NOW Vitamin A 25,000 IU Softgels

First off, I purchased Vitamin A in hopes of having a counter to my acne issue.
Here is my acne history:

I have what Dermatologists call Level 4 or Grade 4 Acne. What this means, my dear hopefuls, is that when I say I have BAD skin, I’m not whining because I get one or two pimples a month or a week. No, I had a FACE full of acne as a teenager, 18-21, which covered EVERY increment of skin on my face. For those of you unfortunate enough to understand what Level 4 acne is, it basically means NO antibiotic or topic medication can help your skin. Not only that, Level 4 acne is ONLY considered level 4 if you have what is called Cystic acne. Cystic acne is the type that grows UNDERNEATH the skin and develops into a nodule filled with bacteria. This type of acne cannot be treated without surgery or other invasive procedures. Guess how many I had? 4. I had two cystic acne the size of QUARTERS on both of my cheeks. So imagine me, an 18 year old bright-eyed college hopeful going to school with a face covered in acne that can only be described as the Acne God waging a self-esteem war on me. On top of that, I had cystic acne that inflicted SEVERE pain if I so much as touched it when washing my face.
Flash forward 4 years and I’m at my wits end. Proactive started my acne issue, neutrogena did nothing, L’oreal was useless, Skin ID did squat, eating organic foods made it slightly better. So, what’s a 22 year old with a complexion of Swiss cheese to do? I went to the motherload of all Acne cures: Accutane. Yeah, I can feel you guys cringing. Accutane is the most effective but also the most destructive way to cure acne. You CANNOT be prescribed this without at least a Level 3 category acne and I had the whole clearance! Check me out! Jumping all the way to the top!

Anyways, more to the point, Accutane did everything it promised. Within 5 months, my acne stopped. My cystic acne dissolved within my cheeks and I was able to properly wash my face without wincing anymore. However, the side effects were horrendous. Accutane should have a slogan “Beauty is worth EVERYTHING” because those 5 months were hell. Depression, dry skin, terribly sore back (If I moved while I slept, I would bolt awake from the pain).
Flash forward 1 year. I am now 23, my acne is back…. Yeah, did I mention I had horrible acne? My acne is so bad, Accutane couldn’t fix it. (Sounds like a yo mama joke). So a couple weeks ago, I decided to give this a try. I’ve read close to 100 acne blogs on the internet, cross referenced many claims (like using oil to wash your face….really?) and everything led me to just taking Vitamin A. Funny how the major skin care companies stress EXTERNAL help instead of taking a very cheap but healthy pill (Where there is money, there will always be deception and white lies). You can buy the most expensive cream in the world but if your insides are not regulated, your skin will NEVER look good, THAT is a fact.
Here is my reasoning (If you’ve read this far…man do you have bad acne):
Accutane is a derivative of Vitamin A much like Retin-A (another effective combatant of acne, do you see a trend? Vitamin A is acne’s worse enemy!). Its medical name is Isotretinoin. When you are prescribed Accutane, the doctor takes into consideration your health, psychology, and weight. If ANY of these three are not up to standard, it is illegal for them to prescribe it. Why? My dermatologist put it best “Isotretinoin is a controlled OVERDOSE of Vitamin A”. In order to control your acne, and cure it (not in my case), you have to overdose on Vitamin A to jolt your skin into producing less Sebum. Vitamin A is crucial in monitoring your oil production therefore, overdosing on it means your forcing the oil production to ALMOST cease. Of course, if you guys are thinking “Thanks guy on Amazon! I’m going to take 5 capsules a day for 5 months and cure my acne” you are DEAD wrong. Overdosing on Vitamin A without professional guidance causes liver failure, brain tumors, and death. When you are on Accutane, you have to sign a health waiver. Accutane is so dangerous, the patient must have a notarized document stating that they understand the risks. In the 5-6 months that you are required to take Accutane, you MUST come in for a monthly blood test and general health screening. I can’t stress this enough. I’ve read Acne Blogs where young adults post about what they are going to do with this product. “I’m going to start taking 3 a day because I think 75,000 IU will be near the level of what Accutane is”. Sure, you can do that but there are more peaceful ways to commit suicide. Did I mention that Accutane is prescribed according to your weight, age, and mental health history? You can’t just self-medicate!

So far, it’s been a week taking 1 capsule a day (Which is still 5 times more than the normal daily requirement of Vitamin A) and my skin has started to heal. I’ve gotten 1 new acne in a week…before taking these I got 8 in a day from stress. I’m still stressing but my acne growth has slowed considerably. So…YES this works, take it from a guy who survived Accutane and STILL gets level 2 acne (At least it divided my acne in half!). There really isn’t a reason for it NOT to work because it’s what Vitamin A does. For those of the reviewers who claimed it did nothing, they probably took it for three days and wrote the review. It takes a minimum of a week for any nutrients to show effect in your system.

Update 2024> I can’t recommend this product anymore due to the addition of retinyl palmitate – it used to be just pure retinol from fish oil which is what you want. I would suggest switching to cod liver oil or some other kind of fish oil instead of this product which is nonlinger fully natural. Retinyl palmitate can be damaging in high doses unlike natural fish oil.
Regarding cofactors, it seems like the ratio of vitamin D to vitamin A found in nature is something like 1:4, so if you take 25000iu of vit A you would want something like 5000iu vit D (unless you get it naturally from the sun or free-range meat). I also believe the bone poisoning they found in Sweden was related more to lack of concurrent calcium intake.

Update: I wouldnt suggest megadosing vit.A any longer, you actually just need more zinc, which is what helps your body use vitamin A to begin with! If you’re deficient in zinc, which most of us are (esp if you avoid red meat and oysters, or have copper overload), then you can’t effectively use vitamin A. Cod liver oil has a good balance of vit A and D. As someone commented boron is also needed.
If you find that megadosing A works on your acne, perhaps try upping your zinc intake and back down on the A to see if that continues to work.
Original review:
I think this is a powerful product and am glad vitamin A in this form is available (as opposed to plant sources, which don’t work based on what I have researched).
HOWEVER, as someone mentioned in the ‘Question & Answer’ section for this product, it is IMO very dangerous to overdose yourself like crazy on this!!! I have witnessed firsthand how this affects bone density because once I and my family started taking this and/or 3tbsp per day of fermented cod liver oil all of our teeth started become grey and translucent.
If you research a bit on ‘Vitamin A bone poison’ or things along that line there are mentions of a study done in Sweden that showed positive correlation with high vitamin A intake and increased fractures, things like that.
What the research does mention is that concurrent vitamin D intake helps to regulate vitamin A, so it is extremely important to ALSO take vitamin D along with this or cod liver oil (I believe one tbsp of cod liver oil has something like 30,000IU of vitamin A but don’t quote me on this). So if you are an acne sufferer make sure to look into the ratio between vitamin D and vitamin A that is healthy for your body before you blast yourself with megadoses of this.
Personally, I have scaled myself back to once or twice a week of this maximum, but take vitamin D daily in the form of sunshine or drops.

Has helped keep my skin clear!!