Vitamin A Deficiency Symptoms
Vitamins are essential for the correct and healthy functioning of our body, if you lack of good levels of vitamins, you are most likely to suffer from the effects of a deficiency. The vitamin A deficiency symptoms are characteristic to that type of vitamin problem and can mean a visit to the doctor if they get too serious.
Vitamin A is a vitamin that helps us to maintain a healthy vision, help us in healing our wounds, regulates lactation, maintains mucous membranes and helps us getting a healthy skin. In top of that it is essential for a good growth. A vitamin A deficiency is more present among poor people who don’t have food available to meet the nutritional needs and elderly people.
The symptoms of vitamin A deficiency have to do then with problems with the eye and skin mostly. Problems in the eye will include reduced night vision (you find it very difficult to see at night or with dim light), annoying dry eyes, an inflammation of the eyes and corneal inflammation. These are very common vitamin A deficiency symptoms and if you have them, you should go to the doctor for a proper diagnose. The skin also suffers as I said before, it gets rough and dry, it could be concentrated in some parts of the body.
Other symptoms of a deficiency in vitamin A will include vulnerability to urinary and respiratory infections, loss of taste, trouble healing wounds, white spots in the inner eyelids and a retardation of growth in children.
Vitamin A deficiency symptoms appear mostly because of bad nutrition. Although in USA the levels of this deficiency are not so great, it is a very common problem in other parts of the World where millions of people have bad diets and subsequent bad nutrition to get all the proper vitamin needs. Vitamin A is found in milk, eggs, vegetables, kidney and fish such as cod and halibut. Our own body is also responsible of converting vegetables’ beta-carotene into vitamin A, like: broccoli, apricots, carrots, and dark green leafy vegetables.
As with any vitamin deficiency, it is important to treat it and keep it from getting severe. A diet with vitamin A -rich foods will be of great help towards treating the vitamin deficiency, and you can also take vitamin supplements, although they are mostly recommended to elderly patients who need higher levels of this vitamin.