Do You Feel Queasy After Taking This Common Vitamin?

Many people take vitamins. While it's best to get all the necessary vitamins and minerals for your body through whole foods, taking vitamins can be helpful for people who want to supplement their diets. However, some vitamins may cause unpleasant side effects (via Mindbodygreen). Vitamin C, for example, makes many people feel queasy when they take it as a supplement. This is because ascorbic acid is not absorbed super well by the body when taken alone or in high doses.

The trick to reducing or eliminating nausea after taking vitamin C is to find a high-quality supplement that contains bioactive lipids and bioflavonoids. These act like buffers to help your body more readily absorb the vitamin C in the supplement without taking a toll on your gut. You can also avoid taking this supplement on an empty stomach, an action that can cause nausea with many other vitamins as well (via Cleveland Clinic). If you have a hard time eating first thing in the morning, take your vitamins with your lunch or dinner instead.

Vitamin C is most well-known for its immune system benefits. While this is a key part of this vitamin, it's only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to its health benefits (via WebMD). Also known as L-ascorbic acid, vitamin C is a water-soluble vitamin. This means excess amounts of the vitamin are flushed out of our body when we go to the bathroom. Vitamin C is essential for our bodies to form blood vessels, cartilage, muscle, and collagen in our bones. It is also an antioxidant that protects our cells from harmful free radicals.

Vitamin C is found in many fruits and vegetables. It is recommended that adults take no more than 2,000 mg per day of a vitamin C supplement. A limit of about 500 milligrams is shown to be safe and effective. Serious side effects are rare, but too much of this vitamin may cause nausea and gastrointestinal issues.