What happens if you overdose in Vitamin C?
Colds and flu are rampant during the last quarter of the year that a lot of people are taking too much Vitamin C. 
For a time my wife asked me to take 4 capsules of 500mg a day to boost my immunity for our cold trip to China.
What do you think will happen if you take too much of Vitamin C? Is it harmless? Are you just going to pee it out?
First think you should know is that the recommended daily allowance (RDA) of Vitamin C for an average person is just 90 mg. Health experts recommend taking between 500 mg up to 2000 mg if you get sick often due to virus or cannot get enough from your diet.
Experts also found out that vitamin C should be taken in divided doses throughout the day as urinary excretion increases rapidly when individual doses exceed 500 mg.
So what happens if you take more than 2000 mg?
Well like any other stuff that you intake, if you overdo it there will be side effects. Although not really harmful, Vitamin C overdose will give you uncomfortable symptoms such as diarrhea, headache, nausea and increased urination. It will not last long though especially if you keep yourself hydrated.
It’s not serious but still, I won’t take 2000 mg of Vitamin C anymore especially if I can also get some from the food and liquids that I intake.
Aside from citrus fruits, other not-so-obvious good source of Vitamin C are broccoli, tomato, papaya, peppers (especially red, yellow and orange), kiwi fruit and even potatoes.
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Filed under: Health & Lifestyle
kawawa naman pala talaga ako.
lahat ng sinabi mong other “not-so-obvious good source of Vitamin C” like citrus fruits, broccoli, tomato, papaya, peppers (especially red, yellow and orange), kiwi fruit… hindi ko kinakain. ahuhuhu!
I keep hearing infommercials by Dr. Michael Pincus, touting his super-duper C formula, all natural, from 22 different natural, with no fillers. He claims that, if taken as prescribed, which is at least 2000 mg a day, will cure just about anything. Should I try it?
i don’t know ed. that sounds dubious but it will most probably boost your immune system at least.
hi calvin,
our teacher told us to do a 5-day diet experiment (mypyramidtracker…maybe you are familiar with that), and he asked us to do a report based on the average valued for each nutrients and the % RDA nutrient intake per day. I did the report but now he wants us to analyze the report since, i have some defiency in areas like, low in Vit. e, potassium and iron. he wants us to analyze what’s going to happen if we continue having deficiency in that areas. and what will happen if we exceeded %RDA, and up to what level are we allowed to exceeds..e.g. my selenium i got 605%, is this acceptable?
your response will be highly appreciated!
thanks in advance.
hi calvin,
sorry i got another question, the same topic though. my cholesterol level is at 87%, my iron level is at 92% , saturated fat is at 98% , sodium at 123%,my vit.b12 is at 570%, im just not sure if those figures are safe or not, and the effects, if any and which one do i have to be concerned with.
thanks.