Summit Total Health

What Vitamin A Does for You

Vitamin A is basically a group of chemical compounds which play an important role in vision, bone growth, and cell division. Vitamin A helps regulate the immune system, preventing infections by making white blood cells which destroy harmful bacteria and viruses.

Vitamin A also promotes healthy surface linings of the eyes, respiratory, urinary, and intestinal tracts. When those linings break down bacteria can enter the body to cause infection.

There are essentially two categories of vitamin A, which depends on whether the food source is an animal or a plant.

Vitamin A found in foods that come from animals is called “preformed vitamin A”. Animal liver is one of the best sources of this preformed vitamin A. Since the days of the Egyptian empire it was known that forms of blindness could be cured by eating liver. This form of vitamin A is absorbed in the form of retinol, one of the most useable forms of vitamin A.

Avoiding the Cold & Flu this Year

Colds and flu’s are the leading cause of doctor visits, especially in the fall and winter seasons. This is partly because people aren’t outside as much during the winter seasons which means they’re getting less vitamin D. During this time were also more apt to spread sickness to each other.

Is it all the flu?

A recent CBS news study showed that this year only 17% of the people with “flu-like” symptoms actually had influenza. The other 83% is caused by other viruses and bacteria. That’s why the prescription of antibiotics is useless for many colds and flu’s. The real culprit is immune deficiency.