Anyway, I'm here to talk about the importance of solubilizing certain vitamins, most importantly Vitamins A, D, E, and K. There's a lot of myths surrounding these vitamins. I'll talk about mineral chelation in another post.
Vitamin A
When you look at a food label and it lists Vitamin A content, it's actually listing the combination of retinol and beta-carotene. I'm sure you're already aware, but this is very necessary for eye health.
Retinol:
Beta-carotene:
See, these guys aren't the same? Your body can only convert beta-carotene into retinol, the biologically active compound, at an efficiency of 9-22%. That's not particularly high, and that's the rate if you are healthy, which chances are you have at least a slightly compromised digestive tract due to years of grain consumption.
Essentially, you can eat 8 pounds of carrots a day and still be deficient in vitamin A. Vitamin A deficiency sucks. I've had it. Your color vision gets really fucked up. Don't do it!
Retinol is only found in animal products. It is abundant in egg yolks, organic/grass-fed butter, liver, and fish oil. If you consume the biologically active vitamin A, your body doesn't have to do the work. Do you see a theme here? The less work your body has to do, the better.
Vitamin D
Your body can make this more easily than you can eat it! If you get adequate sunlight, either by going outside or using a happy lamp, you won't really need to supplement. It's not a bad idea to supplement though, especially if you live in a northern climate like I do. I've also heard that even if you take D3, you still need UV-light to convert it into a more biologically active form, so you should still make an effort to get some UV-light. It won't cause skin cancer in moderation. I'll discuss my beef with sunscreens and UV-light scare propaganda in another post.
You will be depressed if you are deficient in Vitamin D. Trust me. It is way better to have your body synthesize it than to trust a dairy company to enrich their already deficient product (that was actually intended to fatten up a baby cow, not for human consumption ... but I digress)
Vitamin K
There are two forms of Vitamin K, vitamin K1:
And vitamin K2:
These guys are pretty similar actually, and your body can convert vitamin K1 into the biologically active vitamin K2 pretty easily if you are absorbing your vitamin K.
You can get more than enough vitamin K if you eat dark leafy greens with enough fat to solubilize them. So, put some olive oil on your kale salad, etc. That shit's delicious.
Now you have no excuse to be deficient in your fat-soluble vitamins.
Pease, love, and seasonal produce,
/bitchesloveproduce
No comments:
Post a Comment