High-Dose Vitamins - Are They Dangerous?

Are you a vitamin freak? Do you take huge doses of vitamin supplements every day? Then this article is not for you. Even when studies like the one published in Denmark in April 2008 conclude that high vitamin intake could make you die, you'll look the other way. OK, go die!   For everyone else...

Alarming research

Here's what the Danish experts said. They looked at the collected effects of vitamins A, C and E on nearly a quarter million sick and healthy people worldwide, who took part in 817 trials between them over the last few decades. Looks like a pretty comprehensive survey to me -- of mostly ordinary people: bad-health, sickly people, of course; we are talking about the West!

It seems that taking doses of vitamin A or beta-carotene could make you 7% more likely to die. It's 4% for vitamin E and no problem for vitamin C. They found no evidence that any of them were useful as antioxidants, contradicting what a lot of doctors say.

Interesting. The 1975 Readers Digest article I keep mentioning suggested that it was vitamin C, not A or E, which could be dangerous: Nobel Prize-winner Linus Pauling thought in the 1970s that this might be so. (If you want to look it up, the Readers Digest article is in the April 1975 UK edition and was by Elizabeth Whelan, condensed from the June 1974 Glamor )

So, what are the facts as they apply to us real people?  

We need our vitamins

To begin with, be warned that too little of any of the 49 essential nutrients will affect your health -- and that includes vitamins. Most of them it's almost impossible to avoid getting enough of, though over 3/4 of people are deficient in five essentials, and 1/4 of us in eighteen. Let's put it this way: you're very likely to be short of something!

So, my first suggestion is that if you are at all worried that you're short on an essential nutrient, go out and buy the cheapest multi-vitamin-and-mineral pills you can find. One a day will give you about the minimum healthy dose of each essential except the EFAs, and will do as band-aid till you're eating healthily. The extra you might get of some essentials is a long way within safety margins.

Too much of a good thing?

Then let's look at overdosing. Natural overdosing is very rare, but possible if you're stupid in your eating habits. The adult recommended daily allowance (RDA) of vitamin C is 1/17 gram -- that's the minimum for health. Monkeys eat a lot of fruit. They could get 10 grams a day of vitamin C eating some fruit. They're healthy. People -- with 10 times the body weight -- have been known to eat 60 grams a day trying cold cures. That's over 1000 times the RDA. What happened? They just got the runs. 

On the other hand, the long-term toxic dose of vitamin A is only about 20 times the basic need. So, popping high doses of beta-carotene, or drinking gallons of carrot juice daily is not recommended. You'll find your hair dropping out first, then your liver packs up working. Fancy cirrhosis?   Huge amounts of vitamin A can be a quicker kill than alcohol! Your best source of vitamin A is sunlight on your bare skin, then fresh vegetables next, not high-dose pills. 

It's a similar story with vitamin D, though not so bad: the toxic dose is about 60 times the RDA. But vitamin E is still reckoned non-toxic. So, I reckon that high dose vitamins are fine if you want them, as long as you're sensible. Though they're not essential. And you need to avoid large doses of A and D, the toxic ones. Keep off polar bear and shark liver, and -- health freaks like me take note -- limit your carrot juice to half a pint a day.

What do I do?

I take daily high-dose vitamin C (8 times the RDA) and B complex, all in one pill. I reckon they're harmless and the benefits might be good, though they're not medically proven. My vitamin B1 is 18 times the RDA and it's said to make your skin stink to some mosquitoes. I think that's so -- I'm not bitten by the kind that makes my legs swell up as long as I'm popping those pills.

I HATE mozzies!

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