real vitamin manufacturing facility.
Before a producer can reliably turn out a viable product they must perform preliminary checks, pre-blending, wet granulation, weighing and mixing, calibrating, and maintaining equipment such as the encapsulating machine, tableting, coating, packaging, and of course- quality control. These are precise measures that must be performed flawlessly if the manufacturing process is to be safe, legal, and produce a competitive product.
In the highly volatile world of vitamin and supplement manufacturing, innovation and discoveries are paramount to remaining ahead of the curve. Another important aspect of the manufacturer of any substance for human consumption is complying with state and federal regulations. The extremely complex nature of manufacturing is, to a large extent, the reason that so many new developers are have outsourced their manufacturing process.
SMP Nutra is capable of manufacturing any kind of nutraceutical formula, while we already have over of our own stock products that you can have made for your brand, we also are capable of manufacturing custom formulas.
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