Benefits of vitamin A
Chemical Name – Pro-vitamin A or Beta carotene, Retinol.
Recommended Daily Amount – 5,000 IU
Optimal intake- 2,000-5,000 IU
Good Sources of vitamin A – Liver, carrots, spinach
Over doses – Vitamin A is fat soluble, hence toxic in large amounts.
There are many benefits of vitamin A such as it is essential for bone growth and helps boost immune system. You may have been definitely heard from your parents that eating carrots can improve you vision. That may not be exactly true, actually, carrots contain a kind of pigment called provitamin A carotenoids, which is converted by the body into vitamin A.
Vitamin A is important to your vision. There are many forms of vitamin A but the most body friendly form of vitamin A is retinol. Some good sources of retinol are milk, eggs, and liver. Another useful form of vitamin A is beta carotene which is found abundantly in spinach, potatoes, carrots, cantaloupe and sweet potatoes. Vitamin A is also one of the vitamins often used to fortify breakfast cereals.
Vitamin A is fat soluble, and is mostly stored in the liver which means that it can result in toxic build up if consumed in higher doses. This rarely happens from food sources because as the body builds up supplies of vitamin A, it will slow down the processing of beta carotene conversion to vitamin A. Those people, who consume vitamin A in the form of supplements or pills, are more prone to vitamin A toxicity. Increase doses of vitamin A may also cause several problems such as problems related to central nervous system, liver problems, deterioration of bone density, and birth defects.
The deficiency of vitamin A can be found only in the countries where malnourishment is widespread but in other countries like U.S. vitamin A deficiency is very rare. As listed above that there are many benefits of vitamin A. The main reason behind this is that our body uses vitamin A to make various internal tissues, such as those lining the eye, lungs, and intestinal tract and deficiency of vitamin A can results in weakening of linings which makes it easier for harmful bacteria to penetrate them and thus, Vitamin A deficient people more prone to infections, illness, blindness, and respiratory problems.
There are some factors which are responsible for vitamin A deficiency such as people those who consume too much alcohol and people with metabolic disorders are also prone to vitamin A deficiency.
Some recent and ongoing studies involving vitamin A and beta carotene include investigations as to whether high amounts of vitamin A contribute to osteoporosis, and whether beta carotene can lower the risk of some forms of cancer.
