Can one take too *many* vitamins?

Factual Questions
21

Thanks to all for the replies.

As far as eating healthier food goes, I’m not sure that’s possible for me. I might be a little paranoid about it, but I’m not convinced that the food we eat actually still contains all the same things it used to. Instead, I think about things like, what kind of drugs was the cow whose meat I’m eating shot up with to prevent BSE (or any other disease); what kind of quality grain was it fed; what kind of soil was the grain grown in, what kind of pesticides were used on it, etc. (substitute fruit/veg for grain if ya like, the same issues apply). When I spend too much time thinking about it I really (literally) lose my appetite… what crap ARE we eating?
Which was why I concluded supplements might be a better way to go.
I’m aware that it IS murky business, precisely because the body is so finely-tuned and messing with the amounts of any kind of vitamin or mineral can wreak all kinds of havoc…

sigh.

I don’t know. All I do know is not to eat polar bear liver next time I’m stranded in the Arctic :slight_smile:

22

I saw a study last year (which I can’t find right now) that pretty conclusively proved that any amount of Vitamin C over 500 mg/day was immediately pissed back out. (They measured ascorbic acid levels in intracellular and intercellular fluid at various daily doses. The circulating level of ascorbic acid peaks at about 500 mg/day oral dose.) Taking amounts over that is pointless and (if you have kidney problems) could be harmful.

Linus Pauling was a great physicist. He was not a biochemist, and his irrational attachment to megadoses of Vitamin C was just that.

23

In line with the thread title, albeit not the OP, iron “overdose” is supposedly a fairly common cause of death in children. Keep your children’s vitamins well out of reach of your children!

When I was about six, I was taking Flintstones vitamins. My mom told me they would help me be stronger. So logically, taking more vitamins would make me even stronger, right? The neighbor’s kid and I shared a bottle. He ended up getting his stomach pumped, although my doctor thought it was unnecessary. (whew!) So I survived, but if I had been alone, perhaps I would have taken the whole bottle myself?

24

I don’t think there’s anything “finely-tuned” about the human body. Think about it. We’ve survived, as a species, for tens of thousands of years, most of that time eating whatever we managed to catch or find, going long stretches without certain kinds of foods, probably gorging on meat when we managed to bring down something big, and so on.

Even today, look at the extreme variations in diet between different groups of people. Some people remain perfectly healthy eating a diet that’s heavy on veggies and fish, others do just fine eating lots of whale blubber, with no fresh veggies or fruit at all, and others do quite well with a lot of red meat and dairy.

My point is that evolution has equipped us to handle a very wide array of foods. Even with all our dietary variations, serious vitamin deficiencies are relatively uncommon, and vitamin overdoses caused by eating too much of some kind of food are almost unheard of (IIRC, dog liver is almost as bad as bear liver, BTW).

Finally, regarding “modern” foods, the vast majority of what we eat today is considerably healthier and more nutritious than the hunted and gathered foods of bygone eras. It’s far less likely to be contaminated with nasty bacteria, just for starters (think about meat and fish without an effective means of refrigeration!). And modern hybrid grains, the staple of the diets of billions of people, are far more nutritious than any of the wild grains from which they were developed.

As long as you’re not trying to get by on a diet of Twinkies and Buzz Cola, you’ll be just fine.

25

On the contrary, he was a biochemist.
http://www.nobel.se/chemistry/laureates/1954/pauling-bio.html

Perhaps over 500 mg of C is a waste of money, but I personally find it relieves cold symptoms. In any event, you are not going to get 250-500 mg of C without supplementation, and this is the amount that now appears optimal.

Another nutrient one needs in supplementation is calcium. The RDA of calcium has been raised. http://wellnessletter.com/subCorner/pdf/2001/0105.pdf
1,000 mg if a male or 1500 mg a day if you are a female over 50 or a male over 65.

26

Early Out is right. Remember, our ancestors used to get by on a fairly scant diet compared to what we have available today. Both the quality (including range) and quantity of our food today means you are not likely to develop vitamin deficiency (assuming one does not live in a third world nation).

The vitamin supplement companies are just marketing their produce by praying on peoples insecurities.

There are some cases where vitamin supplements are useful (eg folic acid for expecting mums), but for most of us supplements are a waste of resources and money.

27

What exactly IS a vitimin?

28

noun: any of a group of organic substances essential in small quantities to normal metabolism.

Before the spellng nazis pick it up - ‘preying’.

29

I dunno. “Vitimin” is not in my dictionary. Most vitamins are not produced by the human body (synthesized). With the aid of sunshine, we are able to synthesize vitamin D. Bacteria in our guts synthesize vitamin K. And most animals (homo sapiens being one of the rare exceptions) can synthesize vitamin C. That is the reason that Pauling said vitamin C is a hormone, not a vitamin. He said that we, early in our existence, were able to synthesize it but lost that ability because we did not have to, due to the abundance of plants that contain it. Extrapolating from what other animals synthesize, he came to the conclusion that we need 20 grams a day.

Incidentally, the fella that isolated the vitamin also took 18-20 grams a day.

30

Ascorbate metabolises to oxalate.

And by the way, not all renal calculi are primarily calcium oxalate. There are, for instance, uric acid stones.

Regards,
Agback

31

What a bizarre thing to say! Linus Pauling was not just a biochemist, he was a Nobel Prize winner for his work in biochemistry.

Regards,
Agback

32

Vitamin and mineral intake is a heavily studied realm of knowledge. Oddly enough, there is almost no agreement on what levels or sources of these elements of nutrition are best for health. Almost everyone with an opinion likes his own opinion better than everyone else’s.

In some very specific cases (such as Iodine, which cannot be obtained from dietary sources in certain clearly defined regions of the earth, or zinc, which likewise has limited availability in some places for economic, or cultural reasons) there are immediate available benefits to adding supplements. In most other cases, the benefits are less readily observed. It is undeniable that adequate amounts of high quality normal foods in diverse and balanced proportions and will improve the health of those who eat them. Acheiving that, even discounting poverty and famine, seems to be difficult in the extreme.

There is nothing in pills that cannot be supplied by foods, if people will actually eat the foods in the proper proportions. Getting an actual weight/time schedule of such foods (an ideal diet) is a nontrivial exercise as well, given the economic and political influence present in the world’s nutrition sciences. The current “pyramids” recommended by the United States Government were developed by a consensus. They represent the best achievable political compromise that could be reached by those who influence Congress. No doubt they will be altered, as political considerations dictate.

Don’t eat too much of any one thing, and generally try a bit of many different things. Eat only when you are hungry, and stop when you are not hungry any more. Chew your food well, and savor the flavors. Enjoy the company of your fellow diners, they are as important as the elements of your meal.

Tris

And then brush your teeth.

No, really.

33

Agback wrote:

What utter nonsense. Just read the presentation speech:

(Bolding and bracketed annotation mine, of course.)

Pauling was a chemist. He did some studies of proteins and other biological molecules prior to receiving his Nobel - studying their structure - but that doesn’t mean he could deduce from that their biological or medicinal effects, or that he even understood the basics about disease and treatment that a medical doctor understands.

Can anyone cite a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled study of vitamin C’s therapeutic effects authored by Pauling prior to his Nobel Prize? If not, then the fact that he’s a Nobel winner isn’t at all relevant to his vitamin C ideas.

Pauling appears to be a textbook example of an expert overstepping the bounds of his/her realm of expertise. An “argument from authority” with a Nobel medal hanging around his neck.

34

DaveW, precisely. I misremembered “physical chemist” as “physicist”, for which I apologize. It remains the case that Pauling’s “research” into Vitamin C supplementation had no grounding in experimental data, being based entirely on wild conjecture and an anecdotal uncontrolled study with one subject.

It amazes me how vigorously Dr. Pauling’s followers defend the “science” of his Vitamin C claims.

35

BTW, regarding the comment in the OP a About supplementation leading the body’s own systems to get “lazy”, IIRC medical corticosteroids may depress the natural activity of the adrenal cortex, not by “lazyness” or “dependency” but because the body tries to reestablish equilibrium – as in, “whoa, there’s a whole lotta more than normal hormone floating around, let’s shut down production”.

36

Let me tackle some of the postings I have problems with. Ascorbic acid may metabolize to oxalic acid, but there is no case in the medical literature wherein an excess of C caused stones. If you have one, please provide it.
DaveW:

On the contrary, Pauling was much more familiar with nutrition than most medical doctors. Not relevant herein, but Pauling almost deduced the makeup of the DNA double helix, but he was hung up on a triple helix and never got off his mindset before Watson and Crick.

KellyM

Obviously you have not read any of his works. He documented his initial book with many studies. Critics stated that those studies were not well controlled. In his next book (Vitamin C, the Common Cold, and Cancer, IIRC), he noted that criticism, but maintained that his studies were double-blinded and well controlled. He also then maintained that vitamin C helps those who suffer from cancer. When his studies in that field were not reproduced by others, he maintained that not enough C was given.

37

barbitu8 wrote:

Cite? Got any quotes from professional nutritionists to this effect? How is it relevant to what I said, anyway? Most doctors find that most diseases are caused by things other than what one eats. Why should someone’s expertise on nutrition qualify them as a medical expert when nutrition plays a smaller role in general medicine than, say, infection or trauma?

Absolutely relevant, since it shows his interest in structure. It also shows that Pauling was subject to the same failings as other people.

Did he simply “maintain” that position, or did he successfully defend that position with evidence?

Which is a dime-a-dozen ad hoc hypothesis that you can hear millions of times from quacks the world over. Again, did he simply assert that people did the experiments wrong, or did he demonstrate that they were flawed through critical (and correct) reviews of the failed experimental methods and data?

38

It’s looking like you may want to move this into Great Debates, at least the Pauling part. It’s getting a bit… heated.

Andrew “NO .SIG MAN” “Juan” Perron, who’s a Scientologist and takes exception at that one post, but isn’t going to take it up here for that reason.

39

Why don’t you guys who don’t know what you are talking about concerning Pauling read some of his works? You will find all of his evidence therein.
KellyM

I wasn’t going to remark on this specifically before, but since the “evidence” topic is brought up again, I must remark that it gets my goat that people who don’t know what they are talking about post statements like that. Pauling did thousands of studies, and he maintained they were controlled. Please read his book, Vitamin C and the Common Cold

40

barbitu8 wrote:

You are actually the one making the claims here, you should be supporting them yourself, not passing off the work to those who question the claims. And if you support your claims well enough, perhaps we would read the book(s).

Look, I can “maintain” all I want that I am a 400-pound gorilla, but that doesn’t make me a gorilla in fact. Were Pauling’s assertions (that his research was sound) simply assertions, or did he actually demonstrate that his research was good, and everyone else’s was poor?

And I’d appreciate peer-reviewed sources of information much more than Pauling’s popular-press books, anyway. By the way, the indication I got from Amazon.com was that his first book dealing with vitamin C was first published in 1970. Is that true? If so, 16 years puts a big damper on those people who’d use his 1954 Nobel to inflate the value of the vitamin C work.

Speaking of peer-reviewed sources, a Medline search for ‘Pauling L’ turns up only 80 articles in journals which meet certain peer-review standards since 1965. Adding ‘ascorbic’ to the search terms narrows the list down to 32 articles in the last 38 years, the latest in 1991. Some of these aren’t even study reports.

For Pauling to have done “thousands” of studies on vitamin C, he must have been a workaholic. If “thousands” means a minimal 2,000, and he began around the time of his chemistry Nobel, he would have had to complete an experiment just about once a week, every week, until he died in 1994. Had he began when he was born, it’d still be an experiment every two-and-a-half weeks. And we know he must have taken some time off to do the work that got him the Nobel for Peace in 1962.

All that, but he managed to publish less than 32 results in decent journals in the last 30 years of his life. Was the lack of publication due to being too busy running the experiments, or because the journals Medline has indexed wouldn’t accept the articles?

By the way, Ununnilium, this isn’t Great Debates fodder. I’m asking questions which have factual answers, and whether or not Pauling did “thousands of studies” is factual, too. I’ll admit, though, that this could have been discussed without hijacking this thread (the OP of which was pretty much answered prior to my arrival, anyway).