Vitamin A Deficiency VS Vitamin A Toxicity

Should the average person worry about Vitamin A deficiency or Vitamin A toxicity? Vitamin A is a important for your eyes to adjust to light and also helps keep moisture in your mucus membranes. It is a powerful anti oxidant and recent studies show it may help people with coronary artery disease. But how do you know if you are getting enough or headed towards vitamin A overdose?

Vitamin A Deficiency is rare in the US but can lead to severe illness from infections as well as night blindness, eye problems and diarrhea. Westerners consume many foods with vitamin A and the use of supplements makes deficiency uncommon. This is not so in many countries where proper food cultivation is lacking and supplementation is absent. In these countries, Vitamin A deficiency is blamed for most cases of preventable blindness in children and a high risk of disease.

Vitamin A Toxicity is also rare but as vitamin A is fat soluble, it can accumulate in the body in toxic amounts if you overdo it with vitamin supplements. Symptoms of toxicity include stomach upset and blurred vision. Sometime it can cause an orange highlight on the skin and in severe cases, Vitamin A overdose has been shown to cause hair loss, and spleen an dliver enlargement.

Foods with Vitamin A include beef liver, eggs, whole milk and yellow and green vegetables. Other foods such as orange vegetables (sweet potoato, carrots, pumpkin), cantaloupe, broccoli, spinach and apricots contain beta carotene which you body can use to manufacture Vitamin A.

In order to avoid a Vitamin A deficiency, you should eat the foods with vitamin A shown above and also consider a supplement. The RDA of this vitamin is 800 mcg for adult females and 1000 mcg for males. Remember, this is the minimum amount, so a vitamin with this amount plus healthy eating should get you all the vitamin A you need plus avoid Vitamin A overdose and any unpleasant symptoms of vitamin A toxicity.

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