now I've done quite a few videos on the immune system relating to zinc vitamin C
vitamin D but I haven't done one on vitamin A and vitamin a is essential for
your immune system having a vitamin A deficiency will increase your
susceptibility to getting more infections especially in the respiratory
system both lower lungs as well as sinus and throat you need vitamin A for all of
your mucous membranes and I'm talking about the sinuses the mouth the lungs
and even the gut without vitamin A you're not going to be able to produce
the mucous membranes that you need the mucous membranes are an important
barrier to microbes the microbes have a difficult time of penetrating this mucus
layer and they get stuck in there and they can't move too well you have a lot
of your immune cells sitting there waiting for some type of invasion so
they can actually attack and also signal the rest of the team as they hold down
the fort the internal skin of your body the
epithelial layer of your sinuses your throat and your lungs which basically is
just beneath the mucus is highly influenced by vitamin a without vitamin
A you're not gonna have a normal cell layer also vitamin A keeps these cells
together so they don't leak her open up and allow microbes or pathogens to
invade in your colon you have the mucous membrane and then you have a layer of
colon cells and then you have a layer of the Olympic system just below that and
that's where a lot of immune reactions take place if you haven't seen my video
on lymph nodes I put a link down below so vitamin A is needed to make something
called mucin which is a part of the mucous membrane it's like a gel that is
involved in your immune system without vitamin a you're gonna have a difficult
time having normal amounts of macrophages these are the cells that are
very large and they eat microbes for dinner they also clean up debris and
garbage they act as a first line of defense to hold down the fort while they
send the message to the rest of the troops depending on the magnitude of the
battle if it's a small thing they'll pretty much take care of it by
themselves but if there's a large attack they will call in the troops your thymus
gland right about the heart and it helps train your immune cells specifically
t-cells which stand for finest and the thymus has the capacity to activate and
synthesize vitamin A and the reason for that is because your immune system needs
vitamin A now there's another player involved called a dendritic cell and
that cell basically takes a piece of a pathogen or a microbe and presents it to
your immune system to let your immune system now if they happen to see
something that resembles this go ahead and kill it so they actually work
between the innate and adaptive part of the immune system the innate is kind of
a general immune protection defense and then you have another part of the immune
system which is more specific we have very specific cells that are designed to
kill very specific cells well the dendritic cells work between
these two systems to give them information to know who to kill and who
not to kill also vitamin a is involved with enhancing the neutrophil traps now
what does that mean when you have an infection you have like mucus and pus
and inflammation about 70 percent of that infection is filled with
neutrophils neutrophils are part of the innate immune system that do various
things to kill off invaders and one strategy they use is they use these
little traps if you can envision a Spider Man throwing a web over the enemy
that's what neutrophils do and what they have is certain chemicals that they can
inject into that pathogen as it's in this web contained to dissolve it if
you're deficient in vitamin A you your risk goes up for ulcerative colitis MS
psoriasis and even lupus but the question is what food do you get vitamin
A from beef liver would be at the top of the list then you have cod liver oil
mackerel salmon goat's cheese butter and of course I'm talking about
grass-fed cream cheese eggs now by the manao is also in the kale broccoli the
spinach but that would be in the pre vitamin A form carotenoids the active
form called retinol is in all of these now it is true that your body can
convert carotenoids into retinol because crop nones are like a pre vitamin A
compound but only under certain conditions which I did a separate video
on that you can watch that next however there are some great benefits of just
carotenoids in general for vision as an anti-inflammatory as an antioxidant if
you would like to see more information about vitamin A I put a link right here
check it out