Dietician explains why some vitamin B6 supplements will be removed from sale by June

ABC NEWS (Australia)

This week, the Theraputic Goods Administration announced stricter controls on products containing high levels of vitamin B6. It comes after a lengthy review into more than 200 reports of side effects, including nerve damage, in people who'd been taking B6 supplements long-term. And that's renewed debate about the use and overuse of dietary supplements more broadly. Evangeline Mantsio-Ris is a dietitian and the program director of Nutrition and Food Sciences at the University of South Australia.

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00:00The TGA there is to monitor all supplements and drugs that are used by the public and

00:07in this case with vitamin B6 which was taken in high doses and the problem is that vitamin

00:12B6 is available in not only vitamin and mineral supplements but it might also be added into

00:18protein supplements, into macro bars, a whole lot of products.

00:22So they did need to come in and put a limit to the amount that everyone can put into these

00:27supplements to protect the people.

00:30Okay, so this decision will come into play as of next year.

00:35Are you expecting other vitamins or supplements to go the same way?

00:39Yeah, look, that's an interesting question and the possibility is that it's going to occur

00:45with some supplements that have a really narrow safety margin.

00:50For example, we have established nutrient intakes that are safe for people to consume

00:56and in some cases we also established the upper intake level which is telling us that at a

01:01certain level if you take these products, these vitamins, they can cause toxicity problems and when

01:07you have a whole lot of products that may contain them, it might be something that the TGA needs to

01:13keep looking at with other nutrients as well.

01:15All right, well that just brings into question the standard of the regulations that are currently

01:22in place, are they stringent enough?

01:24Look, that's a difficult one.

01:27What we've got to balance here is accessibility and the time it takes to get a product

01:32onto the shelf for the consumer and also safety.

01:35So what the TGA does at the moment is they have a pre-approved list of ingredients that companies can use

01:42in their supplements and they also have pre-approved low-level health claims that they can make.

01:48Things such as supports mental health, supports, you know, immunity and those sorts of claims.

01:54And they also ask that the companies abide by good manufacturing principles.

01:59What they don't check is if the products actually work.

02:04And you can imagine how long it would take to do those studies for every product.

02:09So what I think it means is that we need better education to the public, that most of us don't

02:16need to take any supplements.

02:18What we need to be doing is eating a healthy, balanced and varied diet from as many different

02:24foods as possible to get all the nutrients we need.

02:26We have to remember for centuries and centuries, humans have obtained all their nutrients from

02:33the food they consume, not from supplements.

02:35I feel eventually that you're talking straight at me there because I'm one of those who will

02:40walk through a pharmacy and then get dazzled with all the supplements and vitamins that are on the

02:45shelves. And I kind of look at them and kind of go, oh, yeah, I am going to need some nail and hair

02:50vitamins or, you know, shiny hair supplements. But you say that there's really no need for that.

02:57Would you say then that supplements should actually be prescribed by a GP?

03:01Look, that would be ideal, wouldn't it? But with the amount of supplements that people take,

03:07you could imagine the increased workload that would be for GPs. It would just be impossible.

03:13What people need to remember is nutrients, those that we know of and those that we don't know of

03:19are in the foods we consume. We cannot generally get toxicity symptoms if we get nutrients from food.

03:27There's only one and that's selenium, which is very high in the Brazil nut.

03:32So for people that love eating Brazil nuts, they do have to limit how many they eat.

03:36But generally, every other nutrient, you can't get a toxicity symptom.

03:41So you're best off saving your money, particularly where we've got this cost of living crisis,

03:46and buying yummy fruits and vegetables and all those foods that you really enjoy eating

03:51to get all those nutrients.

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