Vitamins A and D
What do they do?
Vitamin A is needed to help the body make thyroxine, apart from other things. Thyroxine along with fat-splitting enzymes and bile salts helps the liver convert carotenes to Vitamin A. Zinc mobilises the liver to release Vitamin A. Vitamin A is also needed for good eyesight, healthy skin and its antioxidant properties.
Vitamin D is needed for hormones, for the kidneys to release a hormone that helps calcium to be put back into the bones, healing and wound healing properties and reducing anxieties.
Where is it found?
Cod liver oil is rich in the vitamins A and D. Vitamins A and D are also found in milk, butter, cod liver oil, liver, meat and eggs. Vitamin A needs fat for absorption. Carotene in red, orange and yellow vegetables and fruit is converted to Vitamin A in the liver, but the liver doesn’t make that conversion very well. To convert carotene the liver needs thyroxine, fat-splitting enzymes and bile salts to convert carotene to proVitamin A. Zinc is needed to mobilise the vitamin A out of the liver for use in the body.
Deficiencies of Vitamin A and D
Skin ailments from eczema to psoriasis need Cod liver oil. Several studies showed that high levels of Cod liver oil improved skin problems considerably.
Since the 1980s there have been concerns over Vitamin A toxicity and whereas women and pregnant women used to be advised to eat liver if they were anaemic (Vitamin A helps iron to be utilized in the body and liver is rich in both A and iron) that advice was stopped when poor research reported in the British Medical Journal suggested that some birth defects were due to the mother consuming liver. What the report didn’t point out was that those mothers were consuming too much liver and other foods that provide Vitamin A and carotene. Vitamin A is toxic in very high doses, and because of the poor research the fashion of eating Vitamin A rich foods declined and thyroid and skin diseases increased.
Soya that interferes with hormones including that of thyroxine in the thyroid reduces the conversion of carotenes to Vitamin A.
A lack of Vitamin A can cause poor eyesight and disease, itchy skin, rashes, thyroid problems.
A lack of Vitamin D can cause weak bones, lack of an antimicrobial healing peptide cathelicidin, anxiety, depression.
References