- It’s true that sunlight gives you vitamin D. It is because UV light in sunlight converts 7-dehydrocholestrol (a chemical derived from cholesterol within your body stored in your skin) into vitamin D.
- Vitamin K injection is given to patients with obstructive jaundice before surgery. This is because Vitamin K needs bile to be absorbed from the intestine, and in jaundice, the liver doesn’t produce enough bile so there is Vitamin K deficiency. Vitamin K is a vital for maturation of many clotting factors (which help in blood clotting). So, in a jaundice patient with vitamin K deficiency the blood doesn’t clot normally, hence it can lead to excessive hemorrhage during surgery (which can be life threatening). Hence vit K injection is given before surgery.
- Raw eggs contain a glycoprotein called avidin. This glycoprotein prevents intestinal absorption of biotin aka Vitamin B7. So, eating raw eggs is actually harmful. My brother used to tell me that you need to eat raw eggs to get bulk up (I was and am still skinny), thank god I never listened to him lol.
- A deficiency of Vitamin B12 can cause pernicious/megaloblastic anemia even though it has no direct involvement with development of RBCs. This happens because of the “folic acid trap” where, Vit B12 is important for production of Vit B9 (aka folic acid) which actually plays an important part in DNA synthesis. So, less vit B12 means less vit B9, which means insufficient DNA production, due to which maturing RBCs cannot divide properly and so the resulting erythrocytes that are too large (hence called megaloblastic anemia) and have very thin membranes (so they rupture easily).
- The water diffusion across cell membranes is so rapid that, in a RBC the volume of water diffusing in and out of the RBC membrane in 1 second is 100 times the total volume of the RBC itself!
Honestblogs 