Vitamins
Your Immune System Will Thank You
Vitamin A is essential for a strong immune system, especially in winter. Learn how deficiency develops and why antibody production directly depends on vitamin A.
Vitamins
Vitamin A is essential for a strong immune system, especially in winter. Learn how deficiency develops and why antibody production directly depends on vitamin A.
Line items
Good immune system, bad immune system. Does such a thing really exist? The prevailing expert opinion in the Twitter sphere is: Nope, sorry – the immune system can be neither trained nor strengthened. Bye. So: when people suddenly can't produce antibodies against Corona – mind you: this isn't unique to infection, but also happens after vaccination – well, that's just bad luck.
But is that actually true? Should we really view biology so reductionistically?
Sometimes you come to the conclusion that a modern person just has to think this way. We modern humans show no adaptations at all anymore – rather – if anything – maladaptations.
We and our bodies get along so poorly with today's environment that we only get sicker, not healthier, better, or more fit. Of course, a certain number of people know that the body responds very well to nutrition, supplements, exercise, and much more. But how many people in our affluent societies, who live more like animals in factory farming (no joke, just look at the cities!), know such things? They'd rather hide in their Twitter bubble and believe the technocrats who are afraid of viruses. Enough criticism.
Especially important for us in winter: Vitamin A. Cold causes the body to mobilize vitamin A. Because fat tissue needs vitamin A so it can reprogram itself in winter. It becomes the body's heating system. This fat is then called ‹beige› fat, because the newly formed mitochondria give the previously white fat tissue a brownish color under the microscope. Meaning: In winter, vitamin A depletion is higher. Added to this is the fact that there are many settings in which the body can no longer mobilize vitamin A well.
This applies, for example, to inflammation. During inflammation, the body can't mobilize vitamin A well. For several years now, research has shown that obesity leads to vitamin A deficiency: «We found that normal-weight mice on this conventional mouse diet are healthy, but obese mice show severe vitamin A deficiency in their livers, kidneys, and pancreases,» said lead author Dr. Lorraine Gudas, chair of the Department of Pharmacology and Revlon Pharmaceutical Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology at Weill Cornell Medicine.
And these are just two possibilities that lead to vitamin A depletion in the body. Many of us also carry gene variants that reduce the conversion of plant-based vitamin A precursors to actual vitamin A (retinol) (more on this). Modern diets increasingly lack true sources of vitamin A – which only come from animal products, like liver and liver products. That's why liver sausage and cod liver oil were always staples. Today, people believe they can meet their vitamin A needs with carrots.
Unfortunately, this can have serious health consequences, particularly in winter – meaning during infectious disease season – that is, in Corona times. This has unfortunately already been proven. There are cases at every age where severe breakthrough infections occur despite vaccination. At the same time, it's been shown that many people after infection or vaccination – mind you, not just with respect to Corona – show too weak of an immune response, for example not producing enough antibodies. What does this have to do with vitamin A? Well: For many, many decades, we've known that, for instance, antibody production is directly linked to vitamin A availability. Didn't know that?
Animal science has known this, of course – since at least the 1970s: chickens that receive a high dose of vitamin A show two to five times more antibodies in their serum than animals with a deficiency. Moreover: simply adding vitamin A to spleen cells in deficiency medium increases the amount of antibodies that the spleen produces by 15-fold. While it wasn't clear to the researchers back then why this was the case – that is, why vitamin A stimulates antibody production so strongly – more recent research points in new directions: vitamin A is needed to maintain the fresh pool of blood stem cells. These are also precursors to T and B cells, with the latter responsible for antibody production.
