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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