What is Vitamin A?
Vitamin A or Retinol, is a fat-soluble vitamin important for normal vision, tissue growth, and healthy skin. Vitamin A is essential for your vision because it helps prevent night blindness and inflammation/dryness of the eyes. Vitamin A is obtained from carotene occurring in green and yellow vegetables. It's formula is C20H30O.
| What Foods Provide Vitamin A? |
Vitamin A can be found in both animals
and plants. Some foods that contain Vitamin A are egg yolk, cheese,
whole milk, butter, fortified skim milk, margarine,
red palm oil, fish liver oils, cod
liver oil, orange and green vegetables,
sweet potatoes, pumpkin, kale, cantaloupe, apricots, peaches,
papayas, and mangos and more orange fruits.
Plantshave Carotenoids which are compounds that the body can convert to
Vitamin A.
| What are recommended intakes of Vitamin A? |
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| When can Vitamin A deficiency occur? |
A deficiency occurs when you fail to digest the nutrients properly, when you have an inadequate diet, when you have a deficiency of protein, and when using certain lipid-lowering medications.
| Who may need extra vitamin A to prevent deficiency? |
Children with low body stores of vitamin A who have measles may require vitamin A supplementation. Also, individuals with chronic fat malabsorption would need extra vitamin A to prevent deficiency.
| What are some current issues and controversies about vitamin A? |
Studies have shown if your diet contains a good amount of vitamin A in it, it may lower the risk of many types of cancer. A higher intake of green and yellow vegetables or other food sources of vitamin A may decrease the risk of lung cancer. However, they do not help in cancer prevention and did not find them to protect against the disease.
| What are the health risks of too much vitamin A? |
Recent studies have found that excessive vitamin A intake is associated with an increased risk of hip fracture and bone loss.
