Health Benefits of Vitamin A - Food and Health

Health Benefits of Vitamin A

Vitamin A just FYI and preparing us I did a thorough review of the established literature and all the things I'm going to discuss are based on evidence in the research and not hearsay so vitamin A is a family of fat soluble vitamins that can be referred to as retinoids this class includes retinol right now and retinoic acid you may have also heard of AI surrett no.1 which is better known as accutane and is closely related to vitamin A and you've probably heard of beta carotenes or carotenoids and these are precursors to vitamin A synthesis I'm not going to dwell on these distinctions and the differences unless I think as a specific impact on your health but they're just worth mentioning how your body metabolizes the compounds depends on the type of vitamin A ingested pro-vitamin a substances which mostly refers to beta carotenes from plant sources require metabolic activity which is highly regulated by the body and toxicity is unlikely preformed vitamin A from supplements and animal sources is much more efficient and less regulated and toxicity as possible so vitamin A is an essential component of properly functioning vision it prevents zero opthalmic or dry eyes and facilitates phototransduction vitamin a is also crucial to cellular differentiation and integrity of the eye thus it is an essential component of the visual cycle although rare in the u.s. vitamin A deficiency is the third most common vitamin deficiency in the world consequently many parts of the world have increased incidence of night blindness complete blindness and dry eyes as many as 500,000 malnourished children suffer from these maladies each year around the globe clinical manifestations include visual deficits as previously described as well as poor bone growth nonspecific skin problems and impaired immune system function toxicity is possible and most often would occur from ingesting too much vitamin A supplement there are acute and chronic presentations which are really not worth getting into I will say that retinoic acid has been shown to be harmful to a growing fetus in the first trimester of pregnancy when receiving doses several times.

The recommended daily allowance a safe upper limit for vitamin A during pregnancy is probably around 10 it's per day but please talk to your obstetrician before supplementing or if you have any questions vitamin-a does have some therapeutic uses it appears to reduce the severity of symptoms in symptomatic measles cases topical vitamin A is used to treat a variety of skin disorders such as psoriasis and acne and it's also used to treat a very specific type of blood cancer called acute promyelocytic leukemia and also mention the vitamin A is an antioxidant and it was investigated for the prevention of cardiovascular disease multiple studies have observed no benefits in fact there is mixed evidence that it may actually increase the risk of cardiovascular disease as well as lung and colon cancer therefore in most developing nations where vitamin A deficiency is not a common public health concern supplementing with vitamin A is not universally recommended the recommended daily allowance for males is three thousand international units and for females twenty three hundred I'll also mention that individuals with gastrointestinal malabsorption problems such as Crohn's disease or cystic fibrosis may require higher doses to get normal vitamin A levels dietary sources of retinols include liver kidney eggs and butter to name a few and beta carotenes again are plant sources such as green vegetables sweet potatoes and carrots so in summary you can say that vitamin A is a fat-soluble class of vitamins that includes retinol right now and retinoic acid it is an essential component of your vision and the visual metabolic cycle deficiency is rare in industrialized world but more common in developing nations toxicity is possible especially from consuming too much supplemental vitamin A it does have therapeutic uses for one specific type of cancer measles and some skin diseases and in developed nations with no other risk factors supplementation is generally not recommended you...