Friday, October 5, 2012

Is Vitamin A in your Emergency Supplies?

By Terrance Franklin


I hope you don't forget when your mother used to advise you to eat your carrots to make sure you can see properly. The main reason was due to vitamin A. Now as you'll notice, her generous advice was a little misguided, but the concept still applies. Without Vitamin A, you will have a a lot harder time surviving a disaster.

The reason vitamin A is among your important emergency supplies

Using mom's advice, Vitamin A is important for maintaining eye-sight. The scientific term for Vitamin A is retinol, that is associated with retina, the layer at the back of your eye responsible for letting you see. Without retinol, your retina can't function effectively. This actually starts to be noticed in the form of night blindness, but eventually can lead to blindness.

It is especially essential for children under the age of 5, who require it for their developing body. Vitamin A deficiency has an effect on 1/3rd of children world-wide and causes approximately 670,000 deaths and the blindness of up to 500,000 more. If you are planning to live with children, it is important that vitamin A is one of your emergency supplies.

In addition to vision, Vitamin A plays several functions in the body. It performs a major part in cellular health, which has an effect on immune function, bone metabolism, and also the creation of blood cells. The fact that it was one of the primary vitamins found is a testament to the visible impact on overall health.

The variety of forms, and sources

Prepare yourself, this part will contain some biochemistry. As we previously mentioned, the genuine form of Vitamin A is retinol, that is in fact an alcohol. This isn't a stable form seen in nature so the form you would take in originates from a plant or animal source. The primary animal source is retinyl palmate, present in fatty tissues and the major form present in plants is among four types of carotene (like carrots, get it?).

The issue with carotene is it is not easily converted into retinol in the body. Vitamin A is a fat soluble vitamin, which means it is stored in fat. The fatty retinyl palmate is a lot nearer to retinol than the carotenes one can find in plants. In the absence of fats, the absorption of carotenes will be as low as 1/12, less than 10%!

The ultimate way to supplement vitamin A, in home as well as in the field

Bearing this in mind, there is a very easy method to supplement Vitamin A both at home and in survival situations. Additionally it is, in my humble opinion, quite a delicious choice. The perfect source of Vitamin A available to a lot of people is eating liver.

Because Vitamin A is fat soluble, there is the ability for the body to store it in the fat and use it as needed. Because of this, it doesn't need to be taken daily. While there is a proposed daily allowance of 3,000IU, this might quickly be converted into a weekly allowance of 20,000IU. This is equal to around 300 grams of liver weekly, or half a pound. I am basing these figures from beef liver but there is Vitamin A is the liver of any animal you could think of; including fish (such as cod liver oil).

This gels perfectly with a bugout strategy of surviving in the wild. Vitamin A supplementation is difficult from a pantry survival viewpoint because lots of the plant sources just are not absorbed as effectively as animal sources. As you understand by now, all nutrients were not created equal. Thus if you intend on staying in one place, be sure you keep hunting in mind, until you intend on being a post-collapse Ray Charles.




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