Vitamins
Vitamin A: Dangerous Misconceptions
Vitamin A is often misunderstood and dangerously underestimated. Learn why true vitamin A deficiency poses the greater risk and how to dose it properly.
Vitamins
Vitamin A is often misunderstood and dangerously underestimated. Learn why true vitamin A deficiency poses the greater risk and how to dose it properly.
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Few vitamins are as widely misunderstood as vitamin A. Many people associate vitamin A — technically called retinol — with a potential toxic effect.
Curiously, our society tends to rate an unrealistic worst-case scenario as far worse than the opposite: inaction.
For example, assume that 50,000 IU per day — 15 times the daily requirement — taken over extended periods were harmful. We then conclude that "very little vitamin A" would be beneficial for us.
Anyone who thinks this is oversimplified logic should keep reading — more on that shortly.
Your body converts vitamin A (retinol) into a hormone: retinoic acid. This molecule has accompanied us since our first days of life, starting as an embryo in our mother's womb.
Retinoic acid receptors control our development from the very beginning. Throughout life, vitamin A continues to regulate processes like puberty in this way.
This is a serious problem in developing countries, where many children show severe developmental delays due to vitamin A deficiency.
We've covered vitamin A's roles in the body across many articles:
Unfortunately, the claim that "beta-carotene is safe vitamin A" has become widespread. Some carotenoids, like beta-carotene, theoretically serve as vitamin A precursors in your body, which is why they're called provitamin A.
Today we know with confidence that beta-carotene is not a good vitamin A source for most Europeans. This is due to numerous mutations (polymorphisms) in the gene responsible for converting beta-carotene to vitamin A.
There are also several other "weak points" — such as the enzyme becoming saturated quickly and beta-carotene being difficult to extract from plant cell matrices.
Beyond that, beta-carotene has an anti-vitamin-A effect because it blocks vitamin A receptors. Eventually, beta-carotene does exactly the opposite of what we hope for.
(Learn more in our guide article "Vitamin A During Pregnancy".)
This misinformation is especially tragic for pregnant women. We are regularly contacted by anxious pregnant women concerned about, for example, the 25% DV in our Mama Multi supplement.
"My doctor said…" — yes, obstetricians still warn against "dangerous vitamin A." But they usually forget to explain that:
Only in 2022 could an animal study show that "poor maternal vitamin A status can be considered a risk factor for the development of congenital diaphragmatic hernia" (a typical marker of embryotoxicity).
This fact brings us back to our opening statement: If something is potentially toxic in high doses during a critical phase, it is invalid to conclude that very little of it would be particularly protective.
(Learn more in our guide article "Vitamin A During Pregnancy".)
This drives us forward. There are simply too many nutritional myths out there that can make people sick — and do. It's hard to understand how, given all our modern data, people still spread outdated, long-superseded information.
Moreover, it's difficult to accept that many people abandon rational thinking, especially when it matters most. For instance, in early pregnancy.
Instead, panic- and fear-driven advice and misinformation increases the risk that something goes wrong. It doesn't reduce it.
