Vitamin A: What runners should know about Vitamin A
today we are talking vitamin A or
retinol and as you will see vitamin A is
like the light switch before the eye
which allows us to see in low-light
situations
kind of like the ones you experience
there are early morning runs or evening
runs and as always the more you know the
faster you run let's take a look so this
diagram is a diagram of the eye and how
you see and in short real simply light
comes in one end it then goes to the
back of the eye where it hits a series
of receptors and there are two primary
ones in the eye you have cones and you
have rods cones allow you to see green
red blue color primarily during the
daylight and rods allow you to see in
shades of gray and are particularly
useful for low-light situations and as
it turns out rods are composed of two
substances one of which happens to be
vitamin A and the way it works is
actually kind of cool so here at the top
you have retinol which is the active
form of vitamin A and when it is exposed
to light some sort of light source what
happens is the molecule physically
transforms to a different configurations
it's a different isomer same structure
just a different physical orientation in
space from cysts to trans and this
physical transformation is effectively
the light switch which then tells your
body hey something has changed and it
sends the signal throughout the eye
which you're then your brain detects as
like hitting and it allows us to have
the different images that we see is
light so as you can see having vitamin A
is important to making sure that won't
create a the number of rods that we need
to allow for us to detect light or take
in these low-light situations such as
you experience when you're running in
the morning or you're running in the
evening so as always the more you know
the faster you run see you at the finish
line