Vitamins & Minerals at Work
The Animations (6)
Magnesium: The Mineral That Makes Adenosine Triphosphate Work
Bare adenosine triphosphate is useless — enzymes reject it. Watch magnesium clamp the phosphates and switch it on, plug the N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) channel, and let a cramping muscle finally let go.
Launch animation →Vitamin D: From Sunlight to Hormone
Fire ultraviolet B (UVB) photons at your skin and follow the molecule through the liver and kidney into an actual steroid hormone that walks into the nucleus and switches genes on.
Launch animation →Vitamin B12's Impossible Journey
Five stages, two carrier proteins, a working stomach, a working pancreas and one specific stretch of gut. Break any link — a proton pump inhibitor (PPI), metformin, pernicious anaemia — and absorption collapses.
Launch animation →Vitamin C, Collagen & Why Sailors Fell Apart
Zip three protein chains into the strongest rope in biology — then take the vitamin C away and watch the helix unravel, and old, healed scars split back open.
Launch animation →Calcium Control: Parathyroid Hormone, Vitamin D & Your Blood Level
Watch four tiny parathyroid glands defend your blood calcium — pulling it from bone, kidney and gut with parathyroid hormone and vitamin D — then drop your vitamin D and see parathyroid hormone climb and quietly rob the skeleton.
Launch animation →Vitamin K, Clotting & How Warfarin Works
Watch vitamin K get recycled to switch on the clotting factors — then block the recycling enzyme with warfarin and see the factors go dark over days, or override it with a plate of greens.
Launch animation →Micronutrients doing their actual chemical job, one step at a time — magnesium clamping adenosine triphosphate so an enzyme will accept it, sunlight starting the vitamin D chain in the skin, vitamin C hydroxylating collagen, parathyroid hormone holding blood calcium inside its narrow band, B12 riding intrinsic factor through the gut, and the vitamin K cycle that warfarin interrupts.
Every page here is a hands-on animated diagram, not a video — press play, slow it down, break the mechanism on purpose, and read the live values in real clinical units. They explain how a process works; they are not medical advice, and the evidence for any treatment lives on the topic pages each animation links into.