Benefits of Vitamin A
 

Vitamin A's scientific name is retinol, because of its presence in the retina of the eye, where it is essential for good eyesight.  However it is used in far more functions that just that of the eye.  Vitamin A in crucial for strong bone and tooth development, proper reproduction, cell differentiation and immune system function. This vital nutrient is also needed for the growth and repair of body tissues and is a major factor in the health of the skin, hair, teeth and gums.  It also helps protect mucous membranes of the throat, mouth, nose, and lungs and it helps in the proper digestion of protein.  Last but not least, it seems to lower the risk of many different types of cancers, and it aids in the production of RNA.
 

Vitamin A and Cancer Prevention
 

There has been much vitamin A research on its role in cancer prevention.  Dr Max Gerson, for example, successfully treated many "terminal" cancer patients with raw liver juice, which is a concentrated source of natural vitamin A.  Other researchers have also had success treating cancer with vitamin A, but these findings have been largely ignored by the medical community.  Be wary when you hear of bad results using vitamin A nutritional supplements - the researchers often use synthetic versions, which as you may know by now, we think are not the same thing at all as the natural nutritional supplements or the natural vitamin in food.
 

Traditional Diets and Vitamin A Content
 

According to Weston A. Price, the diets of healthy traditional peoples that he studied contained at least ten times as much vitamin A as the American diet of his day, which was back in the 1930's.  We undoubtedly get even less vitamin A today in our diets. Dr. Price's work showed that vitamin A, along with several other fat-soluble activators, are present only in animal fats, but are necessary for the assimilation of minerals in the diet, amongst other things. So this means that if you don't get enough A, no matter what you do to try to get enough minerals, such as calcium and magnesium, your body will not be able to use the minerals properly! 

 In addition, because of our "factory farms" and the consequent way we feed our animals with vegetable oils, there are drastically reduced amounts of vitamin A in most of our dairy products and eggs today.  Research has shown that animal fats will contain lots of vitamin A if the animals have a high amount of carotenes in their diet, like cows get from green pasture, and chickens from insects.  However this is not the case for most of our dairy cows or chickens – they are in confinement and being fed a very unnatural diet.  It is worth it to search out sources of pastured animals.

Weston Price thought that all basic biological processes depended on getting enough of the fat-soluble vitamins, and especially vitamin A, in the diet.  His research showed that in order for the body to use the water-soluble vitamins, like B and C, and also minerals, people needed to have enough vitamin A in their diets.  He found that primitive peoples especially valued vitamin A rich foods for pregnant mothers and children.
 

Vitamin A in Animal Fats Cures Night Blindness
 

It was a physician named Bloch who found out that a diet with whole milk, real butter, cod liver oil and eggs can cure night blindness. He conducted an experiment where he fed one group of children margarine as the only fat and the other group got whole milk, eggs, butter and cod liver oil.  Those receiving the whole milk, butter, eggs and the cod liver oil stayed healthy while half of those fed the margarine got corneal eye problems.   Now, of course, we know that those in the healthy group were receiving lots of vitamin A, which only occurs in animal foods full of saturated animal fat, and in natural nutritional supplements like high vitamin cod liver oil.
 

Beta Carotene
Low Fat Diets & Vitamin A
Vitamin A Toxicity
Deficiency in A
Food Sources of A

Healthy Vitamins & Nutritional Supplements