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I'm trying to get myself some new habits and attempting to get more regular and varied exercise, working on improving my diet, shift a bit of weight - the usual stuff everyone tries to improve upon.
I have a Vitamin D tablet along with the other various tablets I swallow each morning - for medical reasons apparently - they clearly work as I don't appear to have the medical symptoms (I do have regular check-ups with doctors though, so I am being slightly flippant with that statement)!
However, a mate has sent me a link to a large box of multi-vitamins, take 1 a day and it gives what appears to be 100% of everything a human should be getting daily. I don't tend to pop vitamin tablets as I figure with my slowly improving diet then I'll be getting more of the right stuff. If I was to start taking a multi-vitamin tablet, apart from giving me more of the required vitamins, would there be any negative effects to potentially overdosing on the vitamin levels? Wouldn't be all of them, but I'm just wondering if it would be worth adding it to my daily tablet intake.
If the only adverse impact is I'd end up going to the toilet and getting rid of the excess then, then that doesn't sound too bad, but if it could have a genuine impact of health for being to vitamined then I won't bother...
Yes you can but its highly dependant on the vitamin in question.
Vitamin D overdose damage is long term and can lead to weak bones and damage to kidney and heart.
Since it sounds like you are getting specific treatment I would go with checking with the doctor.
If it's just 100% then you might as well go to Holland and Barratt. You can get some decent Vitamin D on line by Jarrats (I think) that have a certain international units - D is useful in winter, and lots of it.
But a bog standard 100% multi is likely not to cause any harm. It's fat soluable vitamins that can cause harm if you take too much. I tend to go for a multi vit soluble tablet - own make super market ones are as good as Berocca - eg 500% of Vit C, 1000% vit B. You'll be piddling bright orange after one though !
I've not taken any vitamins since childhood. Am I in the minority... Noticed my brother does take a multivitamin
Normal healthy diet + a multivitamin is not going to overdose you on anything.
There was/is a fad for very high doses of vitamin supplements, and it is possible to cause toxicity if you do that for a sustained period, but what you're describing is not in the same universe as that.
As an example, Boots standard multivit contains 5 µg of vitamin D. It is recommended that you take no more than 100 µg daily.
I think you just piss out the excess. When I was mad on vitamins my piss was fluorescent yellow.
I had to take a course of treatment a few years back under close medical supervision because the potential side effects included liver damage, sight loss, and more alarmingly a marked increase risk of suicide/ suicidal thoughts. Not only was I closely monitored during the treatment I couldn't even get the tablets from a pharmacy - they'd only be dispensed by the hospital's own dispensary.
Some time later I looked up what the medication actually was, beyond a product name - synthetic Vitamin A
It was an overdose of vitamin A that killed Captain Scot and his colleagues after eating their dogs livers.
I think you just piss out the excess.
Until is starts crystallising in your kidneys
Read for yourself. For example.
"But since it's difficult for people to get enough vitamin D from food alone, everyone (including pregnant and breastfeeding women) should consider taking a daily supplement containing 10 micrograms of vitamin D during the autumn and winter."
"Do not take more than 100 micrograms (4,000 IU) of vitamin D a day as it could be harmful. This applies to adults, including pregnant and breastfeeding women and the elderly, and children aged 11 to 17 years."
"https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/vitamins-and-minerals/vitamin-d/"
Far more people in the UK are Vit D defficient than overdosing. I take a daily Vit D. I calculated that as I am 16-17 stone so at least 50% more than the body weight used to give a max 4000 dose I would be comfortably under my max at 3000. So that is what I take.
It may not do me any more good than a much smaller dose but I think of it as a one way bet. Won't harm, may help, costs pennies a day.
There are a few things such as iron you do need to be genuinely careful of, most vitamins though you'd struggle to od on over the counter stuff without getting bored first (especially multivitamins as lots of vit c will see you on the throne very speedily).
However, if you're on prescription stuff, speak to your Dr before taking anything additional, prescribed stuff can reasonably be much much stronger and generally if its not they'll tell you to buy it off the shelf at asda for 80p instead of £12 on prescription.
Yes you can but you will not.
Vitamin A can be toxic (this is why you should never eat polar bear liver).
Linus Pauling was a big advocate of Vitamin C mega-doses - encouraging intake of 3,000 mg of vitamin C daily.
Also - it's actually very difficult to get all your required minerals and vitamins even from a balanced diet, so a single multi-vit will be beneficial and will do no harm.
(The exception is if you are on warfarin - which can be impacted by Vitamin K).
I used to travel the world attending conferences on this sort of thing. The irony is that the food was always crap.
The dose is the poison.
When you consider how synthetic vitamins are made , they are best avoided.
Google , how is synthetic vitamin D made?
Synthetic vitamins are not always what they claim to be.
https://philmaffetone.com/serious-dangers-of-synthetic-unnatural-vitamins/#:~:text=A%20variety%20of%20synthetic%20vitamin,vitamin%20D%20from%20the%20sun.&text=the%20chlorides.
It varies depending on the vitamin and the dose.
When you consider how synthetic vitamins are made , they are best avoided.
Wait til you find out how natural ones are made!
Anyone who goes on about something being bad because it's 'unnatural' instantly harms their credibility, in my view. Ebola, curare and the manchineel tree are all perfectly natural.
Cholesterol and sunlight
It was an overdose of vitamin A that killed Captain Scot and his colleagues after eating their dogs livers.
What? It was basically that Scott had no dogs with him, that resulted in their deaths.
Ok, so going to the supermarket and getting a box of multivitamin tablets isn't going to do me any harm and will help provide more of the stuff I should be having. My diet isn't bad, just not the right quantities of stuff so that is slowly improving, but I'm aware diet alone won't get all the stuff the body should be getting.
I've never been convinced by the pills that you can buy from body building websites and health and fitness sites...based on no evidence, I just think they are a scam so I just avoid them. By the same thinking, the stuff I can buy in a supermarket seems to be more acceptable to me as it isn't claiming huge quantities of the vitamins or making health benefits that sound too good to be true.
Thought I'd ask to make sure I wasn't completely off track with my thinking and it doesn't sound like I am, but to be sure then I should stick with the supermarket type offerings as the dosages are lower but will still be adding something to me.
Thanks.
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It was an overdose of vitamin A that killed Captain Scot and his colleagues after eating their dogs livers.
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Good! That's just mean. Weren't the dogs using their livers?
It was an overdose of vitamin A that killed Captain Scot and his colleagues after eating their dogs livers.
Not Scott - he considered eating dogs rather unsporting.
Likely thinking of the Mawson antarctic expedition:
(In fairness, they didn't have many other options.)
What? It was basically that Scott had no dogs with him, that resulted in their deaths.
Different expedition, Mawson and Mertz died of Vitamin A poisoning from eating dog liver a year before Scott on a mapping expedition.
Good! That’s just mean. Weren’t the dogs using their livers?
Fun fact, the dog was called George.
If you Google for 'do supplements work?' you get a lot of articles saying no, but that's referring to claims like taking zinc will cure colds, or St John's Wort cures whatever it's meant to cure. Basic vitamin pills do end up in your blood stream, so in that sense they do work. The issue is that vitamins don't necessarily work in isolation, their absorption and function is tied up with other chemicals. That's why they tell you to take them with a healthy meal including veggies, because you get all the other stuff from your healthy meal and the pill is just in case you didn't quite get enough of something.
That’s why they tell you to take them with a healthy meal including veggies, because you get all the other stuff from your healthy meal and the pill is just in case you didn’t quite get enough of something.
Not always the case. Mineral supplements should be avoided around meals with pulses as phytates in pulses chelate with the metals rendering them useless.
It was an overdose of vitamin A that killed Captain Scot and his colleagues after eating their dogs livers.
What? It was basically that Scott had no dogs with him, that resulted in their deaths.
Sorry I'm mixing up my expeditions - it was indeed the Mawson expedition where they ate their dogs - but their dogs were named after polar explorers too - so there was a Scott, an Ammundsen and a Shackleton all on the same expedition- but dog who's liver delivered the fatal dose was called 'Ginger'
Can you overdoese? Yes.
Would you overdose by taking a 100% RDA tablet and a healthy diet? No.
Would taking a multivitamin (containing 100% RDA of Vit D) AND a separate Vit D tablet give you an overdose? No
Essentially the RDA is the minimum amount that someone decided you should probably be consuming. The overdose amount is way more than that.
FWIW my neurologist wants me taking 20,000IU of vitamin d3 a week, so I'd sure hope that dosage is ok... Vitamin a overdose is why humans can't eat polar bear liver I think.
I take one of these every 3-4 days ~November-spring
It claims 4000iu. How accurate that is - I will never know. It does occasionally worry me that they could be well over 4000iu because of cheap manufacturing or whatever - I thought about this recently, actually, and have dropped my intake to more like only twice a week now. Sometimes I'll forget for over a week.
I try to get roughly 30 natural foods in a week which hopefully covers the rest so don't bother with any multivit.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07YDCVX3G/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
From paton's link:
Taking 60,000 international units (IU) a day of vitamin D for several months has been shown to cause toxicity.
So I should be fine with my 3200 IU vitaman D pill, my multi-vitamin pill, and my tablespoon of cod liver oil a day over the winter?
Essentially the RDA is the minimum amount that someone decided you should probably be consuming. The overdose amount is way more than that.
The RDA levels are pretty arbitrary, not based on any real science. IIRC they just took an 'average' 'healthy' diet, worked out what the vitamin levels were in it and called that 100%.
Check your urine for bubbles.
Good timing for this subject to come up, just had my usual handful and I'm not worried they might be doing harm, more interested if I should add any more to my cupboard.
I take:
A-Z multivit + minerals pill
Cod liver oil capsule
Glucosamine + msm + chondritin pill
Vit d3 4000iu pill
Over the years this lot seems to have got decent press, and if I'm wasting my time with them, at the supermarket prices I'm paying, I don't care.
Does anyone take anything else regularly for general health, what and why?
Does anyone take anything else regularly for general health, what and why?
With the lingering colds which seem to be doing the rounds this year, I've been regularly consuming chaga and birch polypore tea. Sure enough, the kids took the cold home from school a couple of weeks ago and I caught it.
Thankfully, I shook it off quickly. Who knows if my hippy remedy made any difference?
Anyone who goes on about something being bad because it’s ‘unnatural’ instantly harms their credibility
My credibility litmus test these days is "are they selling books?"
Who knows if my hippy remedy made any difference?
Lots of people.
I’ve been regularly consuming chaga and birch polypore tea. Sure enough, the kids took the cold home from school a couple of weeks ago and I caught it.
Thankfully, I shook it off quickly. Who knows if my hippy remedy made any difference?
A friend in need is a friend in deed
a friend with tea gets better.
I take Vit D and a multivit. The Vit D has noticeable effects including my finger nails grow fast. I'm convinced
When tested I was 20% of normal levels without supplements
One fact that stuck with me since AO level human biology in 1979 is that if you ate a whole polar bears liver you would die of Vit A poisoning - fun fact kids!
Yes you can OD on vitamin tablets.
When I was a kid back in the 70's I managed to eat a whole bottle of Vit C tablets.
= Hospital and stomach pumped.
Equiv of 5000 oranges in one go 🙂
All I wanted after the pump was ice cream 🙂
Not orange flavour BTW 😉
All I wanted after the pump was ice cream
I'd have thought they'd at least have lubed you first.
My credibility litmus test these days is “are they selling books?”
I dunno, some good scientists also write books and sell them.
Does anyone take anything else regularly for general health, what and why?
Yeah, VitD, a fizzy VitC+Zinc tablet in a glass of orange juice, and a MacuGuard tablet, which has a bunch of things in it to help keep my macular degeneration under control, which it seems to be doing quite successfully at the moment.
That’s along with my morning Naproxen tablet, a statin tablet and a little tablet to help prevent stomach issues, which I don’t think I need, but whatever.
As for the OP, no you cannot OD by consuming widely available vitamin supplements at the recommended dose level. Because the RDAs are about 10x lower than the max dose before toxicity becomes a problem for some vitamins.
But…
Far more people in the UK are Vit D defficient than overdosing. I take a daily Vit D. I calculated that as I am 16-17 stone so at least 50% more than the body weight used to give a max 4000 dose I would be comfortably under my max at 3000. So that is what I take.
It may not do me any more good than a much smaller dose but I think of it as a one way bet. Won’t harm, may help, costs pennies a day.
this is bonkers. No, do not aim to skim just below the max allowed dose. Aim for the recommended dose, which is ten times lower. Do not assume that because you are larger that your liver and kidneys can take more. At this level, a decent portion of cod and chips will see you beyond the max recommended dose and into hypercalcemia realms in the long term.
A friend in need is a friend in deed
a friend with tea gets better.
Oh god - that’s taken me about an hour to work out what song it’s from. Tune *wanders off to play some Placebo…*
Also - tea related - tannins stop absorption of iron. So don’t take your iron supplements with a cup of tea. Vit C, however, aids absorption, but you’ll probably throw it all up in a curdled mess 😆
I take a large dose of magnesium and vitamin b2.
All I know is the excess B2 makes my wee luminous yellow by lunchtime. Facts.
All I know is the excess B2 makes my wee luminous yellow by lunchtime.
So why you do that?
Anything taken in excess can be harmful, including oxygen and water.
The only supplement which makes any sense to me is vitamin D during the cooler seasons in temperate zones, because as a tropical species humans haven't yet fully evolved to deal with the winter deficiency issue.
Oh god – that’s taken me about an hour to work out what song it’s from. Tune *wanders off to play some Placebo…*
I'm just glad someone got it.
I listened to a podcast from Dr Tim Spector a while ago very eye opening, here's a brief interview on vit D from him,
So why you do that?
Because apparently excess B2 just gets passed out in urine. And there's evidence that a high dose of b2 helps with the prevention of the issue I'm attempting to deal with, and therefore it was suggested to me by at least 2 medical professionals.
Anything taken in excess can be harmful, including oxygen and water.
The only supplement which makes any sense to me is vitamin D during the cooler seasons in temperate zones, because as a tropical species humans haven’t yet fully evolved t
However, they're are multiple conditions, that maybe you don't have, for which there are studies that indicate certain supplements help.
All I know is the excess B2 makes my wee luminous yellow by lunchtime.
Smells like pineapple too. Which is vastly better than smelling like asparagus piss.
The only supplement which makes any sense to me is vitamin D during the cooler seasons in temperate zones, because as a tropical species humans haven’t yet fully evolved to deal with the winter deficiency issue.
A multivitamin makes sense to me. Humans don't have a design specification. We can survive on all sorts of different diets, and manage deficiencies in much of it, but we work better with adequate amounts of nutrients. Some are common, others aren't. On top of that the amount of nutrients in vegetables themselves has been declining quite a lot since the original tests were done in the 50s, so when they say 100g of broccoli contains X amount of vitamin K, it probably doesn't any more.
Humans don’t have a design specification.
I think all species have. Try launching yourself off a multistorey building to find out if our design covers flying. Or living on a diet of ants.
On top of that the amount of nutrients in vegetables themselves has been declining quite a lot since the original tests were done in the 50s,
I very much doubt this. Is there a source for it beyond "the internet?"
Many articles about it on "the internet":
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-and-nutrition-loss/
Soil degradation and cultivars bred for yield seem to be responsible.
I take 4000IU Vit D, Tesco multi-vit with iron, Tesco Vit B complex.
Usually in evening, because I believe iron uptake at least is hindered by caffeine and I'm a junkie. Not sure if taking vit B in evening may mess up sleep.
A lot of sites that sell supplements will pander to the "more is better", so you can buy pills with crazy amounts of vitamins and other chemicals (glucosamine, etc). I remember one of my Physiology lecturers telling us that in pretty much all non-extreme cases, you won't overdose, you'll just end up with "very expensive urine."
" Can you overdose on vitamins........"
On the subject of supplements, Google cross contamination of supplements.
My wife is half way through a degree in wholeastic medicine (not sure how it's spelt).
She tells me that vitamin d is really a whole group of different D's. She gets some supplements of a ridiculously expensive website and laughs at my H&B efforts. My GP said most vitamins are a waste of time. Green leafy veg and sunshine is best for vitamin d.
A friend at uni made himself very ill taking a double dose of multivitamins. His liver shut down. We assumed his yellow colour was a combination of sun tan and beer!
You can take as much vitamin c as you want.