Vitamin A....it scares me

I am gennerally a proponet of first do no harm,

Vitamin A scares me due to the small range between therapeutic and toxic according to the posts i have read.

in human medicine recommendations are usually ranked by level of evidence such a double blind placebo controlled randomized trials (the very best), randominzed trials, case control trials or expert consensus. i freely admit i am amog the clueless when it comes to experience and knowledge about chameleons or even reptiles in general.

where is the level of recommendation about vitamin A? has anyone done a study? where can i find them? does it possiblely differ between chameleons? has anyone raised successive generations without it and whith what species?

Thanks for the input,

Sean

First off, anything anyone says about vit. A right now is subject to opinion. I have spoken to many people (vets and multiple breeders), many are strongly against supplementing vitamin A. I know many breeders that are very successful without using vitamin A.

The main thing to know about vitamin A is that it you may not see any immediate detrimental effects, but it also cannot be excreted from the body so it can build up and become toxic.

In my opinion there are too many people giving too much vitamin A and will not see any negative affects right now but I feel if they continue to supplement at their current rate they will shorten the life of their chameleons.

I would love to hear from those who have had panther chameleons live for over 6 years and what sort of supplementation they were using.

Me personally I give my full grown chams a drop from a gel cap once every other or every third month. But again that is my opinion and I have found to true solid evidence on this subject.

-chris

Not giving Vitamin A should scare you more.
There are more cases of hypovitaminosis reported than there are of hypervitaminosis.

Does the calcium supplement scare you?
What study do you follow on that dosage?
How about with D3?


-Brad

Brad Ramsey said:

Not giving Vitamin A should scare you more.
There are more cases of hypovitaminosis reported than there are of hypervitaminosis.

Does the calcium supplement scare you?
What study do you follow on that dosage?
How about with D3?


-Brad

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How do they get vitamin A in the wild?

shaneandjennifer said:

How do they get vitamin A in the wild?

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little lizards and baby mice.

shaneandjennifer said:

How do they get vitamin A in the wild?

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Like Dodolah said, by eating a vertebrate or possibly a bloodsucking insect.
You could give them the same opportunity in captivity by offering the occasional pinky mouse, anole, or zebra finch.
I choose to feed insects and plant matter only and supplement with the fish oil for preformed Vitamin A....
Which incidentally many breeders and veterinarians are recommending now, or at least looking into the need seriously.

-Brad

Only time I had hypo-A problems (edema, swollen eyes) was when my daughter dumped out my vitamin supplement with preformed A. I had forgotten about it, and didn't replace it for a few months. My female veiled developed some eye swellings and slight gular edema. I stopped at a pet shop and bought some vitamins with preformed A. I gave them all a dusted cricket, and within 2 weeks, the swellings were gone completely.

I've been supplementing with reptivite or other "high in preformed A" multivitamins for a very long time. When herptivite came out, I still used them here and there - just in case they needed it.

Brad Ramsey said:

Not giving Vitamin A should scare you more.
There are more cases of hypovitaminosis reported than there are of hypervitaminosis.

Does the calcium supplement scare you?
What study do you follow on that dosage?
How about with D3?


-Brad

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The toxicity levels of vitamin D3 are much higher than those of vitamin A. As for calcium, there are many more uses in the body and again has a very minimal chance of reaching "toxic" levels. As said previously, reported hypervitaminosis (for any of the fat-soluble vitamins) is uncommon. However, I'd be challenged (but not impossible) to find a person who could immediately identify signs of hypervitaminosis. I would not hesitate to assume many chameleons have been misdiagnosed. With vitamin A, small frequent doses do add up. Generally, animals (and people) have cravings when they require any specific vitamins or minerals. In the wild, it's likely that chameleons will dine on blood-sucking insects or small vertebrates. As we have removed these animals from the wild, there is no way of knowing when they want their meal to be a little lizard. There is not likely going to be significant amounts of any vitamin in these meals and the frequency of these meals is unknown (but it's likely not an everyday thing because we have seen many breeders that have successfully raised chameleons without vit A supps). Therefore, we really should supplement at least a little bit.

I'd love to really study these animals in their habitat for several seasons (you know, like Jane Goodall of the Chameleon World) to better understand their natural nutritive habits.

You've got to understand that when you remove any animal from their natural habitat (no matter how well you emulate it) changes in diet need to be made to appropriately accommodate the changes. There just isn't necessarily one correct way to raise them, and with minimal official clinical trials provided there aren't even necessarily ways that are better than others (except for trial and error, and perpetually successful breeders).

I wouldn't ever claim to know exactly how much (human RDAs are just estimates also and are ever changing as new research is revealed) vitamins and minerals promote optimal health, but I DO know that vitamins are NOT treatments. In fact, we have come a long way since the days that we thought vitamins and minerals were medications for disease. THEY ARE TO BE USED FOR PREVENTION AND MAINTENANCE OF OPTIMAL HEALTH. Key words: prevention and optimal. Keep in mind that animals and humans, both, can live long lives with minimal supplementation of vitamins and minerals. But research shows that those who consume certain amounts of vitamins and minerals longevity increases and incidence of illness decreases.

SO, that being said, again there is no set limits for chameleons, but please consider using vitamin A as an infrequent addition to a regular diet because the negative effects of over-doing it (with vitamin A) are worse than the negative effects of under-doing it.

-Chris (& Stacey esp. about the Jane Goodall thing)

And I will add that I always maintain (in regard to regular supplementation) that less is more.

-Brad

Im not shure if anyone got my other question on the other thread? I have 2 ambilobes that are about 2 months old and a veiled thats about 3-3 1/2 months...would It be fine to give them vitamin A also? I want to make shure its safe before I give it them.

Brian

I'm not sure there is a prescribed age to start with Vitamin A supplementation ... as with any facet of this part of the husbandry we are (to a degree) shooting in the dark.
I will say that if we think critically about this question, we might conclude that a smaller/ younger animal would not be able to hunt and/or consume prey that would be a source of preformed vitamin A.
ie: a young chameleon may not be big enough to eat a bird or lizard, it may be that they stick to smaller insect prey while young.
Obviously, I am speculating. I didn't start with the Vitamin A till my animals were close to, or over a year old.

-Brad

brianchamman said:

Im not shure if anyone got my other question on the other thread? I have 2 ambilobes that are about 2 months old and a veiled thats about 3-3 1/2 months...would It be fine to give them vitamin A also? I want to make shure its safe before I give it them.

Brian

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like Brad said, there is not a formula to this.
I started giving my cham a preformed vit A a little bit earlier than Brad.
I believe I did that when he was 10 mo.
(but, since i'm still a bit cautious, i decided to give him once every month/two).

thank you all for your imput.

i hope i was not misunderstood. i definitely consider myself among the clueless, but i have been trained to question the why not just the hows in life particularly when the treatment could be dangerous.

Brad i can definitely see the negative if i choose not to suppliment with vitamin A; i will suppliment when the time comes

In reguard to vitamin D3 i plan to give my chams plenty of sun exposure in the warmer months and suppliment otherwise. my hope is that their bodies make only as much as needed naturally giving me a better safety cushion.

obviously my supplimenting regimen will be based on my reading of this site and in time maybe a study will help us all be more certain on need or dose

Thank you all for being there to help the clueless (me)

Sean

confused

I am a tad confused here. Please could someone dumb this down for me.....Does too much vitamine A cause gular edema ... or is it too little preformed vitamin A which causes gular edema?

I have not given preformed vitamin A to my veiled chameleons for many many years...not in their supplements, not in what I feed to the insects and not in what I feed to the chameleons. As I have said many times most of my veiled females live to be over 6 and often over 7 years and the males even more. None of them have ever shown edema.

As far as gular edema goes....its been a lot of years since I've had a chameleon develop it. I had one panther many years ago that developed a slight case of it when gravid.

"Excessive vitamin A supplementation may result in organ toxicity (kidney and liver) some times causing gular edema and reproductive problems such as sterility."
http://www.seavs.com/case_studies/lizards/chameleons.asp

"Gular edema is a common clinical sign of organ dysfunction in chameleons."
http://www.vetlocator.com/newsarticles/pet_lizard_conditions.php

"Edema in chameleons is often caused by hypervitaminosis (over supplementation)."
http://www.chameleonnews.com/?page=article&id=136

I couldn't find anything about it being caused by too little vitamin A. Maybe someone else can??

kinyonga said:

I couldn't find anything about it being caused by too little vitamin A. Maybe someone else can??

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I don't have any links to provide on this, but my vet (who has treated and kept/bred chameleons for many years) said that his chameleons where developing gular edema if they didn't get preformed vit A.
He also said he discussed this topic with a herp-experienced nutritionist who said that with humans the important part is the ratio of vitamins E, D3 and A. They should be 1:10:100. In other words you need 10 times more vit A then vit D. She thinks it may be very similar for lizards.
BTW this wouldn't mean that you'd have to dust 10 times more with a multivitamin. Quite the contrary: Reptivite for instance contains 60 times more vit A than vit D3 and therefore they need very little of it to get enough vit A to last them for weeks.

Solid answers just aren't available yet, I think. All we know is that, like most (or all) vertebrates, chameleons need vitamin A just as they need vitamin D3. We also know that both are vet soluble vitamins that are easy to overdose.
What we're not sure of is whether chameleons can convert beta-carotene into vit A.
In the meantime I've been supplementing with Reptivite for years and have never had any problem hypervitaminosis - and I've mainly worked with species that are sensitive to oversupplementation.

koabich said:

Just as Westcoastchameleons suggested, I also use the Kammers schedule:
Monday/Thursday: Repcal Herptitive (sp?)
Tuesday/Friday: Repcal with D3
Wednesday/Saturday: Miner-All O
Sunday: Nothing

Some on the forums will say that is too much which is fine. But honestly, I do not think you will find as tried and true of a dusting scehdule as this. Are there people on here that have been keeping chams longer than the Kammers...I am sure there are(Testing, even if it's for 100 years, on a sample of 1, 2, or even 20 chams is not a large enough sample to come any real conclusion) . But there is no one that I know of that has kept and raised as many chameleons for as long of a time as the Kammers. If this works for them, then it's got to be pretty darn good.

Just keep in mind that dusting means dusting, don't overdue it. You do not want to coat the feeder with supplements. You don't want a brown cricket to appear white from the supplements.

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Ok, I know many breeders, other than the kammers, that have worked with chameleons for a long time not supplementing with preformed vitamin A. Some of these breeders are even getting into 7th generation offspring. There is no way that someone can argue with that. IMHO if you can get into 7th generation offspring still producing high fertility and hatch rates then you are doing something right...pretty much perfect. The quote above is the Kammers schedule, and the other breeders I know have very similar schedules. So, believe what you want to hear because everyone has an opinion, but very very few people have gotten 7 generations deep and still counting.

-chris

Sepioteuthis said:

In the meantime I've been supplementing with Reptivite for years and have never had any problem hypervitaminosis - and I've mainly worked with species that are sensitive to oversupplementation.

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I use reptivite also,so the worry with reptivite is oversupplementation,and not not getting enough Vit A. I guess? So it just matters on your schedule? This whole Vit A. thing frusterates me and im confused on to what is what. So reptivite is preformed or w/e? Or is the gel caps that is preformed?

Both reptivite and cod liver gel pills are preformed vitamin A...which comes from livers of animals. The only insect so far that has been proven to change beta carotene into a usable form of vitamin A is roaches. There has not been enough studies on other feeder insects.

-chris

So preformed Vit A is good or bad?