Vitamins

[builder]

Is there such as thing as taking too many vitamins? My friend takes a whole slew of them, from a multi to extra vitamin D to calcium and maybe about 6 others.

[5kgLifter]

Simple answer, yes, you can take too many vitamins...vitamin A is one that you have to take great care with as there are with some of the others, I would imagine.


Try searching Google for specific vitamins, you'll get more info from the internet than from any one member here on that subject, given the myriad of vitamins there are.

[Tannhauser]

Originally Posted by builder

Is there such as thing as taking too many vitamins? My friend takes a whole slew of them, from a multi to extra vitamin D to calcium and maybe about 6 others.

Yes.

I have a bee in my bonnet about vitamins, so I tend to keep posting the same message on these sorts of threads.

Here's the Cochrane review on antioxidants: Cochrane review

And here's an extract:

Our Cochrane review from 2008 demonstrated that antioxidant supplements seem to increase mortality. This review is now updated.

The increased risk of mortality was associated with beta-carotene and possibly vitamin E and vitamin A, but was not associated with the use of vitamin C or selenium. The current evidence does not support the use of antioxidant supplements in the general population or in patients with various diseases.

From the conclusions:

We found no evidence to support antioxidant supplements for primary or secondary prevention. Beta-carotene and vitamin E seem to increase mortality, and so may higher doses of vitamin A. Antioxidant supplements need to be considered as medicinal products and should undergo sufficient evaluation before marketing.

Or try this:

The Downside of Antioxidants - Newsweek and The Daily Beast

[JacktheThriller]

upper limits are established for most vitamins

[Tannhauser]

Originally Posted by JacktheThriller

upper limits are established for most vitamins

Yes - there is information about acute toxicity of vitamins ("if you take more than x mg in a day it may not be safe"), but the problem is that it's really hard to tell what a safe dose is taken over a long period of time.

For example, take this study:

http:
//www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8901854

Here's a quote:

A total of 29,133 men aged 50-69 years who smoked five or more cigarettes daily were randomly assigned to receive alpha-tocopherol (50 mg), beta-carotene (20 mg), alpha-tocopherol and beta-carotene, or a placebo daily for 5-8 years (median, 6.1 years)...
Incident cases of lung cancer (n = 894) were identified through the Finnish Cancer Registry and death certificates.

Here're the results:

No overall effect was observed for lung cancer from alpha-tocopherol supplementation (relative risk [RR] = 0.99; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.87-1.13; P = .86, logrank test). beta-Carotene supplementation was associated with increased lung cancer risk (RR = 1.16; 95% CI = 1.02-1.33; P = .02, logrank test).

So taking 20my beta-carotene a day significantly increased their risk of developing lung cancer. 20 mg didn't seem a lot, and when I googled it, the first lot of capsules I saw were 14mg each, not a million miles away from that 20mg.

Now, these were smokers in the study, so the results may not generalise. But all the same I think the point holds true: we don't really know what even moderate doses of vitamins do over the long term.Personally, I took industrial amounts of vitamins for longer than their 6.1 years - I now wonder if I'll regret it.

[bruteforce]

It bugs me that multi-vitamins have iron in them. I don't need extra iron, I eat several pounds of red meat a week. I do however need a multi-vitamin or my healing time from minor cuts or scrapes goes up by at least a week.

[Rich Knapp]

Getting water and fats will flush and help from O/D on some but like the other said know what and how much you need is the first step. Everything from your daily activities, what you generally eat to were you live, makes a deferents on your needs.

[Kaujan]

I not recommend the vitamins to the common people because if you wanna to make the health so necessary thing is to use the natural diet and fruits which give the max energy to the body in order to keep the fitness of the body.