Your Vitamins Might Be Hurting You More Than Helping

The wellness world has convinced many of us that when it comes to vitamins and supplements, more equals better. This dangerous misconception has real consequences, as I've witnessed firsthand with patients like Samantha, whose well-intentioned supplement routine led to permanent nerve damage.

Through Samantha's story, we explore how her daily stack of supplements—a multivitamin, B-complex, energy powder, and relaxation gummies—unknowingly delivered 140mg of vitamin B6 daily, far exceeding the upper tolerable limit. After eight months, she developed pyridoxine-induced sensory neuropathy, with symptoms of tingling, burning sensations, numbness, and coordination loss that she initially attributed to perimenopause.

This toxicology principle—"the dose makes the poison"—applies universally. Vitamin A, essential for vision and immunity, can cause liver damage and birth defects in excess. Iron supplementation without testing can be particularly dangerous for those with hemochromatosis, affecting 1 in 200 people of European descent. Even vitamin D, selenium, and other B vitamins follow this pattern—beneficial at appropriate doses but potentially harmful when overconsumed.

Why do whole foods differ from supplements? When nutrients come from food, they arrive with fiber, water, and compounds that help your body regulate absorption. Your body controls how much beta-carotene from carrots converts to vitamin A, but high-dose supplements bypass these natural safeguards. The supplement industry capitalizes on our vulnerability with marketing terms like "megadose" and "pharmaceutical grade," while long wait times for medical care drive many to self-diagnose based on symptoms rather than testing.

The solution isn't avoiding supplements entirely but approaching them wisely: consult healthcare providers before supplementing, get appropriate testing, understand daily allowances and upper limits, check for supplement duplication, choose reputable brands with third-party testing, and prioritize nutrient-rich whole foods first. Your health isn't about adding more—it's about finding that optimal balance where nutrients support rather than harm your body.

Have you checked your supplement stack lately? Share this episode with someone whose medicine cabinet might be putting them at risk.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Section A

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:11

Hey everyone, welcome to Season 2 of the Dr Jules Plant-Based Podcast, where we discuss everything from plant-based nutrition to the main pillars of lifestyle medicine. Yo, plant-based buddies, welcome back to another episode. Today we're going to be talking about a super important subject the hidden risk of overdoing supplements and vitamins. Now, you've probably heard it a hundred times if a little is good, more must be better. But when it comes to vitamins and minerals and supplements, more could actually be dangerous. So today I'll share a story from my clinic about a patient whose well-intentioned supplement routine caused permanent nerve damage. We'll talk about why some vitamins can be toxic, how to spot the warning signs and how to know if you might be overdoing it with supplements. Now I remember one of my patients and I've talked about him before. He walked in the office with a Sobeys bag filled with something like three to four hundred dollars per month's worth of supplements. Now, for him, this was health. He was stressed out, he wasn't eating well, he wasn't sleeping well, he wasn't managing stress, but yet somehow his vulnerable self was convinced that he needed all of these supplements. Now, certain supplements can absolutely be super. Creatine is great to improve sports performance and recovery. Certain green powders may have benefits in people who don't have a high quality diet. Vitamin D supplementation, omega-3, iron in certain clinical scenarios, where it's useful, could help, but a lot of the supplements are not only not useful, they could actually be dangerous.

Speaker 1: 2:15

Now let's talk about Samantha. Samantha is a 47-year-old woman who's going through perimenopause and, like a lot of women in that stage of life, she wanted to feel more energetic. She wanted to balance her hormones and support her nervous system, so she booked an online consult with a health coach and basically started following the advice she found on social media. Now her daily supplement stack looked a little like this she was taking a high-potency multivitamin with 20 milligrams of B6. She was taking a B-complex that also contained 50 milligrams of B6. She had an energy booster powder. She was taking, every morning, twice a day, 30 milligrams per scoop of B6. And she was taking nighttime relaxation gummies that also contained 10 milligrams per serving of B6. Now that's about 140 milligrams of vitamin B6 per day, well above the upper tolerable limit of 100 milligrams per day.

Speaker 1: 3:25

Now, when she first came to see me, she had been taking this for over eight months. At first she felt fine, but over time she started noticing tingling and burning in her feet, in her fingertips, numbness in her hands, loss of coordination. She felt fatigued and irritable. She chalked it up to perimenopause, like a lot of women do, but her symptoms kept getting worse. Now, when we finally ran the numbers and started looking at her supplements, it was clear she had a very rare condition called iridoxine-induced sensory neuropathy.

Speaker 1: 4:04

Basically, it's nerve damage caused from too much vitamin B6. And here's the scary part Sometimes that damage can be irreversible. Don't get me wrong. Vitamin B6 is an essential vitamin for brain health, metabolism and making neurotransmitters, but in high doses over long periods it can actually damage the nerves that they're supposed to protect. And this is the perfect example of the toxicology principle the dose makes the poison. And it's not just B6, the same could apply to water. If you drink too much water a very important substance that we would die without you can actually disturb electrolyte balance, dilute sodium, chloride, potassium and have a life-threatening condition called hyponatremia, which could possibly lead to seizures and even death.

Speaker 1: 5:07

Now many vitamins and minerals have a sweet spot just enough to meet your needs, enough to be optimal, and then you tip into toxicity territory. There are a lot of different examples of vitamins that do this. Vitamin A is vital for vision and for immunity, but in excess it could cause headaches, dizziness, even liver damage and even bird defects if it's taken during pregnancy in high doses. Whole food sources like carrots or sweet potatoes and spinach. They're much safer in terms of vitamin A because your body can regulate conversion from beta carotene, whereas supplements and high-dose supplements could bypass that safety mechanism that we have built in.

Speaker 1: 5:57

Now, iron the most commonly diagnosed deficiency in the world in terms of a mineral deficiency. It's super necessary for oxygen transport, but too much can cause organ damage, especially to the liver and to the heart. Now this is a big risk factor for people who take iron. Just in case, without testing, there's a condition called hemochromatosis. It's an iron overload condition. It affects about one out of every 200 people of European descent and basically it's a mutation in a gene that regulates iron absorption. So in people who either eat normal, quantities of iron typically doesn't pose a problem. In women who are menstruating and losing iron every month, it can fly under the radar for years. But in people who either take supplementation or simply ingest too much iron, either from food or supplements, they can quickly accumulate too much and develop symptoms of iron overload.

Speaker 1: 7:08

Super important vitamins like vitamin D that supports bone health and immune function, can also, if taken in excess, cause problems. Too much could raise calcium levels dangerously and potentially lead to kidney stones or heart issues. Most toxicities will happen when people are taking super high-dose supplements that are either not regulated or not being managed by their healthcare provider. Things as simple as selenium, which is super important for thyroid function, in excess can cause hair loss and brittle nails and even other neurological problems. And other vitamins of the B group, like vitamin B3, in the right dose could potentially lower cholesterol, but in high doses it can cause flushing and liver damage and even impact blood sugar and liver damage and even impact blood sugar. Now, these aren't rare cases. The supplement-induced toxicity is one of the most commonly preventable causes of liver injury that's reported to poison control centers.

Speaker 1: 8:18

Just because something is natural doesn't mean that it's safe. Now, when nutrients come from whole foods, they arrive in a package with fiber and water and other compounds that can help your body use what it needs and excrete the rest. We have built-in mechanisms that regulate absorption Doors close when we have too much and doors open when we need more. Now the reason you don't overdose on vitamin A after eating a lot of carrots is because your body can control how much beta-carotene it converts. But if you take high-dose retinol supplements, there's no off switch. Nature has built-in checks and balances, whereas pills and powders they bypass them. Now, unfortunately a lot of people, they end up supplementing irresponsibly, but it's not always their fault. There are other reasons that people end up overdoing vitamins, and in the industry there's a lot of marketing language, and terms like megadose or pharmaceutical grade or high potency are often used to make these vitamins more appealing.

Speaker 1: 9:32

Often, people are taking multiple products that contain the same vitamin or mineral without knowing that they're stacking supplements. Now, if you recall, my 47-year-old perimenopausal patient, samantha was taking a ton of vitamin B6, almost 40 milligrams over the upper tolerable limit. She had been doing that for eight months before we finally realized that her multiple supplements all contained small doses of vitamin B6, but these doses added up. Now I get it. People are desperate. People are vulnerable.

Speaker 1: 10:14

People get their information for health online. It takes months to see their doctors. Wait lists are super long. People tend to associate certain symptoms they have with possible deficiencies and they end up self-diagnosing and self-treating based on symptoms rather than lab testing. Now I get it. Experts tend to talk in nuance and to appear unsure and to talk about pros and cons and trade-offs, whereas influencers they appear overly confident, often without a shirt and a six-pack, telling you that the reason that you have headaches in the morning is because you're not drinking pink Himalayan salt, whereas your doctor has multiple possibilities that could explain your symptoms. He seems unsure. He wants to do more testing. I don't blame the public for trusting influencers without checking their credentials. And then there's the emotional piece. If you're tired, if you're stressed or struggling with symptoms, supplements can feel like a quick fix, and that's where good medical guidance comes in. Now here's how you protect yourself.

Speaker 1: 11:35

Make sure to talk to your healthcare provider and consider getting tested before supplementing, especially for nutrients like iron or vitamin D, vitamin B12. Very often you do not need some of these supplements if you have normal blood levels. You also want to know the RDA and the UL, that's the recommended daily allowance and the upper limit. Make sure to check your supplementation stack and confirm that you're not taking more than either the RDA or the UL. You want to make sure to avoid unnecessary duplication. If you take a multivitamin, check labels before adding a B-complex or other blends or powders, because you could be stacking up different minerals that add up over time, and make sure to choose reputable brands. Look for third-party testing, like NSF, for example. But the general rule of thumb is use food first. Just make sure to prioritize nutrient-rich foods whole foods like fruits and veggies, and legumes like chickpeas, beans, lentils and soy products, herbs and spices, whole grains, nuts and seeds. Nutrient-dense foods that contains all of these vitamins and minerals. Make sure to do that before reaching for pills. Make sure to work with your healthcare provider and they can tailor doses that will fit your needs.

Speaker 1: 13:06

Now, samantha's story is a cautionary tale. It's not about avoiding vitamins, but about respecting them and deficiencies. Yes, yes, they can harm you, but so can excess. More is not always better and sometimes less is more, and you have to think of supplements as a tool, not as a magic bullet. And the most powerful nutrition strategy still comes from what you eat and what you put on your plate. If you're unsure, ask your pharmacist or your doctor before starting anything new.

Speaker 1: 13:48

Your health is not just about adding more. It's about getting that balance right and hitting that sweet spot right on. If this episode gave you a new perspective and a new respect for supplements. Share it with a friend who has a kitchen cabinet full of bottles. Thanks for tuning in. I hope you learned that the sweet spot, the optimal sweet spot, is what we should be aiming for, and it's not always. More is better, right on. Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you at the next episode. Hey, everyone, go check out my website plantbaseddoctorjulescom to find free downloadable resources and remember that you can find me on Facebook and Instagram at Dr Jules Cormier, and on YouTube at Client-Based Dr Jules.