Whether you’re trying to lose weight, increase muscle mass, or maintain your current body type, eating a healthy and nutritious diet is key. With the health-related industries booming in recent years, awareness has grown of what exactly being healthy means. It does not just mean exercising regularly, or watching your calorie intake. In fact, to maintain a healthy body, whatever that may be for you, a balanced diet is key. You need to ensure that you are getting the recommended amounts of proteins, carbohydrates, calories and dietary fats. These include different sorts of vitamins and minerals, including Vitamin A. Maintaining good health leads to a maintenance of your energy levels, boosting your immune system to make it more capable of fighting off diseases and infections, and promotion of proper bodily functions.
What is Vitamin A?
Vitamin A is one of the most important fat-soluble vitamins that should be included in your daily diet. This means that it is stored in the body’s fat cells. It is famous as an immune system booster. Not only that, but it also ensures healthy vision and eyes, as well as sufficient amounts of mucous membrane development. As it also plays a key role in promoting bone growth, it is necessary that younger people include enough Vitamin A in their daily nutritional intake. It is also beneficial for the formation of healthy skin, teeth, and tissues, both skeletal and soft. One type of vitamin A, known as retinal, is also useful for the production of certain pigments in the eye’s retina.
There are numerous sources of Vitamin A to be found in natural foods. Preformed vitamin A, also known as retinal, is usually found in animal tissues, such as fish, meat, poultry, and dairy products. Pro-vitamin A, commonly known as carotene, is converted into vitamin A when we eat certain plants. These include yellow-orange and dark green fruits and vegetables, such as spinach, sweet potatoes, and turnips. Carrots are the best source of vitamin A, offering over 600% of your daily required intake. If you do not get enough vitamin A from natural food sources, however, you can also take vitamin supplements, usually in a pill form.
What are the side effects?
As with any vitamins and minerals crucial to the body’s daily performance and health, there are negative side effects of not including enough vitamin A in your diet. A lack of sufficient vitamin A intake can cause eye problems, such as night blindness and damage to your corneas. It can also cause a condition known as hyperkeratosis, which is characterized by dry, scaly skin. Deficiencies can also make you more susceptible to infections. Not only are there side effects to not getting enough vitamin A, but there are also consequences of consuming too much. Symptoms of an excessive intake of vitamin A include nausea, headaches, vertigo, blurred vision and problems with muscular coordination. Superfluous doses can also lead to birth defects in infants, as well as poisoning in people who have had too much. Furthermore, high vitamin A levels in the body can also result in liver abnormalities, as well as a reduction in bone mineral density leading to osteoporosis.
How is Vitamin A important for bodybuilders?
Vitamins and minerals such as vitamin A are essential for anabolic processes. Exercising, on the other hand, initiates catabolic processes. Due to the strenuous nature of bodybuilding, bodybuilders need to be sure to have an adequate intake of crucial vitamins and minerals, such as Vitamin A, in order to offset the effects of these catabolic processes. Basically, strenuous muscular activity causes your body to break down molecules to release energy and oxygen. Vitamin A balances this by using the released energy to form the building blocks of other cellular structures.
However, most bodybuilders plan diets emphasizing other dietary factors, leading to relatively lower vitamin A consumption. As strenuous physical activity already hampers the absorption of vitamin A, it can further impair the levels that bodybuilders might have. Since muscle building requires a healthy intake of vitamins and minerals, bodybuilders need to ensure that they do not decrease their intake of vitamin A in favor for others. This vitamin also helps in the repair and growth of body tissues, which is essential due to the extensive stress put on a bodybuilder’s body. Since vitamin A aids in the regulation of the immune system, it also helps to make white blood cells function more effectively, and hence, fight infections more effectively.
The strenuous bodybuilding regimens imply that a person is at risk of putting stress on their immune system. The rigorous physical training can also make and environment that is conducive to the disintegration of muscular and skeletal tissues. The inclusion of an adequate intake of vitamin A in a bodybuilder’s daily nutrition may help offset these negative side effects of the lifestyle.
What to avoid:
In order to maintain a healthy physique, and hence sufficient levels of vitamin A, there are some things that you should avoid. Excessively drinking alcoholic beverages, smoking and living in polluted areas are counterproductive to healthy vitamin A levels. Diabetes, low-fat diets, and injuries or illnesses can also pose a risk to your vitamin A status. In women, pregnancy or lactation can also cause a decrease in vitamin A levels. While some of these risk factors cannot always be avoided, like illnesses, injuries, diabetes and pregnancy, it is advised that you do as much as possible to maintain sufficient, healthy levels of vitamin A in your blood. As bodybuilders are already at a risk of lower consumption of vitamin A than necessary, it is advised they pay extra attention to their daily intake.
Leading a healthy lifestyle means having a balanced nutritional diet and exercising regularly. A balanced diet includes the consumption of the recommended daily values of various food groups. These recommendations also include vitamins and minerals. Vitamin A is an important fat-soluble vitamin and has many beneficial health effects.