In talking with a number of people about nutrition and the vitamins and minerals that they take I have found that very few are aware of the two main classifications of vitamins: water-soluble and fat-soluble. This is an important distinction because the fat-soluble vitamins can become toxic if you take too much of them. You don’t have to worry about the water-soluble ones as they get flushed out of your system. Some of the water-soluble vitamins are the B complex of vitamins and vitamin C.
Vitamins A, D, E, and K are very important to human health, but they are fat-soluble so you must take care with the amount that you take and how frequently that you take these vitamins. All fat-soluble vitamins are stored in the liver for when they are needed. You should not take these vitamins on a daily basis unless you are under direct medical supervision.
Don’t worry though about taking a multi-vitamin on a daily basis as the amounts of the fat-soluble vitamins in them are very small and you would have to take a lot of your multi-vitamins on a daily basis to build to toxic levels. However, if you are taking individual doses of any of these fat-soluble vitamins you might want to skip a day to two to allow the excess to work its way out of your system.
In putting this blog together, I came across some excellent information from the Colorado State University and the Nutrition and Well-Being web sites. Check these out for additional information.