Multivitamin causing bad things?

(Jeremiah) #1

So I’m about 2 days from two full months on keto. I’m down 35lbs and still dropping. I visited my doctor a while back for a check up and she recommended i take a multi vitamin just in case my diet change is leaving me lacking. She didnt have any reason other than “it can’t hurt”. I’ve never taken a vitamin in my life before this. Not for fear, I just didnt need it.

So about day 2 of taking a centrum daily I didnt feel right. My chest felt funny, somewhere between heartburn and a lump in your throat feeling. Heart felt funny but it’s hard to say if it IS heart or just feels close to it. Resting bpm is 70 so it seems ok. No past heart issues. My pee also turned greenish.

So i was on the multi for less than a week and felt this way. I stopped taking it (off 48hrs now) and I’m feeling a bit better but still not 100%. I see my doctor for a follow up tomorrow anyways but in the meantime has anyone else run into what seems like an allergic reaction to a simple vitamin? I’ve only ever in my life been allergic to 1 thing ever (maxaran) so allergies are not common for me.

(Chris) #2

Multi’s can’t hurt

Well that’s a hell of a blanket statement. You can get allergic to some of the contents of the pill and have your throat close up, that’ll hurt.

What is it derived from? If it’s plant-based don’t expect to get anywhere near the full value of the RDA listed on the bottle, humans can’t get much from plant-based vitamins at all.

Opinion here, but I think you’re wasting your time and money, and they definitely “can hurt”. Eat some more fatty red meat and I doubt you’ll have these symptoms.

(Todd Allen) #3

Unfortunately there are ways multivitamins can be problematic. For example 23andme genetic testing shows I have a gene polymorphism that make high dose vitamin E in the form most commonly used in supplements toxic. My wife has a gene polymorphism that makes the vitamin B9 precursor folic acid in supplements and added to wheat flour and cereals toxic. There are other common mutations that can cause trouble with numerous other vitamins and their precursors.

Also for many vitamins and minerals it isn’t just the absolute amounts that matter but also the balance between them. For example, copper and zinc compete with each other. If you get more of one you need a proportional amount more of the other. Considering there are many conditions and foods which can impact the absorption and conversion of micronutrients taking a multivitamin with mega doses of many micronutrients, some in forms poorly bioavailable or hard to convert depending on ones genetics, can aggravate imbalance issues.

For these and many more reasons most studies of vitamin supplementation especially multi-vitamins show mixed results although targeted supplementation to correct deficiencies can be very beneficial.

(Cris) #4

Sorry if this is off topic, but how do you feel about 23andme selling your dna data to other companies and the gov’t? I really want to get a dna test but man I’m worried about that, for a number of future reasons that I don’t even know but can imagine. I’m thinking ancestry.com is a better option but they don’t do the health thing that 23andme does…

(Connie Walsh) #5

They say that the sharing of data is only aggregate data. Ancestry does the exact same thing in selling their aggregate data. Of course other companies (not the dna companies so far) have claimed to sell the aggregate data and found out to personalize the data or give enough clues that it can be determined. It is always a risk. I am all for increasing the knowledge of DNA and because of my health history I can’t get life insurance anyway, so I am okay with them having my data.

(Connie Walsh) #6

I am carnivore only. I need to take vitamins/minerals. I take A, C, Omega 3-6-9, Selenium, Magnesium and potassium. Some people (probably most) don’t need to. But if I don’t, my ankles ache, my eyes hurt and don’t see well, I get large muscle spasms, and my jaw hurts. It is really remarkable the difference. So I take them and feel much better. OP doesn’t sound like he needs them, but if he notices symptoms (without taking them) he should look into whether that symptom is related to any of the above vitamins.

(Chris) #7

How long have you been carnivore and how long have you gone without those things? A is in liver, C is in beef of all varieties, as well as 3, 6, and 9. You can get selenium from eggs. Mag and K are also in beef.

(Todd Allen) #8

I’m ok with them selling the data because it makes the DNA testing affordable. I got the basic ancestry package at 23andme on sale for $50 which gives the exact same genetic testing as their expensive health package. It just doesn’t give the medical analysis and reports. I used the free tool at https://codegen.eu/ which got me pretty far. There are many other services of varying expense one can use to analyze their data. I think most will import the raw data from either 23andme and Ancestry.com. Each is a differing subset of your genome and I don’t know which service gives the best covereage of medically relevant genes. And there are several other genetic testing services too, some even offering complete genome sequencing though that was a few thousand dollars last I checked.

(Connie Walsh) #9

I have been carnivore since July. I couldn’t believe the energy I got from carnivore and went for 2 months expecting the symptoms (listed above) to abate. They kept getting worse. At first I just took potassium salt (in addition to my regular salt) and that helped a tiny bit. Then I used a magnesium spray and that helped a little bit too. I was miserable. So I added Selenium and magnesium supplements. My ankle pain and my large muscle twitches disappeared over the next week. I went to the dentist twice telling her that I was sure something was wrong. She said it all looked good from the teeth point of view. On a whim I added Vitamin C (probably the 3rd or 4th month) and that pain started going away. Then I woke up one morning and my eye had a blood blister on it. And it was sore too. I looked that up and they said that it could be a deficiency from Vitamin A. After that (December), I went through every vitamin that could be deficient from a carnivore diet and added them. After I added the Omega 3-6-9 I realized that my lips had been cracked and bleeding and I had been going through a tonne of lipbalm. After that they were fine.

Just a note, I have always been prone to vitamin deficiencies. Malabsorption my doc tells me. I used to wait for the blood test to come back and show me I was deficient and then I realized that my body tells me (if I take the time to listen). I got my DNA tested about 2 years ago and I was able to use it to improve my health. I have MTHFR double heterozygous, as well I have a couple of other food related SNPs.