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What
are Retinol and Carotene? How do they relate to Vitamin
A?
When people first discovered Vitamin
A, they figured the only way to intake this useful element
was to eat many animal parts such as animal livers. Because
these food sources provide us rich "performed"
Vitamin A, which means we can use it immediately after eating
them. The "performed" Vitamin A is called Retinol.
However, not every one of us would enjoy eating animal livers
everyday. Therefore, people started to look into the different
food sources, and we found the magical component from the
yellow, orange and red plant foods - "Carotenes".
Enzymes can easily convert some of intake Carotenes into
Vitamin A in our liver. And the converted amount is just
enough for your health requirement.
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Take
a closer look at Carotene
There are many different kind of Carotenes,
but for Vitamin A's concern, only two kinds of Carotenes
need to be studied here - Alpha Carotene and Beta Carotene.
Beta Carotene is largely contained in the yellow, orange
and red color plant foods, and it is used in two areas:
1). Part of it being converted into sufficient Vitamin A
for your body needs. Since your own Enzyme does the job,
therefore, only the needed amount of Vitamin A will be produced
from the Beta Carotene. It is harmful to overdose Vitamin
A sometimes, but it's never harmful to have excess amount
of Carotenes. The non-used Carotenes are stored in the fatty
tissues and ready to be converted into Vitamin A when ever
it is needed.
2). The rest of the non-converted beta Carotenes can also
be used to extinguish the singlet oxygen in our body, which
prevents us from getting Cancer! Yes, Carotene itself is
also a cancer-fighting agent. From this point of view, Alpha
Carotene does a much better job than the Beta Carotene.
To be precise, Alpha Carotene can be 10 times more effective
in eliminating free radicals for our body.
Among the many different
kinds of carotene supplements, we suggest the Natural Beta-Carotene
25,000IU from NOW. This supplement contains additional antioxidant
carotenoids Lutein and Zeaxanthin, and natural alpha-carotene.
These cofactors are only found in D. salina natural algae
Beta-Carotene.
Click
here for Natural Beta-Carotene 25,000IU from NOW
Click
here for 1+ Vitamin/Mineral 120 tabs from Pioneer Nutritionals
For more information on Oxidation and
Antioxidants, click
here to read our document on OPCs.
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