Recipes From South Africa

As you will see, I started writing about specific vitamins just the other day. It is very important to me that people live a healthy life, cooking and having a balanced diet every day. It is not always that easy, but if you know what your diet need to consist of, it will help you to be healthier. I started with vitamin B12 because I know someone that has a shortage of it, so it is even more important to me that people know about these things. The next vitamin is vitamin A, and I will move on to the B vitamins next.

Vitamin A’s chemical name is retinol and belongs to the family of chemical compounds, retiniods. Vitamin A is a fat-soluble vitamin and plays an essential role in our vision, growth, development and maintenance of healthy skin, hair, immune functions and reproduction. The estimated average daily requirement for intake of this vitamin is about 700 micrograms for woman and 900 micrograms for men. This needs to be taken with a combination of all the other vitamins, because a balanced diet is a healthy diet.

When your intake of vitamin A is greater that 25 000 IUs, it is considered an overdose. Symptoms to watch out for are liver toxicity, dry skin, hair loss and teratological effects. It is also suspected to be a contributor to osteoporosis in die long term. The body converts the carotene into vitamin A as it is needed, so high levels of carotene are not toxic, but the ester (animal) form is. This can be found in the livers of certain animals, for example the polar bear, which has enough vitamin A to kill a human being.

The other extreme is not taking in enough of this very important vitamin. A vitamin A deficiency is common in developing countries, but is very rarely seen in developed countries. Hundreds of thousand of children each year go blind from a deficiency in vitamin A. Night blindness is one of the first signs. What happens is the cornea goes very dry and then damages the retina and cornea. It also leads to a lower ability to fight infections, a slow growth rate and bone development in children as well as very pale and dry skin. Because you have a lower ability to fight of infections, children in developing countries are very vulnerable.

Vitamin A can be part of you daily diet through the intake of foods with high sources of vitamin A. These sources can be found in liver, dairy products (milk, eggs), darkly coloured fruits (orange, mango, papaya, apricot) and leafy vegetables (carrot, sweet potato, spinach, tomato, broccoli). These are only a few examples mentioned.

All forms of vitamin A is used in cosmetic and medical application when applied to the skin. It is used in treatments for acne as well as keratosis pilaris (which is the appearance of rough bumps on the skin and is also better known as “chicken skin”). In cosmetics vitamin A is used as an anti-aging chemical. It is absorbed through the skin, which increases the rate of skin turnover, giving you a more youthful appearance.

Vitamin A, just like all the other vitamins, are vital to your health, so make sure to keep up your intake.