Health Concerns

If vitamins are good for us, then a lot of vitamins must be even better – right? Wrong. Taking too much of certain vitamins is not just a waste of money, but it could even prove harmful too. Most vitamin supplements are secreted normally in the urine after being processed by the body, but some can become toxic at high levels and damage the organs. For example:

• It’s best to avoid taking vitamin A supplements while you’re pregnant, as this may damage the development of your baby
• More than 10mg per day of vitamin B6 can lead to loss of feeling in the arms and legs
• Doses of over 1,000mg a day of vitamin C can lead to abdominal pain and diarrhoea

There have been various studies carried out suggesting that taking multivitamins may increase prostate cancer.

It has been widely reported that taking vitamins instead of eating healthily will not be beneficial to you but treating them as a supplement will boost your vitamin intake. Multi-vitamins are not meant to be taken instead of eating healthily but many people do have this idea.

Multivitamins take at least six weeks to get into your system but there are some types of ‘instant’ vitamins available, these are proving more popular as lifestyles are becoming more hectic and demanding and according to a recent National Diet and Nutrition Survey many people in the UK are eating less than the recommended daily amount of essential nutrients.

In large doses, some vitamins have documented side effects that tend to be more severe with a larger dosage. The likelihood of consuming too much of any vitamin from food is remote, but overdosing from vitamin supplementation does occur. At high enough dosages some vitamins cause side effects such as nausea, diarrhoea, and vomiting.