5 Vitamins You Might Be Overdoing

5 Vitamins You Might Be Overdoing,...........or may not be

Kristin Kirkpatrick, MS, RD, LD, of the Cleveland Clinic who authored this post, is a registered dietitian who has been helping people reach their nutritional goals for more than 12 years. This article was posted on Yahoo! Health and can be found here.


Americans aren’t eating as many fruits and vegetables as we should be. In fact, Americans nationwide are significantly below the fruit and vegetable consumption guidelines set forth by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the USDA.

Enter supplements. As people seek alternative sources of crucial vitamins and minerals, supplement intake has skyrocketed. Supplements can be helpful, but getting nutrients in a pill rather than food is not always the best way to improve your health. In some cases, it can even hurt.

Here are five vitamins and minerals you may be overdoing if you pop them as pills.

Iron and Copper

Iron plays a key role in younger women’s diets for menstrual cycles and pregnancy, but the recommendations for iron after menopause decrease significantly. Despite the lower guidelines (8 mg per day after age 50) many postmenopausal women still take supplements that contain iron. The risks of getting too much iron include a condition called hemochromatosis, which can damage your organs. Further, a 2010 study linked excess iron and copper to increased incidence of alzheimers disease and heart disease.

MyAchingKnees Comment: Taking Iron in a supplement form or worse yet in a multi-vitamin can inhibit the body's ability to abosrb other nutrients. You need to get your Iron from fresh food sources.

“Getting nutrients in a supplement rather than food is not always the best way to improve your health. Here are five vitamins and minerals you may be overdoing if you pop them as pills.”

Best bet: If you’re over 50, ditch the multivitamins with iron and copper unless a doctor instructs you to take them.

MyAchingKnees Comment: Better advice would be to suggest taking high quality, pharmaceutical grade supplements, which won't have iron in them.

Beta-carotene

Beta-carotene and vitamin A — which is formed by beta-carotene — is easy to consume. If you have a bowl of cereal for breakfast, anything orange (carrots, sweet potatoes) for lunch and then a multivitamin or supplement for eye health, you’ve probably consumed too much. Too much beta-carotene has been associated with increased risk for lung cancer and overall increased risk of death.

Best bet: Skip the supplement and stick to food sources such as sweet potatoes, watermelon, cantaloupe, red bell peppers, carrots and spinach.

Vitamin C

When most people think of vitamin C, they think of oranges. But if your first thought is a vitamin C pill, you may be overdoing it. A recent study found that men who took vitamin C pills had higher risk for developing kidney stones.

Best bet: Enjoy the culinary delights of vitamin-C rich foods such as papaya, strawberries, brussels sprouts and kale. But don’t take extra unless a doctor advises you to.

Calcium

While calcium is important for strong bones, data suggests getting too much of it can strain your heart. Studies have suggested that women who take high amounts of calcium increase their risk of cardiac death and moderately increase their risk for heart attack.

Best bet: To avoid overdoing it, get your calcium through food sources such as dairy, tofu, sardines, broccoli and almonds. If you think you need supplemental calcium, talk to a doctor before buying a bottle.

The recommended daily allowance for any vitamin or mineral will depend on your age, medical conditions and other factors, and a doctor or registered dietitian can help you fine-tune your intake.

You may also notice a common theme here: Most vitamins and minerals are best obtained and absorbed through real food. To ensure you’re getting enough — but not too much — of any vitamin or mineral, avoid supplements that contain “mega doses” unless your doctor recommends them for medical reasons.

MyAchingKnees Comment: The common theme I notice is an anti-supplement bent from the author.  A person just cannot get the required amount of nutrients from fresh food or whole sources. And what most nutritionists think of as "mega doses" are anything over the RDA - which again was established over 70 years ago in an era where we did not see these epidemic numbers of degenerative disease like we see today.



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Miracle Vitamin C Cure?

The Miracle Vitamin C cure, at least that's what it sounded like on a morning talk radio infomerical with a Doctor, who I'll call, Dr. Unicorn. We all should know by now that Supplement Manufacturers are restricted by the FDA on making claims pertaining to how their nutritional supplements cure disaeases and conditions.

Doctor Unicorn apparently did not understand that, or is willing to face being a target of the FDA when he claimed that his Vitamin C supplement will lower your blood pressure, lower your LDL (the bad cholesterol) and do other amazing things. It's one thing to say we believe that any particular nutrient or product helps with this or that condition, but to make a claim that it cures a disease is wholly another.

He did correctly state that the FDA's minimum Required Daily Allowance (RDA) for Vitamin C is 60 mg and that is way too low of a dose. I certainly believe that a person needs a much greater dose of Vitamin C and every other nutrient than the old, antiquated RDA recommends, but I also believe that we can't pick one or two nutrient's and take them in mega doses and expect much good to come from it. I believe we need the whole gamet of nutrients in large doses that will work synergistically to provide nutrients for optimal celluar health.

I believe that not only advanced doseages of all nutrients are important but the quality of that nutrient, from the source through to manufacturing, is very important. Doctor Unicorn continued his infomercial by reading ingredients from other manufactuers' products and likened some of the ingredients with toxic substances,....words to the effect,...."cellulose,...that's really chopped up newspapers",.......... ...."Silicon,..that's a lubricant like Motor Oil".

Oh yeah, Doctor Unicorn also made the claim that since his product is a powder, it activates and it's absorbed better and faster. Really? Well, I hope the people who fall for Doctor Unicorn's Miracle Vitamin C are few in number, but if it works for them then maybe they should stick to it. Doctor Unicorn could use the income because he ain't concerned about his reputation.


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Vitamin C - So Important

If you have read this site once or twice you have probably seen an article on the disconnect between the 60 year old RDA levels and what is called higher doses of nutrients for optimal cellular health. You have probably seen Doctor Ray Strand's name mentioned as well. Dr Strand spells it out in his book, "What Doctors Don't Know About Nutritional Medicine May Be Killing You", and his Bionutrition Newsletters and Health Nugget e-mails, that the RDA’s have nothing to do with chronic degenerative diseases. They are simply way too low.

The RDA's were developed as the minimal amount required to avoid acute deficiency diseases like scurvy, rickets, and pellagra. Vitamin C is a perfect example. The body can’t manufacture vitamin C and it has to get it from our diet and through supplementation. Vitamin C is critical for proper immune function, prevention of oxidative stress, and prevention of DNA damage. Researchers who have looked at the RDA of vitamin C, which is 60 mg daily, have concluded that we need at least 10 times more or over 1,000 mg to receive a health benefit. The best way to achieve this goal is to eat a healthy diet that contains at least 6 to 8 servings of fruits and vegetables and also to use supplementation.

I ensure I get a high does of quality Vitamin C each and every day, especially throughout the late fall and winter months. Although it has been years I remember the racking joint pain in my knees and back brought on by the seasonal flu, I do not take any chances with my health and take a pharmaceutical grade supplement of multi-minerals and anti-oxidants to ensure I am giving my body the necessary nutrients for cellular health and my immune system.

One cannot just pick and choose their supplements and expect to be effective. All required nutrients need to be taken in the right doses in order to provide a synergistic effect.

Deruelle F, Baron B. Vitamin C: is supplementation necessary for optimal health? J Altern Complement Med. 2008 Dec;14(10):1291-8

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