Can You Overdose on Gummy Vitamins?

Delicious gummy vitamins can make you feel like a kid again eating fun, chewable vitamins (or Haribo), but, frankly, they taste a little too good. Eating more than the recommended serving — usually two or three gummies — could harm you in certain cases. In others, you’re not going to get the benefit you think you’re getting and will have consumed calories you could’ve used on, you know, real food, says Sonya Angelone, MS, RDN, CLT, a spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

For instance, if you take too much vitamin C, your body will see to it that you pee out what you didn’t use. You will also likely get diarrhea and stomach cramps, warns Angelone. Taking too much calcium without the proper amounts of vitamins D and K2 could lead to free calcium in your body because it’s not getting into your bones. “The calcium is going to linger in your bloodstream longer and it can contribute to calcification of your arteries or joint calcification,” she says. And while many calcium supplements contain D, they don’t have K2, and neither do vitamin D supplements, which some people take for immune support. “If you don’t take calcium with K2 or vitamin D with K2 — since vitamin D increases calcium absorption — then I think you’re setting yourself up for secondary problems,” she says.


Then there are cases where your supplementation won’t do a whole hell of a lot, and vitamin C is again in the hot seat. “People tend to buy vitamin C for their immune system but I would say vitamin D is more effective at supporting it,” she tells the Cut. “And how are you eating? Immune systems work off protein and other vitamins and minerals to be healthy.” Though she admits there are good studies showing that taking vitamin C at the first onset of cold symptoms can help decrease the virus’s severity and duration by about half a day. Angelone says she’d take a few thousand milligrams (the National Library of Medicine suggests 1,000 to 2,000 milligrams), but taking a few hundred milligrams every day is probably not going to prevent you from getting rundown.

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