Can You Overdose on Vitamins?

If you eat just one carrot every day, that provides all the vitamin A you need to survive. But in some parts of the world, that's not easy to come by. There are an estimated 250 million preschool-aged children who are vitamin A deficient. Most of them are in Africa and Southeast Asia, like here in India. Of those, about 250,000 to 500,000 are severely vitamin A deficient.

When that happens, they get night blindness, which means as the Sun goes down they lose their ability to see. Now if you catch the condition at that point, and give a child just a few high-dose vitamin A supplements, their sight can be restored within 24 to 48 hours. It's like a miracle cure. But if you don't, well, the condition can continue to worsen until they're completely blind. And of those children who are completely blind, roughly half die in the following 12 months.

These are all things I learned while working on a new feature-length 90-minute documentary called "Vitamania", all about these sense and nonsense of vitamins. And I am not only the presenter of this documentary, I'm also one of the co-executive producers. And you can watch this documentary right now. It is live, on the web, for everywhere in the world except France and Germany because it's coming to your TVs.

But I will put a link to it, "Vitamania the Movie", in the description and right here. And I want to show you a trailer for this film, so you get a sense of what it looks like, what it's all about. It's something I've been working on for two and a half years, so I'm really proud of it, and I just want you to go and check it out. So here is the trailer.

In 1913, Antarctic explorers Douglas Mawson and Xavier Mertz were fighting for their lives. With most of their food gone, they faced a stark choice: eat their dogs, or die. [MUSIC] After reluctantly eating their dogs, the men fell ill, burning with fever. Within days, Mertz was dead. Mawson, against the odds, made it back to camp.

So what was the mystery illness that killed Mertz, and nearly cost Mawson his life? Well, when they ate their dogs, they weren't just eating canine flesh and fat. They also ate the dog's livers, which contain high levels of vitamin A. So basically, they overdosed. It's a condition known as Hypervitaminosis A.

Hypervitaminosis A is rare but deadly, and today we know it can be caused by overuse of high-dose vitamin A supplements - the same kind of supplements that can save a child's sight. This power and complexity lies at the heart of the great vitamin story. [MUSIC]

I'm embarking on an epic world-spanning investigation of vitamin science and history. "Aargh!" "That is one big fish!" I want to know how we discovered them, “You sure this is safe?” what they actually are, “The 13 vitamins can be divided into two teams.” how we learnt to build them, “Tonight, Walgreens and Target have pulled the products nationwide-” and how safe they are. “All vitamins - all nutrients - they are toxic in high amounts."

“We've got to start taking these seriously, as we should with every chemical we put into our bodies.” I'm a scientist. I'm also a father, and I want to know, how do I do the best for my son. And one day, might he be taking vitamin pills to Mars? [ROCKET LAUNCHING]

Across the world, some experts claim that taking vitamins can be lifesavers, whereas others argue that it's just a waste of time or even dangerous. So how are we supposed to know whether to take them or not? [MUSIC]

So I hope you enjoyed that trailer. If you want to check out the film you can click right here or the link down in the description. I really hope you liked it. Let me know what you think in the comments below.