The Alphabet of Vitamins – Vitamin B5 (Pantothenic Acid)

You hear all about them in everyday conversation but what do you really know about vitamins? Everyone knows that they’re good for us but how are they good for us? Give us the details, please!

Vitamin B5, or Pantothenic Acid, is water-soluble essential for energy production from your diet. It’s part of a coenzyme that’s necessary for sustaining life, synthesizing fats, hormones, and components of your blood. Organ meats, milk, avocados, seeds, and broccoli contain Vitamin B5.

Pantothenic Acid is needed by all mammals – it’s synthesized by plants and bacteria and the primary precursor to one of the most important coenzymes in your body, coenzyme A. 95 percent of your coenzyme A is in cellular mitochondria (where cells gets their power). As part of coenzyme A, Vitamin B5 is required to produce energy from dietary carbohydrates, fat, and protein. This role in energy metabolism is fairly complex, involving several chemical cycles but it’s very similar to the way other B vitamins participate in energy production.

Coenzyme A also needs to be present for reactions that include synthesis of cholesterol, hormones, Vitamin A, Vitamin D, and melatonin. Melatonin is a hormone that your brain produces in response to darkness. It helps with the timing of your 24 hour internal clock and with sleep. Being exposed to light at night can block melatonin production and research suggests that it also plays other important roles in the body beyond sleep. Vitamin B5 is also involved, through coenzyme A, in your liver’s breakdown of toxins.

Pantothenic Acid is pretty easy to find in nature so deficiency is incredibly uncommon and there’s no need to worry about oral toxicity because it’s never occurred in humans.

So let’s review – Pantothenic Acid is an essential water-soluble vitamin critical for production energy and synthesizing different components for your body. All extremely good reasons to make Vitamin B5 a part of your daily life and nutritional plan.