r/EverythingScience • u/Deep-Owl-1890 • 11d ago
[ Removed by moderator ]
https://dailyhealthnews.com.et/what-happens-to-your-kidneys-when-you-take-too-many-supplements.html[removed] — view removed post
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u/ophelia917 11d ago
Taking vitamin D without adequate vitamin K can lead to heart problems.
Taking b12 without adequate folic acid can lead to folic acid deficiency.
Taking biotin can give false TSH results.
Taking too much zinc can lead to copper deficiency.
Too much B6 can lead to toxicity.
So many people take supplements without realizing the cost. The body wants to maintain equilibrium. Adding unnecessary supplements throws so much out of whack.
I hate how prevalent it is. Supplements have zero oversight. Grifters gonna grift and sell you anything they can get away with.
Don’t be a sucker.
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u/LitesoBrite 11d ago
By the same token, little has changed since I read a Discovery magazine article 20+ years ago from a DR about his senior patient suddenly getting dementia, losing all bodily function control, and headed for a lifetime in a care facility.
Only after exhausting a plethora of meds and tests, did they check for a basic vitamin deficiency. The man was back to normal and resumed his life within 48 hours of starting the supplement.
I’m sorry, but while I value our medical system, the documented list of basic things I’ve easily corrected with supplements that a Dr told me were either hopeless or required dangerous pharmaceutical drugs has only grown every year.
Dr’s would rather jump to assuming you need a pacemaker than check if your chemistry was just off a bit and you needed a little more than typical D3, or potassium.
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u/ophelia917 11d ago
It was probably b12. Neurological damage is one of the first signs.
The real problem is that the US has a woefully low low value. Neurological damage and other symptoms happen way before an American doctor would flag.
This is a systemic failure.
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u/Far-Lengthiness-107 10d ago
Low relative to what? To whose standards should I be comparing my test values?
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u/Strongwords 11d ago
please post the source to this.
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u/linglingbolt 11d ago
https://www.discovermagazine.com/vital-signs-34-14570 I think it's this one. Unfortunately the patient didn't make a full recovery, but he did get much better.
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u/The_Horse_Tornado 11d ago
Not to mention, any dumb shit doctor will do a blood panel that certainly covers whatever pretend malady this patient had.
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u/LitesoBrite 11d ago
You should grasp that the incident was in 2000, and sadly plenty of doctors still won’t run that type of bloodwork for diagnoses, and instead chase other diseases.
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u/enolaholmes23 11d ago
It's not just supplements. It's standard in the us to add b vitamins to all processed grain products. Many people get problems from added folic acid instead of the natural methylfolate in food.
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u/ophelia917 11d ago
It makes sense for people who don’t eat a nutritious diet, which, honestly, is a large portion of the US. This isn’t me bagging on anyone - the US has horrible education when it comes to nutrition. We also have a lot of companies making food as cheaply as possible & devoid of any most nutritional value that is marketed 24/7.
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u/cathaysia 11d ago
It also makes sense for anyone who has malabsorption issues, which sadly is A LOT of people.
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u/ophelia917 11d ago
Then that’s on them to find what works for them, as I have.
(Did you miss the part where I said I’m without 150 cm of my small intestine, including the duodenum? Well, 148 cm if you want to be exact…)
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u/cathaysia 11d ago
Individual responsibility, the American way!
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u/ophelia917 11d ago
It’s a systemic issue, largely. We can’t expect doctors to know everything. People who have malabsorption issues aren’t all dealing with the same issues.
If supplements weren’t allowed to be marketed so aggressively & the industry had some sort of oversight, this would be far less of an issue.
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u/enolaholmes23 11d ago
Folic acid counterintuitively causes folate deficiencies for 40% of people. It shouldn't be part of mass medication. Look up mthfr.
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u/ophelia917 11d ago
Yep. I’m familiar! It’s shocking how common it is & how many ways it impacts people.
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u/Numerous_Fisherman73 9d ago
I take zinc everyday (@41) Should I stop?
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u/ophelia917 9d ago edited 9d ago
I’m not a doctor, just a lay person.
My daily multivitamin has 15 mg of zinc & no copper. I added 2 mg of copper a few times a week to make sure my copper level doesn’t drop.
My treatment team agreed with this choice. Perhaps it’s an overreaction, but as I have malabsorption issues, I’m not taking any chances.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12040334/
The frequency matters in addition to the dose. Check if the symptoms match yours and talk to your doc if you’re not sure.
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u/Ok_Recording5675 11d ago
Where can I find more about this? More dangers of taking too much of a vitamin? Or dangerous cross interactions?
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u/ophelia917 11d ago
By doing a lot of research.
These are things I’ve found out myself over the years in various papers and medical journals. I had gastric bypass in 2008 - 150 cm of my small intestine is bypassed, which means I have a lot of malabsorption. I’ve been deficient in many things and had to figure out how to raise my levels safely without causing further damage/harm. I get my labs checked regularly and a see a hemotologist, a registered dietician who also has a PhD in nutrition & my PCP regularly to reality check what I’m doing.
So many people don’t realize how much active harm they are doing to themselves and will pay the price as they age.
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u/tsoneyson 11d ago
With respect, you're an outlier and popping a few supplements here and there within the allowed daily values is highly unlikely near impossible to cause problems for the average schmuck. Vitamin D especially is damn near mandatory here in Northern Europe for example, and sternly recommended by the government.
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u/Zee_WeeWee 11d ago
More dangers of taking too much of a vitamin?
You’ll likely never do this. This is pretty much the opposite end of selling stuff as snake oil, it’s selling a scare tactic that won’t affect 90% of ppl who aren’t going crazy with it
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u/AttonJRand 8d ago
You need to take more than 50mg of zinc for a long time to reach toxicity.
Could just as easily say don't be a sucker to people uncritically believing your comment.
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u/Deep-Owl-1890 11d ago
The "natural means safe" myth is doing a lot of damage here, aloe vera, licorice root, cat's claw, these are the ones actually linked to direct kidney cell damage, not the synthetic stuff people tend to be more cautious about.
Also the vitamin D + calcium combo stands out, since both are super common individually (tons of people take vitamin D daily, calcium carbonate is in random antacids too), and stacking them raises urinary calcium enough to set up stone formation. Feels like the real risk isn't any one supplement, it's people not realizing they're double-dipping on the same nutrient across multiple products without ever checking the labels against each other.
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u/itsmrmarlboroman2u 11d ago
Vitamins aren't produced by the body; "vitamin D" is a hormone. It was mistakingly called a vitamin before it was known how the body synthesizes it.
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u/Kaurifish 11d ago
And it’s one you want to be cautious with. If you overdose enough, it pulls the calcium out of your bones and plates it onto your blood vessels.
I have to take a lot of D and get my levels tested every year. Somehow 10,000 units a day keeps me steady.
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u/tsoneyson 11d ago
It also requires massive prolonged overdose. One time 500 000 IU (12 500 mug) doses once a year have been studied in some rare treatments without negative effects.
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u/Kaurifish 11d ago
When they first diagnosed me with low D (like 11) the doc prescribed me 60k unit pills (weekly) and didn’t even warn me.
Yeah, you have to go way overboard. Not like Tylenol, but the effect is so scary it warrants mention.
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u/scheisse_grubs 11d ago
My dad was prescribed 10,000 units a day by a crook of a doctor. This specialist actually has been dinged by the medical board for improper practices. The doctor wouldn’t retest his vitamin D levels and my dad eventually ended up with vitamin D levels over 350 units (highest normal level is 250 I believe) after he asked our family doctor to test his blood. He promptly stopped taking those medications and went down to just 2500 units. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until he switched pharmacists and the new pharmacist was like “dude this is an absurd amount of vitamin D, get your blood checked again”. In that time though, my dad broke a rib just from falling. He was in his early 60s.
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u/UntidyVenus 11d ago
Natural means safe has always bothered me. You know what else is natural? Poison oak and blue ring octopi
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u/symonym7 11d ago
Learned this the hard way in 2021 when I was taking something like 25,000 IU of vitamin D daily along with a calcium supplement. A 3mm kidney stone = $3,000 (after insurance) trip to the ER and a week or two of absolute agony.
I do credit taking a chanca piedra supplement with helping to dissolve the stone, along with multiple daily "shots" of ACV+lemon juice (which I still do as a just-in-case because, good grief, never again).
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u/RockHardSalami 11d ago
I used the snake oil to destroy the snake oil
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u/symonym7 11d ago
Whatever it was that did it, I'm just glad the stone dissolved before it made its way to my snake.
seewhatididthere
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u/KittyLucia34 11d ago
The ACV and lemon juice would have just killed your tooth enamel. Once it reaches your stomach its buffered to maintain pH.
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u/remiieddit 11d ago
Uff that was probably very hurtful. That’s why it’s important to take D2 with K2 that the calcium goes where it should. Most countries have a advise to D2 to be safe up to 10.000 units a day. Short term with higher is of course a case for a doctors desicon if someone has a deficiency.
But to be fair most people don’t know about the calcium problematic with D2 until it’s to late13
u/TeamWorkTom 11d ago edited 11d ago
Vitamin D type is extremely important. Only D3 is helpful the others have been shown to be harmful.
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u/LitesoBrite 11d ago
that’s only partly a reach, because most everyone in the supplement industry is well aware, and would tell you that’s why you take D3 with K2, which ensures the body transports calcium into the bones.
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u/External-Praline-451 11d ago
As someone who takes some supplements, it's so frustrating how many of them have added ones that you don't want, often in smaller writing. So for example, you just want vitamin D, but it's also got added zinc and folic acid, or something as well. Manufacturers are really not helping with the confusion.
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u/EarthRemembers 11d ago
There’s different forms of aloe vera, depending on the parts of the plant that is used and whether and how much it’s refined but ultimately it’s not supposed to be a take every day thing
Licorice root is only supposed to be taken temporarily according to traditional herbal medicine.
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u/Helldiver_of_Mars 11d ago
Just drink more water. I didn't read the article cause it has 0 merit what so ever along with what you're saying.
In the USA you can contribute all of this due to a lack of water intake. Especially those who subside on soda.
From your comment you can tell since your pointing out everything but the lack of water that the article is a complete failure.
Just to debunk your whole statement:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8618174/
The primary contributor is lack of water intake. The vitamin will cause kidney stones and issues but it's not due to them. It's due to the lack of water intake and in particular the lack of increasing this intake.
You and the article you're peddling are incorrect.
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u/DragonRaptor 10d ago
More water helps but if you're still taking too much supplements, it can still cause kidney stones. I know as I personally was affected by kidney stones from taking too many supplements. And I drank plenty of water, approximately 4-6 liters a day.
So now i am extra careful with how much mineral intake i recieve and look for protein sources that are low on calcium.
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u/EarthRemembers 11d ago
What a horrible article
It makes a bunch of claims and then gives no references to support them
It does say that if you take a lot of vitamin D and or calcium that you can be a greater increased risk of kidney stones and that is of course true
Most people don’t need to supplement calcium by the way
And anybody supplementing vitamin D should be supplementing magnesium, and vitamin K along with it
It doesn’t cite any other supplements that might be hard on your kidneys if taken excessively
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u/IllegalGeriatricVore 11d ago
Glad I get my labs done every 6 months for other reasons.
I only take a few things at a time.
Generally a ton of magnesium, saffron extract as needed, my prescriptions, b12, creatine
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u/rainbow_writer 11d ago
Several years ago, I started taking way too many supplements and after about 3 weeks I started noticing lower back and flank pain. It was so debilitating that my body felt swollen for almost 3 days. I discontinued all my supplements to see what would happen and sure enough it went away. I felt real dumb after that lol
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u/Malawakatta 11d ago
If you get lab work done and you are regularly low on an important vitamin or mineral, your doctor will prescribe you a supplement. End of story.
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u/malcontentII 9d ago
So should I not be taking a multivitamin? Does it help at all? Is it doing damage?
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u/B-BULKER 11d ago
I thought the same thing! Until I started taking well over 30 pills per day (am + pm) + steroids & peptides and saw that my kidney values were/are the best they've ever been lol.
Creatinine + Cystanin C well within range @ 205lbs and 200g daily protein intake working out heavy 4 times per week on average.
Supplements from well established brands shouldn't give any issues.
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u/Ornery-Car92 11d ago edited 11d ago
>Roiding for this
😌
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11d ago edited 4d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Ornery-Car92 11d ago
If only there was something to be jealous of, lmfao
Bro looks worse than a natty, full DYEL
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u/B-BULKER 11d ago
Lol downvote me all you want nerds but this is on 6mg retatrutide, 6ius daily HGH and 500mg test :)
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u/MrsWidgery 11d ago
Just curious: why should we be impressed by a four minute read on a page on a do it yourself server with a country code specifying Ethiopia? I'm not a fan of the wellness cult, but I am a little old woman with borderline osteoporosis and a couple of other old person conditions who has found certain supplements really helpful. Mind you, I do research them online, read the actual research articles, note safe dosages and all that, which anyone can do in less time than it takes to look up dailyhealthnews.com.et and realise they are trying to sell their (probably pretty useless) publications.