It seems on every label we see, be it on a bottle of water, a snack bar or a box of cereal, added vitamins are listed. It begs the question; are we ingesting too many and if we are, is it harmful?
When it comes to vitamins and minerals, more is not necessarily better. A quick visit to webmd.com, gives us some helpful information.
If you’re routinely taking megadoses of vitamins, you could be headed for trouble. For instance, too much vitamin C or zinc could cause nausea, diarrhea and stomach cramps. Too much selenium (found in brazil nuts) could lead to problems including hair loss, gastrointestinal upset, fatigue and mild nerve damage.
Most people aren’t getting megadoses. Still, if you eat a fortified cereal at breakfast, grab an energy bar between meals, have enriched pasta for dinner and take a daily multivitamin, you could easily be over the recommended daily intake of a host of nutrients.
If you’re taking a basic multivitamin, there’s no need to fear taking too much, according to Andrew Shao, PhD, senior vice president of scientific and regulatory affairs for the Council for Responsible Nutrition, a trade group for the supplements industry.
“Most multivitamins have such a wide margin of safety that even when you’re combining them with fortified foods, it’s still not going to cause you to keel over”, Shao says. Scientists don’t yet know if routinely getting a little bit too much of a vitamin or mineral (as opposed to a megadose) is a problem. These fairly mild symptoms may include difficulty sleeping or concentrating, nerve problems such as numbness or tingling, or feeling more irritable — depending on the nutrient that’s going overboard.
Vitamin D, calcium, and folic acid are three nutrients you may get too much of through a combination of food and supplements.
Adults who regularly far exceed the 4,000 international units (IUs) daily safe upper limit for vitamin D might be setting themselves up for kidney stones down the road — a health problem that may also occur with excessive intake of calcium, whose upper limit range is 2,000-2,500 milligrams daily.
Folic acid is added to enriched grain products — white flours, pasta, rice, breads, and cereals — to help prevent birth defects in babies due to folic acid deficiency in pregnant women.
While folic acid fortification has successfully cut the number of birth defects by 25 per cent to 50 per cent, it might have created other health concerns in people getting too much. (There’s no need to worry about foods naturally rich in folate).
It’s not that hard to get more than 1,000 micrograms of folic acid a day (the safe upper limit for adults) from fortified foods and supplements on a regular basis. Doing so might hide the signs of a vitamin B12 deficiency in older adults. Vitamin B12 deficiency can sometimes lead to permanent nerve damage if left untreated.
