What you are about to read is not exact science. It’s an observation, but a scary one. It’s an area that I think we need to start researching. In my practice I have seen a lot of kidney failure recently. It’s been mainly men around 50-70 years old. The thing they all have in common though is that they come to me taking huge amounts of supplements, sometimes 35, 45, even 50 pills a day thinking that this will make them healthy. They’re taking so many things and it can be a little bit of a whole lot of different supplements or a lot of just a few kinds, but I’m seeing them in kidney failure.
This same age group is also taking a lot of prescription medications. When they add ridiculous numbers of supplements on top of their prescriptions, plus what normal aging does on its own, their kidneys are just shutting down. I’ve seen this eight different times in the last six months and it scares me. Where there is smoke there is fire. I’m not sure what the connection is between large doses of supplements (unnecessary supplements) and renal failure, but it sure looks like there is one.
One gentleman’s labs showed renal problems and it turned out he was taking 50 supplement pills a day. A lot of you are probably asking why. As you know, misinformation abounds. He had been advised at a health food store to take various things and he was self-medicating with things he’d read about online and seen on the news. He thought these were all good for him and was taking them in addition to his prescription medications. This relates to renal failure because your kidneys have to process everything you take in, the supplements, the prescriptions, everything and they just shut down.
Again, these are just observations, but they are affecting my practice. I’m now asking people for any additional supplements they’re taking in addition to what they’re naming and I’m looking at their renal function.
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Tags: cardiotabs, forever young diet, Joan O'Keefe, kidneys, kidneys dietary supplements, renal failure, renal function, supplement toxicity, supplements, too many supplements, vitamins
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