Chicken liver and vitamin A

[Rajtar]

I have been eating a lot of chicken liver lately, up to 700 grams a day, it is my main source of protein at the moment. I know it has a lot f vitamin A and if I am correct my daily intake of vitamin A is around 80000 iu, can it be harmful? I am 6,1 225 lbs intermediate on texas method, very active. I have been eating like this for almost 2 months and did not notice any problems so far, my diet also consist of milk, eggs, poultry and pork. I know that hard training athletes need much more vitamins and minerals I just wonder if the amount of vitamin A I am eating right now may be a little too much. Thank you in advance, I appreciate any tips, articles or studies you recommend.

[Robert Santana]

I have been eating a lot of chicken liver lately, up to 700 grams a day, it is my main source of protein at the moment. I know it has a lot f vitamin A and if I am correct my daily intake of vitamin A is around 80000 iu, can it be harmful? I am 6,1 225 lbs intermediate on texas method, very active. I have been eating like this for almost 2 months and did not notice any problems so far, my diet also consist of milk, eggs, poultry and pork. I know that hard training athletes need much more vitamins and minerals I just wonder if the amount of vitamin A I am eating right now may be a little too much. Thank you in advance, I appreciate any tips, articles or studies you recommend.

Good question buddy! SO the UL for Vitamin A is 3000 mcg Retinol Activity Equivalents (RAE) or 10,000 IU. 1IU of retinol = 0.3 mcg RAE. So if you are eating 80,000 IU you are getting 24,000 mcg RAE, which is 10 times the UL! Since this is coming from a source of retinol versus a provitamin A (I.e. beta carotene), you are definitely at risk of hypervitaminosis A, which can be life threatening. Vitamin A gets stored in your liver so you don't excrete it, hence why you want to be careful with it. A quick PubMed search will show some classic papers from the 70s that discuss some case studies that had liver damage due to hypervitaminosis A. Fat soluble vitamins are not something you wanna play around with unless it's Vitamin K because you do not store it in meaningful amounts.