Originally Posted By: nursemike
vitamins a, d, e,and k, the fat soluble ones- are less easily excreted that the rest, and can cause problems in high oral dosages-in this case, hypervitaminosis d .

You're quite right, and I certainly have done much reading on the matter before trying it out on myself. That's also why I did not mention any specifics in that post. If anyone is interested, they should really take the time to educate themselves instead of just blindly following something you read posted by some stranger on a web forum (i.e. me!). Honestly, though, any vitamin product is far, far safer than pretty much any medication people are taking.

Just for perspective, the Lazarou meta-analysis in 1998 looked at adverse drug reactions in hospitalized patients. They estimated that a little over 100,000 hospitalized patients died from adverse drug reactions in 1994 (so not counting what happened to people outside of the hospital). Assuming that's a fair estimate, only heart disease, cancer, and strokes killed more Americans that year. (Too bad the CDC or FDA doesn't routinely track medication-related deaths.)

When's the last time anyone has heard of someone dying from a vitamin overdose?

From that link you provided, it says:
Quote:
Acute overdose requires between 15,000 µg/d (600,000 IU per day) and 42,000 µg/d (1,680,000 IU per day) over a period of several days to months, with a safe intake level being 250 µg/d (10,000 IU per day).

The typical vitamin D supplement you'll find at the drug store comes in 400, 1000, and possibly 2,000 IU doses. Rarely, you'll find 5,000 IU. Even with the 5,000 IU capsules, you'd have to take 125 of them to hit the 600,000 IU lower range quoted above. And keep taking 125 capsules for at least a few days before experiencing any toxicity issues. Actually, they don't specify in the article but I assume they're talking about vitamin D2, which has a lower toxicity threshold than D3.