Yes – So I’ve been away long enough that my browser no longer remembered “wordpress” when I started typing the address. If you want a thorough breakdown of my absence from the blogosphere, you can read all the details on Superman Disposition.
For now, I would like to talk about Vitamin A.
So, I had always been misinformed about Vit A due to various medications and acne cures, and things like this. Vit A makes you go crazy, Vit A is toxic, and so on. It wasn’t until I read “Vitamin K2 and the Calcium Paradox” by Dr. Kate Rheaume-Bleue that the truth about the misunderstood vitamin came to light.
Retinol is the scientific name for Vit A. It aids in vision, night blindness, skin, immune system fighting infections, bones and teeth, optimal production of antibodies and white blood cells, maintaining healthy skin (barrier for foreign bacteria), healthy lining of the respiratory system. Wow. Bet you didn’t know it was responsible for so many aspects of your overall health.
Skin is one of the first things to show if a Vit A deficiency is present. Other factors in determining if there is a deficiency are:
- increased risk of infections and illness
- dry itchy skin
- hair loss or thinning
- poor night vision
- changed in the respiratory tract such as asthma
- liver damage
- headaches
Anemia is probably the best sign of a deficiency, and yet it is mainly is only corrected with a iron supplement, and Vit A is overlooked. It should be corrected with both iron and Vit A combination. Vit A is shown to increase hemoglobin (red blood cell) production – which is essentially the underlying cause of anemia, is low hemoglobin. Treating the anemia from both angles has the best chance of overcoming it.
Toxicity
Vit A is fat soluble and is required for the body to use protein sources. Fat soluble nutrients have the potential to accumulate in the body. Usually accumulation is only happening with supplements and not intake by food. When you are getting nutrients by eating them, it is a natural way, and the body understands that they must be used.
Fat soluble nutrients require the presence of the other fat soluble nutrients that work with it as a team. Vit A needs Vit D, as they work together to build and strengthen. With a combination such as Vit A and Vit D, the need for calcium is completely eradicated. Vit D does exactly the same thing as calcium, but in a safer way. Calcium doesn’t really know where to go in the body if taken as a supplement, which is the most common way. It is why people get clogged arteries and calcium deposits, ect. There is nothing else telling the calcium supplement where to go – where as Vit A and Vit D are both a fat soluble team, and they work together to get to the right places.
So there you have it – a scraping off the top of the great Vitamin A debate. If you want to get more information, I suggest reading “Vitamin K2 and the Calcium Paradox” by Dr. Kate Rheaume-Bleue before doing any other research. It is important to go into the topic with some background information so you can decide what to look for, as there is a lot of conflicting and incorrect information out there.
Glitter and Gore 