NOW Foods Supplements, Vitamin A (Fish Liver Oil) 25,000 IU, Essential Nutrition, 250 Softgels

I love this brand and have ordered this product several times.

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.

I was severely depressed being 24 and still having horrible acne. Okay not horrible it was mild but it was a build up because I dealt with severe acne growing up and the only thing that made it mild was dieting , cutting out dairy and sweets and cows milk I switched to almond milk and I went to an allergist to find out I was also allergic to eggs and peanuts which gave me forehead and chin acne. I sacrafice and cut these all out and started to lose a lot of weight because I was paranoid if every food because I still Mildly broke out. I took vitamin A before when I was about 18 and broke out so badly that I just toss the whole bottle but it was the beta caretone version. This year my sister said she was gonna try NOW brand vitamin A and I warned her that it broke me out badly in the past and not to. But she listened to the good reviews on here and purchased. I notice that her skin was clearing after a week and so smooth and then after three weeks no new acne. I had nothing to lose I was so depress because I my mild acne was becoming bad again and I was tired of losing weight and watching my diet so much. I tried her bottle before I bought my own and listen to me, my skin PURGED! This is retinoids version so idk if there is a difference with beta caretone but this version also broke me out in the first 4 days. I'm at th point of my life where there is nothing to lose so when I purged I didn't even react much like I use to. It's either you wanna purge to clear skin or you want to not purge and not ever experience the great affects of Vitamin A. The purge was like a week and then my skin started clearing and better yet HEALING! My red marks started getting a faded gray which is better because it was easier to lighten with grade cream! I'm a Caremel African American and I started to scar so easily until this vitamin. You want to know the best part of the vitamin? I can eat what I want now ! I still avoid peanuts and eggs but sweets I can finally eat again because vitamin A helps so much that I stopped breaking out. If I do it's sooooo small and last like a day or two, really small small small bump. So small and that's rarely. I have my life back and even though I'm healthier now with my diet since I'm use to it now I can still cheat and eat what I want and not suffer consequences. If you take this vitamin please take vitamin d3 with it which also helps with skin. Also make sure you take one a day not two, and also buy NOW version (Retinol) thank you so much vitamin A, my bacne is gone, my acne is pretty much non existence and I'm not scared of food anymore. It really saved my life and saved my summer. Also thank my sister for not listening to me. Acne will slowly cure or greatly vanish from the ROOT problem. Not just external factors you have to start from internal! Try it!

First off it came in a timely matter and was exactly as pictured here on Amazon so that's great also the quantity for the price is good too. Now if you are like me and you bought this in hopes of helping your acne then I say look no further and read on. So I am now ending week one of taking two of these per day, one at night and one in the morning and I can say that it is already doing wonders for my skin. I am not totally acne clear but what has surprised me the most is how I have little whiteheads in my chin and on my forehead...subclinkcal acne, and these little bastards are painful and no matter how much I exfoliated my skin and squeezed the crud out of them they alway came back within a couple days...it was very frustrating, in the end I tried virtually every topical thing I could find with some decent results from a few things but never to the extent I've seen after just one week of taking this. Sounds too good to be true? Well in part it is as this does come with some side effects, most weirdly for me was I got the runs the first few days I was on it, after that it cleared up but things in that area are still a bit runny... Eh small price to pay if you ask me, I also seem to be a lot more thirsty in general, and my skin is certainly drier than it has been previously but in my case that's beneficial. So how does this work? Well basically what your doing when you take this is a controlled overdose of vitamin A, I also recommend taking zinc and magnesium while doing this to help speed up your body's healing process in general. Anyhow vitamin A in a nutshell works wonders for acne sufferers because it promotes the creation of new skin cells, and reduces the amount of sebum AKA oil your skin produces, so if your pores get clogged from oily skin like me then this is a great option to try. On top of that it also does wonders to reduce inclination in your skin as well, basically flattening existing whiteheads and taking away much of the redness of irritation from acne breakouts, my breakouts now look more like a scrape on your elbow that scabbed over then acutual red marks now. How long does it take? Well everyone's body reacts differently to different things so it's hard to say, but you should notice some difference within about 1 week of consistently taking this, I noticed my skin being much less oily in as little as three days and now entering the end of week one, begging of week two I am seeing a real benefit to my skin, it's tone and I am noticing much, much less new white hands or blemishes, and I can only imagine as I keep going things will continue to improve more and more. In short does it work? Yes but beware of potential side effects as this is 500% of your daily value, not a typeo this is 5x as much as your body actually needs, like I said earlier this is a controlled overdose of vitamin A, one step down from prescription stuff so use this cautiously and watch for signs of acute vitamin A poisoning.

This has been part of our regimen for a few years and we have been healthy. Maybe slight cold or sore throat in the winter, but none of the hard stuff like flu or bad congestion.

Good quality, excellent delivery speed,worth the price, natural source of vitamin A

Okay, I'm sorry, but I don't think many people know quite what they're talking about here. Drug Toxicity is not the same as side effects. This supplement is MEANT TO BE a controlled overdose of vitamin A. It is in a special form, so that many physicians may write an OTC script for this product, and not have to go through all of the paperwork, and expensive middle-man fees, hiking the price up to hundreds, per bottle. That being said, yes, this does cause some side effects: Occasional headache, muscle fatigue and soreness, dry skin, lips, and scalp, physiological issues such as depression, and occasional loss of appetite/nausea. It ALSO does cause some adverse effects, in high dosage, which are serious, negative, potentially fatal side effects: SEVERE birth defects, Liver Damage, and brain sores. I'm not saying that it is good to just go ahead and take 3 of these a day against medical advice, but it certainly will not kill you. If you are worried, you probably shouldn't be reading amazon.com reviews anyway. Get in your car the next chance you get, and go talk to your physician. No health insurance? Call a pharmacist. They will know what is safe for a person of your physique and will generally give you medical advice, or call a physician for you. The best option for someone who is scared about going on this test is to get a blood screen. See if you have any abnormalities that a healthy person would not have, and then go from there. Vitamin A is not toxic. It does have a recommended dosage, and can be (acutely) toxic if taken in excessive amounts (which is about 25,000IUs per 2.2lbs of body weight.) So obviously that is extremely high and 3xd is nowhere near that. Now on to the personal bit. I have loosely 'suffered' from acne since about the 6th grade. So basically, a long time. I have tried everything that my family could possibly afford for my skin, but stubborn acne kept coming right back. Then, like some of you reading this, I moved on to the vicious murderer of acne vulgaris. Isotretinoin. After about 3 months of that, my body, and my mind could no longer bear it, (not to mention my mothers wallet) so i made the switch to over-the-counter topicals again. So obviously my pizza face, chest, back, and arms, all returned with a self-esteem conquering cry. Literally a cry because accutane effed me up pretty good. After months of research, and drug store prawling for miracle-cures for genetic, hormonal severe acne, I came to a sort-of unyielding conclusion. Most products used for the treatment of acne contained some sort or retinol. What's retinol? It's synthetic vitamin A. Toxic at a much lower dosage BTW. I thought, vitamin A. This is why they call kale a super food for your skin! (and by 'they,' I mean the hipsters with shiny gold bandannas) So i thought, why not skip this whole entire eating thing, (I was never good at eating healthy) and take supplements. That lead me here. I received two, 250 capsule bottles today, and am going to start off by Rx-ing myself 'Fish Oil Vitamin A 25,000IU tid pc pm' --Medical Abbreviations are fun. That means 3 capsules per day, after evening meal. Vitamin A is fat-soluble, so it must be taken with fatty food to achieve desired effect. I want to keep everyone posted on my journey, and time-frame of my dosage change. I plan to only take two capsules when my skin has cleared. Then one, some time after that when my skin no longer can produce a zit. Then gradually one every other day, then none. Adjusted as needed. *5 STARS FOR NOW*

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.