You need a mixture of vitamins and minerals to help your body function and to support continuous growth throughout every stage in life. Multivitamin supplements can provide the vitamins and essential minerals you need, including calcium. However, taking multivitamin supplements or calcium supplements in excess can cause vitamin and mineral toxicity, which can have serious health affects.
Calcium Overdose
Acute calcium overdose occurs when you take calcium in supplement form beyond the daily recommended allowance. Calcium overdose can occur from taking calcium supplements along with antacids that contain calcium carbonate such as Tums or multivitamin supplements that contain calcium. Symptoms of calcium overdose are abdominal pain, bone pain, confusion constipation, depression, headache, irregular heartbeat, muscle twitching and nausea.
Vitamin Toxicity
Multiple vitamin overdose can occur from taking a single vitamin supplement or a multivitamin supplement beyond the manufacturer’s recommendations. These supplements taken in large amounts can pose serious health risks. Symptoms of multiple vitamin overdose are irregular heartbeat, bone pain, muscle pain, confusion, fainting, fatigue, mood swings, irritability, dry cracking skin, hair loss, appetite loss, stomach pain and weight loss. Complications of multiple vitamin overdose are nerve damage, fluid buildup in the longs, coma and death.
Considerations
Follow the manufacturer’s instruction on taking your multivitamin or calcium supplement. Do not take more than the recommended daily allowance of any vitamin or calcium supplement without prior consent from your physician. Taking a high dose of calcium multivitamin supplements continuously over time can result in chronic overdose. According to Medline Plus, patients who have taken an excess of iron and calcium usually recover well if medical treatment is received quickly.
Treatment
Your doctor can treat your vitamin overdose with a niacin flush. In some cases, you receive intravenous fluids or an antidote to reverse overdose symptoms. In severe cases, you need a gastric lavage, which empties the contents of the stomach. Calcium overdose is usually nontoxic, according to Medline Plus, and recovery is quite likely.
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