(not the rest of your body).

How do we know?

When you say vitamin A, do you literally mean vitamin A, or the similar potential-precursor compound found in plants that is often mistaken as vitamin A? See my other comment.

Hi, thanks for responding. You say:

Dietary vitamin A (beta carotene) is not the active form of vitamin A (retinoic acid), it needs to be converted into the active form by the body's enzymes.

It is possible to eat the active form of vitamin A, for example through animal sources like liver. 

When I said vitamin A, I meant vitamin A (not the compound in plants that can be lossily converted into vitamin A).

So this doesn't answer the question IMO

thanks! There's a lot I don't post on LessWrong because I don't think it matches the vibe. Even this post has gotten some substantial downvotes

haha i didn't think 

what becoming secure does to a mfer

would resonate on lesswrong

empiric claims for which they have neither empirical evidence from their own life experience

what

I have a confusion about retinoids that I haven't been able to find an answer to:

If retinoids are approximately vitamin A, does this just mean that the average person is very vitamin A deficient? Should they just be eating vitamin A instead? (The best source is probably animal liver.) Surely this would have not just the beneficial skin effects but also lots of other positive effects on the body (surely facial skin is not the only part of the body bottlenecked by vitamin A).

I wonder if people who eat/absorb lots of vitamin A don't get any marginal benefit from retinoids.

Btw I'll pay $30 for a satisfying answer to this

Clarification: By vitamin A, I literally mean vitamin A. The compound that can be used without conversion. For example, the compound that is consumed through animal sources like liver. 

This may sound tautological, but how do you know you that 1) you had the extreme fears; 2) it was exposure (as opposed to anything else or stochasticity) that fixed it?

That seems more avoidant to me than what I said haha.

Also, I fully expected this person to ask questions for more detail if I had said what you suggest.