5 Benefits of vitamin a to support body health

What are the benefits of vitamin A for body health?

You can meet your daily vitamin A needs from various food sources. Starting from fish, liver, eggs, milk, cheese, carrots, spinach, broccoli, sweet potatoes, melons, papayas, mangoes, and so on.

Because of its very important role, the daily intake of vitamin A recommended by the Ministry of Health in the Adequacy Rate of Nutrition (RDA) is as much as 500 micrograms (mcg) for adult women and 500 micrograms (mcg) for adult men.

Here are the various benefits of vitamin A for bodily functions that you will get:

1. Maintain eye health

One of the most well-known benefits of vitamin A is due to its ability to maintain the function of your eyesight. Vitamin A here has an important task to convert the light captured by the eye into electrical impulses to be delivered directly to the brain.

If your body is deficient in vitamin A, you may experience night blindness as an early symptom. This occurs because the retina of the eye, which is supposed to catch incoming light, lacks the constituent material of rhodopsin. Vitamin A is the main component in producing the pigment rhodopsin.

Not surprisingly, many people with night blindness have difficulty seeing clearly at night due to decreased retinal function. In addition to preventing night blindness, meeting the need for vitamin A, which is a source of beta carotene, can help slow vision decline as you age.

2. Strengthen the immune system

Is it easy to get sick in the middle of a busy life? Maybe you are deficient in vitamin A. This is because vitamin A has an important role in maintaining your body's natural defenses. Includes optimizing the function of the lungs, intestines and other organs of the body from invading bacteria that cause infection.

Vitamin A is also directly involved in the production and work of white blood cells, to help attack foreign pathogens that enter the body.

This means that a body that is deficient in vitamin A will be very susceptible to infection and will find it difficult to recover when you are sick, as reported by the Annual Review of Nutrition Journal.

In addition, so that your immunity is maintained, you should know 7 Things That Turn Out to Damage Your Endurance at Hello Sehat.

3. Supports fetal growth

Other benefits of vitamin A are important for the health of the male and female reproductive systems. In fact, this fat-soluble vitamin is also good for supporting embryo development during pregnancy.

Adequacy of vitamin A that must be fulfilled by pregnant women will complement the structure of the fetus's body, including the heart, kidneys, eyes, lungs, pancreas to the body's skeleton. Even so, pregnant women must still monitor their intake of vitamin A into the body. Too much vitamin A can also harm the fetus in the mother's stomach.

We recommend that you meet the needs of this vitamin in moderation, not less or more, which can actually endanger the health of the body.

4. Prevent pimples from appearing

Uniquely, vitamin A has a special relationship with acne, you know. Yes, this vitamin is an important nutrient that can help eradicate stubborn acne and even prevent its appearance.

This is because when the level of vitamin A in the body is low, the production of keratin (a natural protein in hair) will increase rapidly until it exceeds the optimal limit.

This condition then makes the oil production in the skin more so that it clogs the skin pores and triggers acne.

5. Maintain healthy bones

Vitamin D and calcium are some of the key nutrients that are able to maintain bone function as you get older. But what you may not know is that vitamin A also has an important role in bone development. This vitamin is often associated with worsening bone condition.

This statement is supported by research published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, that people with low vitamin A levels are at a much higher risk of fractures than people who can meet their vitamin A needs well.