It’s really tempting nowadays to just get ourselves some pills instead of doing the things the healthy way. As we are speaking, there are millions of people all across the country buying pills not because they are sick, but they are just too lazy to eat healthy and exercise. Instead of devloping these simple and natural lifestyles, we just take vitamins so that we’ll probably survive or live longer than the next person.
But beware, as one great philosopher said, “virtue stands in the middle.” That means everything should stand in moderation, including vitamins. There is a condition called vitamin overdose. Its rarity is the same as its deadliness.
One of the most common over-dosages of vitamins is iron. We often tend to think that we are too weak, and don’t have enough energy in our body, so we tend easily get fatigued by the work required from us. Because of this, we often resort to taking vitamins to boost the iron content in our body. At first you may like it and then you take more than the required amount. That just makes sense at first, since more iron = more energy. Wrong! Excessive iron can damage the cells in some of the most important internal organs in your body. Heart, liver and the gastrointestinal track cells are only some of the victims of excessive iron. And don’t think that reducing the dosage of iron in your body is the answer. There are more expensive medicines in store for you to remove the effects of too much iron.
Excessive vitamin A in our body can also get really nasty. When we take vitamin A in our body, we convert these vitamins into retinoids to perform specific tasks in our body. Our liver has a maximum hold of retinoids, and anything beyond that is already dangerous. If you think more than normal dosage of vitamin A in your body will make your eyes super strong, that’s where you’re wrong. Excessive vitamin A will damage your body, and it will even reverse the good effects on your eyes. Instead of getting the eyes of superman from vitamin A, you’ll end up having thicker glasses than you can think of. And that’s only the start, for more serious cases, insomnia, weight loss, fever and weakened bones are also some of the effects of excessive vitamin A.
Although very rare, you should also watch out for Hypervitaminosis D or excess in vitamin D. The good and the bad thing about vitamin D is that it’s really not known yet how much is too much. We can take as much as we can if we think we lack some of it, but we can just fall victim to this trap anytime. If you’re dehydrating, easily get irritated and become weaker by the day, better check your vitamins.
To make sure your vitamins will help you instead of killing you. Always follow the recommended daily dosage of these vitamins. Vitamin containers should have the information to guide you about the vitamins inside, and warn you about the excessive usage.
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Risk assessment for vitamin D makes it quite clear that 10,000iu/daily is absolutely safe. Amounts up to 40,000iu/daily are safe for short periods but dosing at 40,000iu will build up status to above 375nmol/L after some months and above this level adverse events such as hypercalcemia can be expected.
Comment by Edward Hutchinson — September 23, 2007 @ 3:42 pm