When You Kind Of Poison Yourself A Little

I take vitamins along with my prescribed medications every day.

I think most of them are run of the mill.... calcium... fiber... Vitamin D... nothing that I think is too out of the ordinary.

I also have some that I take when I'm feeling run down or like I'm fighting something, namely Vitamin C and Zinc.  Those two I generally only take when I feel like I need it (plus too much Vitamin C can make things a bit... um... uncomfortable "downstairs" ahem.)

A while back I read something about Zinc helping the immune system and so I figured with all that's out there right now I'd start taking Zinc daily.  Yay me!

A few... I don't know, months?  Weeks?  Somewhere in there, I started to notice I'd get nauseated around lunch time.

I think as long as I've been writing this blog I've talked about not having the most stable of stomach/digestion situations so being nauseated when eating sucks but isn't terribly unusual for me.  (Sadly.)

So I took to just figuring when I'd eat lunch and take lunch meds/vitamins I'd also just take a Gaviscon to help the nausea fade a little.  But ugh.

Over the years of living with and dealing with this stomach stuff I've gotten fairly good at knowing what it was that upset my stomach.  I can't really explain it but it's like that particular flavour "sticks out" and I "read" that as being the thing I should avoid or be wary of.

So not that long ago when I noticed that my upset at lunch was fairly consistent I started trying to pay attention to what it was.  And the taste I was getting was "chalk".... so... one of my vitamins?  Hmmm.... that shouldn't be.  They're fairly neutral... At lunch I take a calcium, a Zinc and some D, all things that seem pretty neutral to me.  But to test it out, I stopped taking lunch meds for two days and?  No nausea.  Hmmm...

Yesterday I took them all again and Urgh.... nausea.

So I trusted my gut (ha... instinct) and googled "Zinc and nausea".

And, well hey guess what?  The recommended adult female dose is less than 1/5th of what I'd been taking!  WHAT?

WHAT???

The recommended daily dose of Zinc from any/all sources for an adult woman is 8mg (11mg for men) but what I bought in the store was 50mg! 

Sure enough one of the symptoms of "zinc toxicity" is nausea so I'm stopping my daily Zinc immediately but why on earth would they sell dosages SO much higher than what ALL the places recommend?

I know that often Zinc is suggested as a "hey you have a cold coming on take some Zinc" thing so maybe they just assume people are hammering large doses for a few days and then stopping rather than taking the overly excessive dose daily?

To be fair, it took a while (a few months?) for me to notice the pattern and figure it out so maybe it took a while for the over-amount to build up in my system but still... not cool vitamin companies, not cool.  

So yeah... I'm... uh, stopping taking that little fellow!  Who knew, eh?  Glad I figured it out though, (and sorry to myself for all the unnecessary nausea!)  Jeepers!