Vitamin Supplements Source: Flickr
I bet you have taken vitamin supplementation at some point in your life. Why not? It can only be good for you, since all we hear about is how taking vitamins is good for your health, right? Wrong. Turns out there is a big misconception and that overdosing your body with vitamin intake can actually have detrimental effects for your body, even to the point to even increase the risk of getting cancer.
There is such thing as vitamin overdose which is toxic for your body. You might think that the more the better, right? Turns out excess of certain types of vitamins are not simply excreted by your body as one might think, but they rather build up in your organism and negatively affect your health. Specifically, the vitamins that negatively impact your health in excess are vitamins A, D, E and B.
Different vitamin excess causes different symptoms. For vitamin A, some symptoms include: headaches, irritability, abdominal pain, nausea, renal stones, anorexia, etc. for vitamin D, they include: anorexia, constipation, depression, hypertension, seizures, etc. For vitamin E: fatigue, weakness, hemorrhage, affected inmune system, etc. Lastly symptoms for vitamin B include: paralysis, convulsions, fatigue, light sensibility, liver damage, insomnia, skin lesions, etc. And this are just a few out of a longer list of the symptoms for each type of vitamin.
This excess is rarely due to overconsumption of vitamins through food, since vitamin content in fruits and vegetables is not as high as in supplements. Vitamin intake through a healthy and balanced diet is usually enough to be good for our health without having the risk exceeding and get to toxic levels. These excess are mainly due to vitamin supplement intake. Furthermore, there are several studies that indicate that taking vitamin supplementation for a long period of time might increase the risk of cancer. For example, long term use of vitamin A and vitamin E supplementation have been linked with incidence of lung cancer.
This is not say vitamin supplementation is always bad for your health. There are many studies about all the positive effects of vitamins. We need vitamins for our body to function optimally. However, dietitians suggest to take vitamin supplementation in specific cases were intake of certain vitamins is crucial, for example vitamin B9 during pregnancy. If not required for a specific medical reason, people should aim to obtain vitamins from food sources rather than by supplements to avoid toxic levels that can affect your health negatively. Sometimes more does not necessarily means better, but rather the oposite.
-Andrea Olaizola.
