Vitamin Overdose?

Hypervitaminosis! . Hypervitaminosis is the medical term for getting sick from taking too much of a vitamin -- but how sick you can get and how much you have to take to get sick varies all over the map, depending on the vitamin. The fat soluble vitamins are the ones to watch out for, especially vitamin A and vitamin D. The water soluble vitamins (such as C and B-complex) are less dangerous, as they do not build up in your system over time. For example, prominent researchers have promoted massive doses of Vitamin C as a means of preventing colds and cancer (though the last time I looked, there was no good evidence this worked). But it points out that it is pretty hard to get sick from taking vitamin C. By contrast, taking too many capsules of vitamin A daily can lead to serious and even life threatening illnesses (if you take more than 25,000 IU/day). Hypervitaminosis A makes your long bones hurt, causes your skin to defoliate, and can damage your liver, among other unpleasant effects. The other fat-soluble vitamins include D, E, and K. Too much vitamin D will make your Calcium level rise, and give you kidney stones -- but it takes 100 times the daily recommended dosage over an extended period of time. Vitamin E also is a concern, but studies have focused on whether a high daily dose over a long time will be a risk factor for other conditions, such as heart disease. In practice, few people have become sick from vitamin E. Vitamin K is required for your liver to make coagulation factors. Not enough can make you bleed too easily. Too much is not a problem, unless you are taking a medicine to thin the blood (an anti-coagulant), such as warfarin (Coumadin). Finally, the supplement that can be even more dangerous than vitamins is Iron! Supplemental Iron (ferrous sulfate or ferrous gluconate) is toxic in moderate doses. In fact, when larger dosage forms were available over the counter, there used to be tens of deaths per year, especially among children, due to accidental overdosage on iron pills that looked too much like candy. The maximum daily dose for the increased needs of a pregnant woman is 30mg, and that is the most that you can get in an over the counter iron supplement. The pills that are given on prescription for people with anemia (low blood count) who need to rebuild their iron stores have 300mg of ferrous sulfate -- but a handful of the 300 mg pills can make you acutely ill, with vomiting and diarrhea, and other nasty effects (up to and including death if you have a big handful). The bottom line is that several multivitamins per day probably won't do any harm -- but I'm not sure I see any good reason to take more than one. Geoff Rutledge, MD

Too many vitamins are toxic. I found an article online written by Dr Mark Rosenbloom. It definitely agrees with the next post. It lists the vitamins, food sources and normal supplement dosages and the amount that is considered toxic as well as the symptoms experienced in a user friendly format. Go to this link http://emedicine.com/emerg/topic638.htm for the full article. Don?t forget that some of the supplements you take can interact with prescription medications so it's important to let your doctor know about them.

Yes!. Yes, it's absolutely possible to overdose on vitamins, some more so than others. The fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K can cause liver damage and other problems at extremely high doses. It would be helpful to look up the ODA (Optimal Daily Allowance) of a given vitamin, as everyone's needs are different. This dosage is the ideal amount for correcting deficiencies and improving bodily functions in case of illness...the RDA won't do much for people not already in perfect health. It's also possible to overdose on minerals such as calcium, magnesium, iron, and selenium, so make sure to stay within reasonable limits of those as well. Water soluble vitamins like C, B-Complex, etc. won't cause much harm in case of an overdose, as they will just flush out in the urine once the body has reached capacity. Hope this helps!