I know a guy (in his 50s) who unfortunately has a lot of health problems, and he’s on over half a dozen medications. At each dinner, he pulls out a little vial, and lines up his drugs that keep him ticking.
I don’t wanna end up like that so a few weeks ago I started supplementing my diet with vitamins, and from the research I did concluded I needed individual vitamins (and minerals) instead of just multi-vitamins - for higher dose, so like specific zinc, iron, EPO supplements and what not. but basically, I now also have a line of pills to swallow before each meal. am I overdoing it? Could this end up bad for me in the long run?
And a related idea - but it seems common knowledge that where and when the human body gets help (glasses, certain kinds of medication, even a limb in a temporary cast), it gets lazy and becomes dependent on the help. Can this happen with vitamins? so like if you start taking supplements of something your body already produces, will it eventually stop producing it and leave you dependent on external sources?
I can’t say I know much about the subject, but my two cents is there’s at least one vitamin that will kill you if you take too much - Vitamin A. For this reason, if you’re ever stranded in the icy wastes, don’t eat polar bear liver.
My mom used to see quite a few patients with toxicity symptoms from taking too many vitamins or minerals, back when megavitamins were the current fad in “alternative health”. Generally speaking, minerals are more risky than vitamins, but there are exceptions. From the top of my head:
Vitamin A is fetotoxic in doses in excess of 18,000 IUs/day, although it appears that in nonpregnant individuals the toxic dose is at least 1,000,000 IUs. Doses up to 100,000 IUs are generally without complication in adults.
Niacin is hepatotoxic in large doses and has a number of side interesting effects, including hallucinations.
Vitamin C can cause acidosis in large doses, especially in individuals with renal problems, and encourages the formation of kidneystones.
Taking large doses of iron can cause copper insufficiency (and make you constipated).
Selenium is toxic in relatively small doses and should be used with extreme caution.
In general, unless you have a specific medical condition, taking vitamins at levels exceeding that in a typical multivitamin will have little or no additional benefit.
A murky subject, indeed. One can find research to support the idea that taking vitamin supplements is good for your health, and other research indicating that they don’t do any good.
Just a quick example: this article indicates that vitamin E helps prevent Parkinson’s Disease. Oddly, however, it only seems to work if you’re getting your vitamin E from food; taking vitamin E supplements showed no disease-preventing effect. The conclusion, in that case, would be that trying to get your E from pills, instead of by eating a balanced diet, would, in fact, amount to “taking too many vitamins.”
And this can also be a problem with other vitamins besides E. A pill may have a concentrated vitamin with 100 times the dose of a typical meal, but if the body only managed to absorb 0.001% of it, was it any help?
I once pictured my choice of meal in the future to be a cup of vitamins and bread for carbohydrates. Maybe someday.
Nobody’s addressed this point yet, so let me say that I don’t believe any of this is true. Glasses do not make your eyes lazy - they help you focus when your eyes no longer do so. Your eyes may get worse after starting to wear glasses, but they would have in any case, glasses or no.
And your body does not produce vitamins (except to a certain extent, as in manufacturing vitamin D from sunlight through the skin). It requires outside sources of them. But the important point is that even if this weren’t true, I know of no evidence that the body ever becomes dependent on external sources when it has the ability to manufacture on its own.
If this is common knowledge, then it only goes to strengthen the case that common knowledge is always wrong.
Hi Swoop,
You should know that some minerals work in a see saw effect, so for example since you are taking iron, you should watch out for zinc deficiency. Same with calcium/magnesium and b vitamins with other b vitamins. Are you sure your diet was deficient in any of them anyway? There are heaps of other things you can do if you are worried about health eg. if you do the quiz at http://www.realage.com/ on lifestyle factors, they give you tips.
Good luck,
Mel.
And BTW, not knowing what kinds of meds your friend is taking, there’s no particular reason to suspect that taking more (or fewer) vitamin pills would (or would not) have prevented his current health problems. If he’s taking stuff for high cholesterol or blood pressure, for example, genetics, exercise, and weight could all be factors.
The best advice from the most reliable sources always seems to boil down to the same thing: Eat a variety of fresh foods in moderate amounts, exercise moderately, and so on. All the things your mother probably told you.
If EPO is some kind of erythropoeitin thing, watch it.
If you have a normal Haemoglobin and red blood cell count, taking a drug/supplement to increase it can make your blood “stickier” and put you at higher risk for blood clots and stroke.
Vitamin supplements should be balanced with each other. Taking too much of any substance without taking other substances with it only serves to cause more problems.
For example, vitamin C is an antioxidant, but it produces weaker free radicals of it’s own. Vitamin E destroys the excess free radicals tha C creates in destroying stronger free radicals, and vice versa. Taking one without the other isn’t as effective.
Also, everything has side-effects in large enough of a dose, so it’s advisable to start small, and only carefully increase the dose of any vitamin, monitoring yourself for side-effects.
Taking Iron supplements is discouraged unless you are anemic. Iron is a powerfull oxidation catalyst that helps time to wear down the body. Some people even go as far as to recommend that people regularly give blood so as to remove excess iron from the body.
Vitamin A is a fat-soluble vitamin, and so is vitamin D. This means that excessive intake is not pissed out, as is the case with the water soluble vitamins (all the others, except vitamin K, which is also a fat-soluble vitamin). The medical literature is filled with cases of ODing on Vitamins A or D. (Vitamin K is not a problem, as it is not usually found in multivitamin tablets or in single tablets.) So, as far as the vitamins are concerned, those are the two you have to be careful with. As posted prior, men should not take iron supplements unless prescribed by a doctor for pernicious anemia or someother disorder.
There is no record of vitamin C causing kidney stones, altho one often sees this warning. Kidney stones are primarily calcium, and it is oxalic acid, not ascorbic acid, that ties up the calcium.
KellyM
Do you have a cite for this? Niacin in large doses is often used to lower cholesterol levels, for acne, and for other medical conditions. Niacin is a B vitamin and is water soluble.
I don’t think it is necessary to take single vitamins of any vitamin (other than vitamin C). A good multivitamin/mineral tablet is all one needs, for insurance, as meals should supply all the nutrients you need. Recent studies disclose that taking up to 500 mg of vitamin C may be good for you.
Almost every vitamin has a toxicity level as well as a deficiency level. yes; Too much of just about anything will cause you all manner of grief. Note that most things resembling sane behavior won’t push a normal, healthy person into the toxicity range on anything.
barbitu8: Oral niacin, even in relatively low doses, frequently causes peripheral vasodilation, itchiness, and a “sunburn” like blotchiness. In large doses it can cause liver damage. Normally the toxic dose is much larger than anyone would normally ingest (3000-5000 milligrams/day or more). When niacin is used to treat acute hypercholesterolemia, caution must be used to avoid liver damage. See http://www.feinberg.northwestern.edu/nutrition/factsheets/vitamin-b3.html for more on niacin use and toxicity.
Scientology’s “Purification Process” involves using ridiculously high doses of niacin (sometimes as much as 10,000 milligrams/day) to induce hallucinations and other effects that they then identify for the poor confused soul as the effect of “toxicity” leaving the body. Scientology admits using megadoses of niacin as a drug rehab technique; see http://drugrehab.lronhubbard.org/page39.htm. There is no evidence that megadoses of niacin “break up drug residues”, however.
I think it was Paracelcus who said that the poison is in the dose.
If you eat a healthy, balanced diet you do not need supplimentary vitamins.
Good food is cheaper, healthier (because you get a ‘natural’ range of vitamins and minerals - compared with mcDonalds and megavitamin) and it is better for the environment.
Research I have read and seen first hand at the Linus Pauling Institute here at Oregon State University on Vitamin C would shoot holes through the single cite you did provide where the doctor claimed that they were safe but useless.
Linus Pauling institute!! That would be a bit biased wouldn’t it, considering old Linus was such an advocate himself of vitamin C later on in his life.
“A flyer distributed in 1991 by the Linus Pauling Institute recommended daily doses of 6,000 to 18,000 mg of vitamin C, 400 to 1,600 IU of vitamin E, and 25,000 IU of vitamin A, plus various other vitamins and minerals. These dosages have no proven benefit and can cause troublesome side effects.”
so a few weeks ago I started supplementing my diet with vitamins, and from the research I did concluded I needed individual vitamins (and minerals) instead of just multi-vitamins - for higher dose, so like specific zinc, iron, EPO supplements and what not. but basically, I now also have a line of pills to swallow before each meal. am I overdoing it? Could this end up bad for me in the long run?