Vitamin A deficiency can be quite serious. In developing countries, it is not uncommon to see widespread vitamin A deficiency resulting in weakened immune systems.However, in developed countries, vitamin A deficiencies are usually seen only in people who are alcoholics or fasting oreating severely restricted diets.
Because vitamin A supports so many bodily functions, it affects just about every part of the body. However, one of the first signs of a vitamin A deficiency is something going wrong with eyesight, which is why you've probably been told all your life to eat your carrots to protect your eyesight. Night blindness is actually one of the first signs of a deficiency, followed by other signs of degenerating eyesight. Usually the cornea begins to dry out and the retina shows progressing signs of damage as the deficiency continues.
Another sign of a vitamin A deficiency is a low immunity, difficulty fending off illness or recovering from medical conditions. If you have a vitamin A deficiency, your body will have trouble fighting off all disease in general. One particularly common issue is a problem on a cellular level, where patients with respiratory illness cannot fight off pneumonia because the cells in their lungs cannot resist viruses, bacteria and other disease-causing agents. As a result, people who should be able to fight off pneumonia submit to the disease and are overcome by it.
One of the problems facing doctors today is the fact that people often do not exhibit distinct symptoms of a vitamin A deficiency, so the problem goes undetected and untreated. Sometimes people have a problem storing vitamin A, which makes the deficiency even harder to diagnose because the patient is taking in plenty of vitamin A, but is not storing or using it. The early symptoms of this problem are usually respiratory problems, diarrhea, intestinal infections, slow growth and low immunity, all of which can be attributed to a number of other causes.
Recommended amounts of Vitamin A are as follows:
 | Consuming too much vitamin A, which is a fat-soluble vitamin, can lead to vitamin A toxicity. The medical term for vitamin A toxicity is hypervitaminosis A. It means your body is storing way too much vitamin A and your body is not responding well to this high level. |
 | Make foods rich in vitamin A a part of your diet because vitamin A supports healthy eye, respiratory, urinary and digestive function. Vitamin A is vital to so many bodily functions that it is an essential part of every diet. |
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