For the average healthy human there should be little to no fear of overdosing on the vitamin supplement folic acid. The daily recommended amount of folic acid is four hundred micrograms (mcg.) and those who could become pregnent, are pregnent or lactating should take between six hundred and eight hundred mcg. daily. As always there are a few exceptions to this rule, but none of them will cause an extreme amount of harm if treated.
The upper tolerable limit (UL) of folic acid is one thousand mcg. It has been set here primarily for folic acid’s tendency to ‘mask’ vitamin B12 deficiency. At daily doses of around one thousand mcg. laboratory machines have difficultly detecting a deficiency of the B12 vitamin. There are also two other reasons a UL has been set.
Folic acid appears to inhibit the working ability of some certain types of epilepsy drugs when present in doses of one thousand mcg. In very rare cases some people have developed an allergic reaction to folic acid in doses as low as one thousand mcg. The number one symptom being itchiness. It appears that one thousand micrograms is the magic number with folic acid.
Most folic acid supplements have a dosage of four to five hundred mcg. so if you do say accidently take one too many folic acid supplements in the day you probably won’t get much higher than one thousand to twelve hundred mcg. in your system for the day. Of course this depends on the kind of folic acid supplement you are taking.
There have been studies done on folic acid toxicity with dosages as high as fifteen thousand micrograms daily for up to a year in one study. The results were somewhat mixed in that the first study done of this type showed symptoms of insomnia, anxiety, behavior, concentration and digestive disorder for all volunteers, while the subsuquent studies found little or no symptoms at such a high dosage.
If you are concerned that you may be getting too much folic acid in your diet, don’t be. It’s hard to the recommended amount in the daily diet let alone an overdose. Unless of course you have an abnormal fondness for snacking on liver throughout the day.
Liver of course has one of the highest concentrations of folic acid at between one hundred seventy to one hundred ninety mcg. per three ounces.
High doses of folic acid are prescribed by doctors for treatment and as a preventative measure in some cases. Folic acid is very good as correcting forms of anemia, so in addition to other medications folic acid in high daily doses may be prescribed to help jump start the creation of healthy red blood cells.
Women who have previously given birth to a child with a neural tube defect may be prescribed a folic acid supplement with four thousand micrograms in it. Folic acid is involved in the replication of DNA and RNA so it is essential to a developing fetus.
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Author Vincent Platania represents the Rawleigh Products.W.T. Rawleigh founded Rawleigh Products in the late 1800s to create a line of products that possessed both strength and quality. Visit http://www.rawleigh-products.com
A Folic Acid Overdose?
