Megadoses of Vitamin C not only ineffective against the common cold, but can also double the risk of kidney stones. — Click to Tweet.
It’s not uncommon these days for people to take large doses of Vitamin C — sometimes over 1000mg, which is 10-20 times the recommended daily amount.
Most people take them because of the common belief that it can help fight off a cold, or in some way increase immunity to colds. But as we’ve covered here at eDrugstore in previous articles, Vitamin C simply isn’t effective at doing so.
Well, not only is it completely ineffective to take extra Vitamin C, but new research says it could, given the right circumstances, be dangerous.
The Study on Kidney Stones
A large study was recently published in JAMA Internal Medicine, where researchers tracked over 23,000 Swedish men. The men were between 45 and 79 years old when the study began in 1997.
The study followed each man until 2009. None of them had been diagnosed with kidney stones previously. But of the 900 or so men who regularly took 1,000-milligram doses of Vitamin C, almost twice as many eventually had kidney stones, compared to the other men.
Statisticians took into account body weight, education levels, and oddly high or low numbers of men in certain age groups when analyzing the data, and found that Vitamin C megadoses increased kidney stone risk by a factor between 1.7 and 2.2. It is comforting, however, to note that the risk was still relatively low: about 3 percent of Vitamin C-taking men developed kidney stones, while fewer than 2 percent of other men did.
Why So Much Vitamin C?
Large doses of Vitamin C are widely available at convenience stores and groceries, but there aren’t any scientifically documented reasons for it. In fact, the US government recommends between 75 and 90 milligrams a day, and most multivitamins (which don’t increase kidney stone risk) don’t have megadoses of Vitamin C either.
You may also have noticed that the study didn’t report on women at all, but there’s no need to wonder if any questions were left unanswered. Women’s risk of kidney stones is much lower than men’s.
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