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Can you take too much B Complex?

I am taking 1 of these. Would it hurt or be to much to take 2?

Ingredients:

Advan-C 100mg
B1 250mg
B2 10mg
B3 100mg
B6 100mg
Folic Acid 800mcg
B12 500mcg
Biotin 500mcg
B5 100mg


Thanks,

Cat

the concern would be the b6.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16320662
Vitamin B6 (pyridoxine) causes neuropathy at intakes of 1000 mg per day or more, which is about 800 times the daily intake from foods. There have also been occasional reports of toxicity at intakes of 100-300 mg per day.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16320661
n=2 case studies of neuropathy with supp in the B25/B50 range

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2162644
Studies involving large population groups with carpal tunnel syndrome, all adults, using 100-150 mg/day have shown minimal or no toxicity in five- to 10-year studies. Women self-medicating for PMS taking 500 to 5000 mg/day have shown peripheral neuropathy within one to three years. It would appear from this retrospective analysis that pyridoxine is safe at doses of 100 mg/day or less in adults.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articl ... id=1949298
Vitamin B6 at less than 200 mg daily is not likely to cause any adverse effects, but patients should be monitored for changes in symptoms, particularly when high doses are taken over long periods.

other than that, i have not found any studies looking at b6 toxicity from dietary intakes. i'm going to hazard that most studies using supplements or use histories are talking about synthetic supplements...

http://www.organicconsumers.org/nutricon/qa.cfm#7
How can I tell if my B vitamin is good?
A good example of "junk" nutritional supplements is B vitamins. Most people do not know that most B vitamins are made from petrochemicals! For your best health, take a whole-nutrient B vitamin and avoid synthetics.

http://www.chetday.com/bvitamins.html
"Whole food" vitamins are those that have been carefully processed and unaltered in any way that would change the molecular structure or biochemical combinations and actions of the vitamin complexes.
Chemically, natural and synthetic vitamins are identical. The same ingredients are contained within the molecules but they are arranged in a different fashion. When a beam of polarized light passes through a natural vitamin it will always bend to the right, due to the molecular rotation of the natural substance. The letter "d" seen on some supplement labels represents dextro or "right." This indicates that the vitamin is the natural form.
As a beam of polarized light passes through a synthetic vitamin it splits into two parts, one part bending to the right and the other to the left. The synthetic supplements may be represented by the letters "dl" preceding the vitamin name. The "d" for dextro and the "l" for levo or left. This demonstrates that the molecular rotation of the synthetic is not identical to the natural form. The biological activity of synthetic vitamins can be 50% to 70% less than nutrients in natural, whole food supplements.

B vitamins are not generally referred to in conjunction with these letters but the difference in molecular structure between synthetic and a truly natural substance applies to them as well as any other nutrient.

Whole food supplements and some "natural" supplements will give foods as sources for the nutrients they contain. If a supplement is synthetic it will usually show the following as sources:

B complex – no source listed
B1 – thiamine mononitrate or thiamine hydrochloride
B2 – riboflavin
B5 – calcium D-pantothenate
B6 – pyridoxine hydrochloride
B12 – cobalamin
Folic Acid – pteroylglutamic acid
Biotin – d-Biotin

whole food b-complex examples:
http://www.organic-pharmacy.com/rightfo ... ngredients
http://www.naturallydirect.net/whole-fo ... omplex.htm
http://www.perfectfoodsnutrition.com/b-complex.jpg
http://nutriplexformulas.com/?page_id=26

As a beam of polarized light passes through a synthetic vitamin it splits into two parts, one part bending to the right and the other to the left. The synthetic supplements may be represented by the letters "dl" preceding the vitamin name. The "d" for dextro and the "l" for levo or left.

Actually, with a racemic mixture there would be no observed rotation of plane polarized light. The rotation would be equal and opposite and would cancel each other out.

The biological activity of synthetic vitamins can be 50% to 70% less than nutrients in natural, whole food supplements.

Vitamin E is a good example. With vitamin E I think that the biological activity of the synthetic version would be much less. There are three regions in a vitamin E molecule where it can be bent either to the left or to the right in three dimensional space. Each of these three regions is called a chiral center. Chiral comes from the greek word for hand. In essence, a chiral center is a carbon atom that can have the other atoms attached to it in two different arrangements such that they form non-superimposable mirror images of each other (in the same way that our hands are non-superimposable mirror images). Since vitamin E has three chiral centers, there will be 2³ total possible combinations. With 8 different possible molecular configurations in synthetic vitamin E, which is also marked "dL", the natural form will only make up 12.5% of the total. The body only has receptors configured to accept the natural form. One wonders what the other 87.5% of the stuff is doing? In addition, it could explain why there have been so many studies reporting ambiguous results when looking at the effects of vitamin E.

Anyways, that's just my 2¢ on natural vitamins.

NHE

"Actually, with a racemic mixture there would be no observed rotation of plane polarized light. The rotation would be equal and opposite and would cancel each other out."
hi nhe, i gather that's the reason the synthetics get the 'dl' tag? the directions cancel?

moving from b vitamins to e, i have seen racemic applied to that synthetic vitamin in particular. you are exactly right NHE, many of the vitamin e studies used synthetic alpha tocopherol which i have read but not confirmed is synthesized from coal tar.

natural or synthetic, vitamin e studies tend to use alpha tocopherol in isolation from the rest of the e complex (the beta delta gamma tocopherols and the alpha beta delta and gamma tocotrienols).

isolated alpha tocopherol supplementation is known to drive down gamma tocopherol. gamma tocopherol is known to inhibit breast cancer cells in vitro, via a different mechanism than vitamin A, ie gamma-tocopherol is not dependent on estradiol presence/absence.

i have a 25 page collection of abstracts on the Es and selenium, importance in cancer and pulmonary embolism (k-antagonism / blood thinning). if anyone is interested pm me.

ps my vitamin e product is new roots E8 complex.

catfreak, re your b100s, i guess you could take 2 a day if you want but not forever - especially if you are not testing your levels.
consider trying to find a natural food source b-complex down the road.

HTH!
JL

Thanks Jimmy!!

I will just keep taking 1 a day to be safe. I really appreciate the input it helps me a lot.

Cat

no probs.

pps my new roots E8 is cheap compared to the equivalent product brand 'trophic'.. as in half the price.. not sure why, but they both seem to be natural source, and while mine says 'sunflower', the expensive one appears to be part soy bean source, and part palm.