Too Much Alcohol Could Reduce Vitamin A Levels in Your Body

Before understanding how too much alcohol could reduce the Vitamin A count in your body, it's important to understand why Vitamin A is important for you. Vitamin A is key to a strong immune system and improves your eyesight. It comes from two main sources: plants and animal products. According to web MD, Vitamin A supplements are used in the treatment for cancers, HIV, dry eye and measles.A study published in the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) Journal suggests that chronic alcohol consumption has a dramatic effect on the way the body handles vitamin A. Long-term drinking lowers vitamin A levels in the liver, which is the main site of alcohol breakdown and vitamin A storage, while raising vitamin A levels in many other tissues.

"We hope this study will lead to a broader understanding and appreciation of the fact that excessive consumption of alcohol has a negative effect on vitamin A function in the body," said one of the researchers Robin Clugston from Columbia University Medical Center in New York, New York.

He added, "Ultimately, we hope that vitamin A will be seen as a broad target for alcohol in multiple tissues of the body and that our understanding of alcohol-induced disease will be linked together by its effects on vitamin A."

Clugston and colleagues conducted multiple experiments using several groups of mice including those who received alcohol-containing food and alcohol-free food. They analysed the liver and other organs (kidney, spleen, heart, lung, white adipose, brown adipose and blood), from both groups of mice and measured tissue vitamin A levels.

The alcohol-fed mice had distinct changes in how their body handled vitamin A. In general, vitamin A levels were lower in the liver and higher in other tissues.  This strongly suggests that vitamin A in the liver is reduced by excessive alcohol consumption and that these findings are important in the development of alcoholic liver disease.