We tend to think of vitamins as something natural, a harmless pill that we pop to boost our system just in case we’re lacking anything.
But a few recent studies now reveal that a common vitamin that most of us take could be the #1 cause of the spike in new neuropathy cases over the past few decades.
If you suffer from neuropathy, you absolutely must stop taking this vitamin.
Vitamin B6 (also called pyridoxine) is essential in the human body, and deficiencies can cause a wide range of conditions like anemia, skin and tongue inflammation, abnormal brainwaves, depression, confusion, weakened immune function, and so on.
But deficiencies are quite rare, since Vitamin B6 is found in lots of our favorite foods, including meat, poultry, pork, salmon, tuna, milk, eggs, oats, legumes, peanuts, carrots, sweet potatoes, avocadoes, and bananas.
As such, unless you are on some very strange specialist diet, or unless you take drugs that deplete your B6 levels, it really is not possible to fall short.
But many people still take Vitamin B6 supplements.
Since the 1980s, a growing number of reports have emerged about people who began suffering from neuropathy after consuming too much Vitamin B6.
Already in 1992, the journal Neurology published a study showing that people taking 56 mg of B6 per day started suffering from neuropathy symptoms within 45 days, while those who took 12 mg daily began struggling after seven months. In some cases, the damage was permanent and the symptoms continued even after they stopped taking these supplements.
This is the kind of study that prompted the British National Health Service to recommend that we take no more than 10 mg of Vitamin B6 supplements per day, unless told to do so by a doctor.
The recommended daily dose is 1.2 mg for women and 1.4 mg for men, but many supplements contain up to 50, 100, or even 200 mg.