Why are some vitamins sometimes listed as 1500% of your RDI? and wouldn’t that be damaging to your body?
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One thing to keep in mind is that our bodies are not perfect at absorbing the substances from our food. So just because a vitamin has 1500% does not mean that all of that makes it into your body. Some exits the body via urine, sweat, respiration, or just never gets digested and gets pooped out. It is very difficult to get sick from vitamin toxicity using *natural* food based vitamin sources, with the notable exception of polar bear liver for example. For synthetic vitamin sources like multivitamins, vitamin toxicity is a more present danger but you would need to be surpassing the recommended dosage for the vitamin supplements. Especially with multivitamins, you don’t take in everything that is listed on the bottle because vitamins and minerals can “compete” so to speak for absorption in the body. Which makes it hard to “overdose” if you’re taking vitamins as directed.
There’s two groups of vitamins, water soluble and fat soluble. The fat soluble ones are the dangerous ones if you take too much. If you take too many water soluble vitamins, like vitamin C, you just pee the excess out.
Depending on the type of vitamin, your body will absorb a very small percentage of that pill. A lot of it will just go through to your pee
Many of the B vitamins have no observed side effects when taken in enormous doses, and if your kidneys and liver are functioning properly, your body will only keep as much as it’ll use.
Except B6, which can cause nervous system problems at high doses (<~400% DV). Don’t eat too much niacin.
There is a difference between water and fat- soluble vitamins.
You can overdose on fat soluble vitamins like A, D, E, and K as your body will store it all. Excess water soluble vitamins like Vit C or B will simply be peed out.
That’s why it is often said that multi-vitamins are only good if you want to have some nice colored pee (assuming you eat healthy and you are healthy).
Here is a recent article of someone who overdosed on Vit D and had to go to the hospital;
https://gizmodo.com/vitamin-d-overdose-man-hospitalized-1849144300
It depends on the vitamin.
Fat-soluble vitamins will hurt you if they build up too much in your system, especially Vitamin A.
High-doses of water-soluble vitamins like C are mostly just expensive pee. ETA: On that note, most of the time, most vitamin supplements amount to expensive pee. Unless you have a diagnosis/doctor’s advice indicating you have an actual deficiency, nearly all supplements are pretty much a scam. And if you do have a diagnosed deficiency, you should be under a doctor’s care, as deficiencies not corrected by a healthy diet often have an underlying cause that requires treatment.
Your body doesn’t absorb 100% of the vitamins it takes in. If you absorb only 1% of the Vitamin X you take in, then taking a pill with 1500% of your RDI will mean you only absorb 15% of your RDI from that pill, and the rest passes right through you un-absorbed.
The amount of a vitamin you can absorb varies from vitamin to vitamin, and also the form in which you take it. For instance your body is quite good at extracting nutrients from plants or meats being digested, but it isn’t necessary very good at extracting nutrients from a concentrated pill form.
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