Too Many Dietary Supplements May Jeopardize Your Health

The German nutritional iconoclast Udo Pollmer tells the story of a man in Sweden who developed scurvy, a disease of extreme vitamin C deficiency. Scurvy at first causes bleeding gums, easy bruising, leg pain, nosebleeds, and a peculiar kind of bleeding from the hair follicles. As the body runs out of  the vitamin C it needs to make an enzyme for the production of collagen, old scars may begin to open.   Blood may leak into joints, causing extreme pain. The sternum may start to sink. Later there is diarrhea with bright red and bloody stools, loss of appetite, extreme irritability, swelling over the long bones of the arms and legs, rapid heartbeat, falling blood pressure, and death.

The symptoms of scurvy don't appear all at once. The human body can conserve vitamin C in glandular tissue, up to about 1500 mg in the body of a healthy adult. As long that body receives more vitamin C than it needs, the extra vitamin is excreted into urine. When daily diet does not provide enough vitamin C, spillover into the urine stops and the body begins to use its tiny reserve supply.

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The body can function with just tiny amounts of vitamin C from the lymphatic system for 30 to 90 days. But eventually vitamin C, which is, after all, vital to human health, runs out.

What kinds of people can suffer from scurvy?

• Alcoholics and drug addicts often do not get enough vitamin C from food.
• People who follow extremely low-carb diets may not get enough vitamin C.
• Babies who are fed only cow's milk during the first year of life may develop scurvy.
• Refugees dependent on food aid often do not get enough vitamin C.
• People who have the iron overload disease hemochromatosis lose excessive amounts of vitamin C through urination.
• People who have hyperthyroidism, cancer, or AIDS use large amounts of vitamin C.
• Pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers may develop vitamin C deficiency because their bodies use an extra large amount of the vitamin.
• Smokers may become deficient in many kinds of antioxidants including vitamin C.

But the man in Sweden who developed scurvy did not fit into any of these categories. In fact, he made a point of drinking orange juice every day, an 8 oz (240 ml) glass of orange juice providing more than a day's supply. Why should someone who drinks orange juice develop scurvy?

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The answer turned out to be that this man's body was eliminating vitamin C at a very high rate. He had spent a winter vacation in Florida. While he was there, he drank 8 to 10 tall (16 oz/500 ml) glasses of delicious freshly squeezed orange juice almost every day. His body became accustomed to eliminating large amounts of vitamin C, so when he returned home to Sweden and went back to drinking just one small glass of juice a day, he developed scurvy.

Water-soluble vitamins such as B and C, it turns out, are not necessarily harmless. When we take overdoses of water-soluble vitamins, our bodies may demand more and more. But increasing the daily minimum allowance for good health by overdosing vitamins is not the only pitfall over hypervitaminosis.
 

The Hazard of Hypervitaminosis

Hundreds of millions of people benefit from consuming the recommended daily intake of the thirteen vitamins required for human health. (There are another 16 substances that once were thought to be vitamins, and that are still sometimes advertised in supplements, but which turned out actually to be manufactured by the body itself.) Just a few hundred thousand people every year suffer diseases caused by over-consumption of vitamins, also known as hypervitaminosis, but the consequences can be serious.

• Vitamin A. The effects of overdosing vitamin A are especially well known because many of the treatments for severe, cystic acne are based on vitamin A. About 10% of women who take an overdose (more than 50,000 IU) of vitamin A during the first trimester of pregnancy bear children who do not have completely formed brain tissue. A smaller percentage of users of acne drugs based on vitamin A develop "polar hysteria," causing extreme mood swings and resulting in a risk of suicide. Smaller overdoses of this fat-soluble vitamin can cause shedding of skin and nails and nosebleeds.

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• Vitamin B1 (thiamine). Vitamin B1 is the water-soluble vitamin famed as a cure for the central nervous system disorder beriberi. Excesses of vitamin B1 can also cause neurological symptoms such as unusual gait and slurred speech. Hypervitaminosis B1 is most common in gastric bypass patients who take too many B vitamin supplements.
• Vitamin B3 (niacin) overdose causes facial flushing. People who have rosacea must be careful not to consume too much niacin. As little as 500 mg of time-released nicotinic acid for two months has been known to cause hepatitis (although this complication is more likely at dosages of 3,000 mg a day and higher). Excessive consumption of niacin can also cause dry skin, diabetes, blurred vision, and headaches.
• Vitamin B6 (pyridoxine) overdoses (500 mg a day and more for several weeks or longer) sometimes cause neuropathy, loss of nerve function in the fingers and toes.
• Vitamin C is a gastric irritant in doses of more than 2,000 mg a day. Some vendors of vitamin C for cancer will tell their customers that they "need" to induce diarrhea to help treat cancer; but the only way to get enough vitamin C into the bloodstream to fight cancer is by intravenous drip. People who have iron overload disease should not take vitamin C at the same time that ehy eat a food that is high in iron, because vitamin C increases the body's absorption of iron.

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• Vitamin D in tremendous excess—over 50,000 IU a day—can cause an even worse form of osteoporosis than it is taken to prevent.
• Vitamin E in overdose, over 2,000 IU a day, can cause thinning of the blood and easy bruising.
• Vitamin K in any dosage can interfere with older drugs still used as blood thinners, such as Coumadin and Plavix.

There is nothing wrong with taking the daily recommended intake of vitamins and more. But "more and more" is not necessarily better. Never take more than 1000% of any nutrients unless you are taking the form of that supplement in a dosage recommended by your physician for the treatment of a specific health condition.