Man ‘got kidney failure from taking too much of vitamin supplement’
Most of us think of vitamins as an instant health boost – whether they arrive in the form of healthy food, as a booster in cereal, or in a pill bottle.
But a 54-year-old man discovered to his cost that vitamins can seriously damage your health.
After taking concentrated Vitamin D drops every day for more than two years, he seriously and permanently damaged his kidneys.
Doctors were initially puzzled, but then realised a naturopath had prescribed the man a dangerously high dose of Vitamin D.
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The man had also inadvertently chosen a supplement twice the strength of the one he had been prescribed.
It left him with a dangerous build-up of Vitamin D and calcium in his blood – leaving him with kidneys with a seriously impaired filtration rate, Science Alert reported.
Study co-author Bourne Auguste said, ‘He thought that vitamins are harmless. And his logic, which one can understand looking back, is that the more vitamin D I take, the stronger the bones will be
The researchers wrote, ‘Our experience informs us that patients and clinicians should be better informed about the risks regarding the unfettered use of vitamin D,” the authors suggest.
‘Given new findings from the US Preventive Services Task Force, current Canadian guidelines regarding its use in low-risk individuals should be revisited.’
