GAL Vitamin A

Our company does not attribute any disease-prevention, treatment, or curative properties to our products, nor do we imply any such properties. That said, in the interest of transparency we provide the following information about the health effects of this product's active ingredients and their scientific background. We aim to present the latest, independent, and authoritative research to give interested readers a clear picture of the evidence. This is not intended to encourage a purchase. If our customers return to us with repeat orders, we hope it is only because they have experienced GAL's benefits for themselves, that is what we believe in, and why we do this work.

Why Did We Create GAL Vitamin A?

It's hard to imagine a simpler product, yet it was worth creating: for anyone who doesn't get enough vitamin A from their diet, it can be a real help in dialing in the ideal retinol-to-D3 ratio.

Who do we recommend GAL Vitamin A for?

For anyone who doesn't regularly eat liver, since their vitamin A intake may otherwise run too low, which can become a real issue, especially if they're also supplementing a large amount of vitamin D3.

Vitamin A performs a great many functions in the body, the most important of which are:

1. Supports healthy immune system function
2. Essential for skin and mucous membrane health
3. Important for proper thyroid function and sex hormone production
4. Plays a role in growth

GAL Vitamin A Ingredients

The product contains plain, ordinary retinyl palmitate dissolved in MCT oil, stabilized with a touch of natural vitamin E complex.

Retinol is the ready-to-use form of vitamin A, the body can put it to use directly, with no conversion required, unlike the carotenoids found in plant foods.

Retinyl palmitate is essentially the only form of retinol found naturally in food. It's simply the natural compound formed between retinol and palmitic acid, the most abundant fatty acid in the human body.

Why don't many people get enough vitamin A?

The best source of retinol by far is liver, which relatively few people eat regularly. Converting plant carotenoids into vitamin A varies enormously from person to person, depending on digestion and genetics. Since we can't know how efficiently we absorb carotenoids, let alone how well we convert them to retinol, it's worth consuming retinol directly on a regular basis.

Is Vitamin A Really So Easy to Overdose On?

Two kinds of risk have been raised around excessive vitamin A intake:

• A handful of older studies found an increased risk of bone fractures associated with vitamin A intake.
• Some people experienced toxicity symptoms after supplementing larger amounts of vitamin A.

Looking more closely at this research, it becomes clear that vitamin A itself wasn't really the problem, other factors the studies didn't account for were.

Vitamin A doesn't weaken bones, it strengthens them

Vitamin A supplementation only raised fracture risk among participants who were also deficient in vitamin D, since a large dose of vitamin A can somewhat worsen an existing D deficiency.

In studies where vitamin D status was adequate, or at least not severely deficient, because participants were also supplementing D3, high vitamin A intake turned out to be beneficial for bone health too. This isn't surprising, given that vitamin A is itself needed for bone remodeling.

Only Certain Forms of Vitamin A Are Problematic

A review study found that vitamin A toxicity only occurs with the non-natural, dry retinyl acetate form, or with water-miscible and emulsified forms, while the natural retinyl palmitate form doesn't cause toxicity symptoms even at much higher intakes.

Taken in this form, even extreme doses of vitamin A are safe, and at the recommended amount, alongside an adequate vitamin D level, it can only work in your favor.

What's the Ideal Vitamin A to D3 Ratio?

A 2020 study found that taking the two vitamins together in a 1:1 ratio produced markedly better results than taking either alone. This can be considered the optimal ratio, since supplementing only one of the two, whether you're deficient in D3 or in vitamin A, only worsens the deficiency symptoms of the other.

If you're not deficient in either, they can be taken across a very wide range of amounts and ratios. As long as your overall status of both is adequate, even quite extreme doses and ratios will still tend to offset each other's potential side effects, while reinforcing each other's benefits.

In short, supplementation works best when intake follows a 1:1 ratio, since this best supports the balance between the two regardless of your current vitamin A and D3 levels. That said, getting enough of both matters more than the exact ratio between them. (Our Multivitamin products contain both vitamins in the ideal ratio and amount.)

Practical Tips for Supplementing Vitamin A

It's enough to consume retinol on a weekly basis, daily intake isn't necessary. What matters is that, over a given period (say, a week), you get at least as much retinol as vitamin D3, expressed in international units (IU).

Among foods, liver is really the only significant source of vitamin A worth counting on, though it's still worth eating carotenoid-containing vegetables too. About 100g of liver contains roughly 15,000–20,000 IU of retinol.

If you don't eat liver, and only eat carrots, pumpkin, or sweet potato occasionally, it's worth supplementing roughly as much retinol as vitamin D3, or even a little more.

If you eat more than 150–200g of liver a week, you likely don't need to supplement vitamin A separately, though if you're also taking vitamin D3, the extra intake won't do any harm.