[Skybird]

Vitamin A supplementation basics:


- Use Retinol (usually its in the form of retinol palmytate), not beta carotine as often mentioned by clueless vegetarians advertizing carrots. Beta carotine must be changed into retinol by the body but does so at an extremely disadvantageous transformation rate. It was once assumed to be around 6:1 to 8:1 (you need 8 parts of beta carotine to make 1 part of retinol from it), then they realised it was higher, 12:1, then claimed to be 24:1, now you have findings ranging from 36:1 to even over 44:1. With veggies you may be able to gain the mere essential minimums of vitamin A, but an essential minimum and an optimum level are two different things. For an assumed optimum supply with retinol from carrots' beta carotine, you would need to eat a minimum of not less than 3-4 kg of carrots every day. Bon appetit.



- If carrots or veggies for vitamin A production (its a multi-stage chemical process) , eat with some oil or fat. Retinol usually comes in flasks with a retinol solved in an oil. However, absorption by the body benefits if you still eat a small ammount of second fat or oil togetehr with it - that is true for all fat-solvable vitamins and even Omega-3 oil in general, never depend on just the oil in the flask or capsule, always add some fatty or oily food, or a tablespoon of separate oil with it, or a slice of creamy cheese, salami, etc.


- Vitamin A accumulates faster than other vitamines, and a bit more care must be taken when supplementing it (I do, btw.). Safe doses usually are seen to be in the maximum range of up to 10,000 to 12,000 IUs, but I have so far not heard of red anything that convinced me that such doses are really needed, especially in the West. I keep it to 5,000 IUs therefore, that equals 3 drops from the oil I use.



- Vitamin A has a close link to Vitamine D, both vitamins can almost recylce each other, are functionally close relatives, can often use the same cell receptors to dock on cells, and cooperate in various functions of the metabolism, especially on my mind is for example the countering of free calcium in the blood and calcium in plaques. They form Osteocalcin and Matrix GLA proteine that both need activation (by hydroxilation) by vitamin K2 and then work on keeping calcium in the blood low, transporting calcium into bones and teeth, and reducing calcium in plaques. Thats why I said elsewhere that vitamine A belongs in the widened circle of co-factors for vitamin D, K2 and Magnesium - they all belong together. Maybe not necessarily all is linked to evertyhign else, but certainly much is lknked to many others things. Thats why I oppose to supplement just seletively with minerlas and vitmnianes: better fire a broadl spectrum full volley shot with evertyhing, but not an single mutli mitmaine pill, but everything as an individual item, so that you can dose individually and vary timing: some supps benefit if not been taking together, but separated by 2-3 hours. Uusally its not dangerous, but just renders the taking ineffective (and thus: needlessly expensive).



- There was controversy some years ago about "vitamin A actually suppressing vitamin D", and some people even went as far as claiming that you should keep vitamine A out of your food as best as you can. A famous propagator of this irresponsible Quatsch is Dr. Mercola, who seem to be a famous lifestyle doctor in the US selling his own overpriced supplementation products and enjoying quite some popularity amongst his audience. Well, I heard him preaching quite some more nonsense like that, some of that really putting your health at risk like for example that iron is killing us, and that we should avoid eating any iron-containign foods, and men should ta best even loose blood twice a month to keep their iron levels down - while we indeed talk about iron being one of the most pandemically present nutrients deficits of a nutrient world wide, eoseicflaly but not only amoingst women (by which I do jto say you should supplement iron without blood work and a resulting diagnosis for an iron deficit, becasue true also is that with suplkementing iron you indeed can easily do harm, it sone of the nutrients that get much advertised but of whcih i woudol say keepo your hands of it as logn as you do not hav ea dman good reason explkained by a doctor - as long as this doctor is not Mercola). - In summary: when it comes to this controversy around vitamine A blocking vitamin D: its BS, ignore it, and ignore this Dr. Mercola. I had two books by Mercola, in the beginning of my quest into all this nutrition and supplementation stuff. I red both only the first third and then threw both books away.