Whenever I feel like I may be coming down with a cold, I always take extra vitamin A.
I take 50,000 to 100,000 international units of vitamin A, combined with 50,000 units of vitamin D3, and 10 mg or so of vitamin K2.
And when I take that, I chase it down with 400 units of vitamin E, mixed gamma tocopherols, because the vitamin E helps to preserve the vitamin A and keep it from breaking down in the body.
I want all that vitamin A to fight any kind of cold or flu that I may be getting.
And so far I find that it works.
I find that this routine, when I feel under the weather, or like I’m run down, almost always make me feel better, and I do not get sick.
Now, there are some great studies on vitamin A, including this one that shows vitamin A fights internal inflammation of the gut.
Gut inflammation is responsible for many diseases
Our gut holds anywhere from 3 to 6 pounds of bacteria and yeast and even funky parasites.
They are constantly creating waste products, and even live bacteria that go through the gut and enter the body.
The liver’s job is to constantly detoxify what’s coming out of our gut.
These gut products that challenge our body create internal inflammation. They are called endotoxins.
And now it seems that vitamin A has a significant role in preventing endotoxins.
Before I get into that study, let me just show you what you can do if you want to get vitamin A from natural sources.
So, about vitamin A…
Forget carotenoids like beta carotene as a primary source of vitamin A
Carotenoids are the pigment in carrots, which is where that name comes from, but also in almost any colored vegetable.
Those are not vitamin A.
Those are something your body can sometimes turn into vitamin A.
I find that carotenes or carotenoids may be useful, but I don’t find that they are creating enough vitamin A.
For that, I generally turned to liver.
The best source of vitamin A is liver
If you are going to take my advice and NOT consume fish oil, you may want to try a four ounce piece of cooked beef or calf liver each week.
Otherwise, you can take supplements.
You can take retinol, retinyl or fish-oil derived vitamin A supplements.
If you do supplement, you may be raising dangerously LOW levels of vitamin A and help yourself in many ways.
Vitamin A helps lower gut inflammation
This is my favorite kind of study. A randomized controlled trial. It was done extremely well. And it showed that people, in this case kids, who had enough vitamin A were able to fight off some of the worst intestinal parasites.
The study showed good evidence that the permeability of the gut was vastly improved with vitamin A
You can certainly argue how much vitamin A somebody needs.
But I take extra vitamin A, along with vitamin E.
The reason I do is because I find vitamin A levels are better when they’re higher than lower.
There are so many good roles of vitamin A that it doesn’t pay to have low vitamin A levels.
The endotoxin load that our body is under may be one of the chief reasons that we age.
And vitamin A seems to be able to lower the endotoxin load by making our intestines less permeable to harmful bacteria and parasites.
Citations
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2830290/pdf/nihms126898.pdf
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