Can Taking Too Many Vitamins Be Bad For You?

We know that vitamins are essential for our bodies, but do we know if we are taking too many? In fact, do we know if there is even such a thing as too many vitamins? And can taking too many vitamins be bad for you?

As Our Christmas dinners and Easter Eggs will testify, we can have too much of a good thing. Our bodies might need vitamins and minerals to function, but actually, it only needs certain amounts of them. For example, our bodies only need 83-105mg of Vitamin C a day, but some of us are reportedly consuming upwards of to 2000mg a day!

So how do we know how much is too much? Here is your complete guide to the upper limits of the most popular vitamins, so you know what you can and should be consuming. It will help us to find out: can taking too many vitamins be bad for you?

How many vitamins do we need?

We can usually find out how much of a vitamin our body needs by using RDA's or Recommended Daily Allowances. Most vitamin supplements, including the whole myvitamins range, will show you how much of our RDA is present in each serving. We put this information in an easy-to-read table in the ingredients list, just like this:

These recommended daily allowances can help us to ensure our body gets all of the nutrients it needs in the right amounts. This is a good guide but it's important to remember that nutritional needs can vary from person to person. A number of factors affect our nutritional needs, including lifestyle, diet, size, and genetics. So we can have more of some vitamins and less of others. That's often why you might see some that multivitamins and supplements actually provide more than 100% of your RDA.

So if our RDA is a guide that we can exceed sometimes, how do we make sure we aren't getting too much of a vitamin?

How Many Vitamins Is Too Many?

Vitamins can be categorised into two types: water-soluble and fat-soluble.

Water-soluble

Our body can control the amount of the water-soluble vitamins. It can retain in times of depletion and release when consumed in excess. This means that our body can adjust itself to individual vitamin needs and demands without having to worry about consuming too many.

Fat-soluble

Fat-soluble vitamins, on the other, hand, are stored differently by our bodies. Consumption in excess could cause toxicity over prolonged periods of time. This because they are stored in our body's fat cells, which makes it difficult for the body to remove excess.

So, if some vitamins can be toxic, can taking too many vitamins be bad for you?

Can Taking Too Many Vitamins Be Bad For You?

In short, yes. Taking too many vitamins could have negative health effects over long periods time. But taking vitamins shouldn't be something to worry about! They are essential to our health and correct usage can have powerful benefits on our wellbeing.

To make sure the vitamins you're taking aren't bad for you, it is important to be mindful of your consumption. If you take more than one vitamin, add up how much you're actually taking to make sure you're within a healthy range.

The majority of multivitamins available to buy do contain less than these toxicity levels. However, caution needs to be taken when more than one supplement is being consumed at once over time. We would recommend checking each supplement's nutritional table to make sure you're doing the best for your body.

If you're concerned, you can speak to one of our qualified nutritionists over the phone or on Facebook!

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