Vitamin A appears to protect the heart from the effects of being overweight.
At least this is the conclusion of a German study published in the American Journal of Physiology-Heart and Circulatory Physiology.
A team of researchers from the Medical School of the University of Hanover induced obesity in an animal model (mice) with vitamin A deficiency.
After 20 weeks, the scientists compared the hearts and metabolism of mice with obesity but vitamin A deficiency.
Experimental animals with a deficiency of this particular vitamin had in the heart a suppression of genes related to the extraction of energy from fat, the extraction of energy from glucose and the production of the molecule adenosine triphosphate, which transports energy.
These changes are crucial for metabolic functionality.
“Our study identifies a role for vitamin A in maintaining cardiac energetic gene expression that could moderate the subsequent development of mitochondrial and contractile dysfunction in diet-induced obesity,” the researchers report in their article.
Numerous scientific studies have documented that eating foods rich in vitamin A is protective against various diseases.
In addition to vitamin A-enriched foods found on supermarket shelves, such as cereals, juices and dairy products, good sources of vitamin A are tomatoes, red peppers, mangoes, fish oils, milk, eggs, beef liver, cantaloupe, green leafy vegetables (such as spinach, kale and broccoli), orange and yellow vegetables (such as carrots, sweet potatoes and orange squash).
