Three more reasons to have vitamin A in your medicine cabinet

According to Dr Jonathan Wright of Nutrition & Healing, years ago, researchers decided to test what they called the “naturopathic myth.” When they did, it showed that vitamin A could help improve the health of the intestine. They took biopsies of the intestinal lining and asked research volunteers to take extra vitamin A (not any of the carotenoids) for several weeks.

What they found was significant.

They reported that in every case there was an improvement in the appearance of the lining cells: They organised themselves more regularly, had a better mucous layer and showed improvement in several other technical aspects of cell health.

Following the results, they admitted that the “old naturopathic myth” was true, after all.

Your intestinal lining is just one of your body’s many lining surfaces. Others include your skin, the inner surface of the respiratory tract, the bronchial tubes, lungs, the gut and urinary tract. And that’s why if you have problems with any of these linings, vitamin A may be of help.

Revealed: Three unexpected benefits of vitamin A

Health benefit#1: Skin protection from sun damage

Vitamin A can be helpful in protecting your skin before as well as after sunshine exposure. “In an uncontrolled trial, 50,000IU vitamin A starting two days to two weeks before sunshine exposure helped significantly increase the time before skin became pink,” says Dr Wright.

Other researchers have found that rubbing in retinoic acid (a metabolite of vitamin A) before bedtime after a day’s sun exposure significantly improves your skin’s ability to repair itself and likely lowers cancer risk.

Health benefit#2: Lowers your risk of kidney stones

The lining of the urinary tract is also sensitive to insufficient vitamin A. By ensuring you have adequate vitamin A, you can lower the incidence of kidney stones if you have with marginal vitamin A status.

Health benefit#3: Helps treat eczema

Another uncontrolled trial found that 25,000 to 200,000IU vitamin A daily resulted in significant improvement in eczema in six of nine children, without adverse effects.

According to Dr Wright, if zinc is added to this programme, along with gammalinolenic acid (GLA), vitamin E and vitamin B12, along with elimination of food allergies and checking for low stomach acid, nearly anyone’s eczema (atopic dermatitis) can be eliminated in a few months.