July 22, 2025 • 21 mins
You may be like half of all Australians who now take a multivitamin, to improve their health.
But are they safe?
Melbourne dad Dominic Noonan-O’Keefe had no reason to think the multivitamin he took recently, to boost his energy, would be anything but. And then, one day, he sat at his desk and felt like his brain was exploding.
Today, health reporter Angus Thomson on the hundreds of Australians who’ve joined a class action investigation against wellness giant Blackmores. And the Australians who are unintentionally poisoning themselves with over-the-counter supplements.
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Episode Transcript
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S1 (00:01):
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is the morning edition. I'm Samantha Selinger Morris. It's Wednesday,
July 23rd. You may be like half of all Australians
who now take a multivitamin to improve their health, but
are they safe? Melbourne dad Dominic Noonan O'Keefe had no
(00:24):
reason to think that the multivitamin he took recently to
boost his energy would be anything but. And then one day,
he sat at his desk and felt like his brain
was exploding. Today, health reporter Angus Thompson on the hundreds
of Australians who've joined a class action investigation against wellness
giant Blackmores, and the Australians who are unintentionally poisoning themselves
(00:48):
with over-the-counter supplements. So, Angus, just to start off, can
you tell us how you actually stumbled onto this story?
Because I imagine many listeners would be like myself. They've
never taken B6, at least not knowingly, and they don't
know anything about it. So how did this all kick off?
S2 (01:07):
Yeah, I was like you, Sam. I hadn't heard of B6,
vitamin B6 until I think January last year when I
got an email from a reader, Gillian Clark, who had
been taking magnesium supplements for decades. Initially it was to
help with cramps after she'd been playing badminton. So Gillian
was 86 when I interviewed her last year. She started
(01:30):
losing feeling in her feet around 2012, and she was
diagnosed with peripheral neuropathy. So that's when nerve damage leads
to tingling and numbness in your fingers and toes. But
neither her GP or her neurologist could find the cause
of this, and the symptoms gradually worsened. Eventually, she worked
(01:52):
out that the two magnesium tablets she was taking each
day contained vitamin B6 at levels 80 times the recommended
dose for her age group. Um, so a lot of
that's a lot. Yeah. Then I did some research and
I stumbled upon an article in the Medical Journal of Australia, uh,
where Sydney neurologists Professor Matthew Kiernan described a 40 year
(02:16):
old gym enthusiast who came to him with uncontrollable twitches,
which he eventually worked out was the result of vitamin
B6 toxicity. Uh, then after we published that story, I
had dozens of emails in my inbox with people who'd
been through similar things.
S1 (02:33):
That's incredible. So can you take us through what vitamin
B6 actually is and what sort of products it can
be found in, and how many? Because it's only upon
reading your stories that I've realized it's actually in a
lot of products. Right?
S2 (02:45):
So vitamin B6 is an essential nutrient that supports things
like healthy brain function and converting food into energy. Most
people actually get enough B6 through their diet. So foods
like chicken, fish, legumes are all really good sources of
the vitamin, but it's also added to other processed foods,
(03:06):
energy drinks, diet shakes, supplements, and of course, the vitamins
that we're speaking about today, which sometimes people do have
vitamin B6 deficiency and do need these vitamins. Other people
don't even know that they're taking these. They're taking magnesium supplements.
They're taking zinc supplements that might have vitamin B6 as
an additive. Vitamin B6 is registered in more than 1500
(03:30):
over-the-counter supplements, from magnesium to zinc to ashwagandha to all
these products that people take for their wellness. And 80%
of them contain levels well above the recommended daily amount
of 1.7mg.
S1 (03:45):
Which brings us to your latest story. Because you've reported
that a lawyer is investigating a class action lawsuit against
wellness giant Blackmores on behalf of a really a growing
number of people who have unknowingly poisoned themselves with vitamin B6.
So what is going on? And just how dangerous is this?
S2 (04:02):
Yeah. So back in May, Melbourne based law firm Polaris
Lawyers announced they were launching a class action investigation against Blackmores,
the wellness giant, on behalf of hundreds of patients who
have developed twitches, migraines, nerve damage and other neurological symptoms
after they've taken their supplements.
S3 (04:24):
Hundreds of Australians are ready to join a class action
against health supplement giant Blackmores over the allegedly toxic levels
of B6 in its vitamin supplements. Patients have experienced neurological symptoms,
including twitches. The medicines watchdog is considering restricting access to
products containing vitamin B6 linked to the growing number of
(04:47):
toxicity cases.
S2 (04:49):
So vitamin B6 has generally been considered toxic only when
consumed in high doses over a long period. So if
you remember Gillian Clark, she'd been taking it for 20 years.
But the Therapeutic Goods Administration, so that's the medicines watchdog
last month noted there was no scientific consensus on a
safe threshold and announced that they were looking at changing
(05:11):
a few things in terms of the regulation of that.
So symptoms include nausea, hypersensitivity and nerve damage, which leads
to that tingling and numbness that we mentioned. So often.
A lot of these supplements won't say that they have
vitamin B6. They'll often say that they have a form
of B6, which if you look on the back of
your supplement label, this will say pyridoxine, pyridoxal, pyridoxamine. And
(05:36):
these have been associated with about a thousand adverse events
reported to the TGA since 2010. Mind you, these are notifications.
These haven't been investigated by the TGA. These are just
people saying I've developed these symptoms after taking this supplement.
The most common symptoms reported include nausea. Hypersensitivity. Peripheral neuropathy,
(05:58):
which is that damage to the nerves that we spoke
about before.
S1 (06:01):
Well, I wanted to ask you about the experience of
one man you spoke to. This is Melbourne dad Dominic
Noonan O'Keefe, because he took some multivitamins and says he's
experienced some long term injuries as a result. And they're
pretty extreme. He's one of the people who's taking part
in this potential class action against Blackmores. So tell me
about him, because I was pretty shocked when I read
just how bad his symptoms were.
S2 (06:23):
Yeah. So Dominic, who lives in Frankston down in Victoria,
he started taking vitamins about eight weeks out from the
birth of his daughter, honor. He had decided to start
taking them because he'd heard from podcasters such as Andrew
Huberman that it helps with things like fatigue and sort
of general wellness. So at first he didn't really notice
(06:43):
much of a difference. Either way, he didn't notice himself
getting better. He didn't notice any of the symptoms that
he would later get. But it started as a sort
of generalized fatigue, which he just put down to sleepless
nights with a newborn baby, which, you know, a lot
of people can sympathize with.
S4 (07:03):
I started feeling this kind of generalized fatigue, kind of
like you're hungover from a big night out and it
wasn't going away. Like, I couldn't sleep it away. I
couldn't nap it away, I couldn't recover.
S2 (07:19):
But a couple of months later, he was standing at
his desk in Melbourne CBD, and he said he felt
like his brain just exploded.
S4 (07:29):
And I felt like this stiffness and fullness in my neck.
And then all of a sudden it was like an
explosion went off in my brain. It felt like it
was my brain. Most overwhelming thing I've ever experienced. I
couldn't hear anything properly. Like, everything was just overwhelming, like
(07:50):
pain in my head. I thought in that moment I
thought I was dying. I was just panicking. It was
like a yeah, I can't really describe it because it's
kind of even hard to remember what it was like.
It was just so.
S2 (08:01):
And that was he later worked out, was a form
of neuralgia, and he's described the extent of his symptoms
as almost unbelievable. He thought that he had motor neurone disease.
He thought that he had Parkinson's. He began this sort
of investigation where he went to his GP. He went
to a physio. He went to specialists. He got scans,
(08:22):
he got blood tests. Nothing was coming up. So eventually
one day, a few days before Christmas, he was talking
to his step sister, who asked him if he was
taking vitamins because she had a colleague who had suffered toxicity.
So he went and got a blood test because he
checked his vitamins and sure enough, they had B6 in them.
(08:44):
He went and got a blood test, and then within
days he had a diagnosis of B6 toxicity.
S1 (08:49):
I mean, that's a shocker. It's not often you hear
of someone saying that they feel like their brains exploded.
I can only imagine the terror of feeling something like that.
But you spoke to another person. This is Katrina Pakulski.
She's a dentist from Sydney. Well, tell me about her experience,
because it's pretty emotional. What happened to her?
S2 (09:06):
Yeah, it definitely Katrina is similar to Dominik in the
sense that otherwise healthy, very health conscious. She's a dentist.
She works in Sydney's south. She switched to Blackmores magnesium
supplements in June last year, and within three months she
had body twitches, restless leg and an auditory hallucination. So
she was hearing sounds and things like that, not voices,
(09:29):
but sounds. She stopped taking the supplements after discovering the
link between her symptoms and B6 toxicity. And while most
of her severe symptoms have since subsided, she still has
lingering numbness in her fingers. And when I spoke to her,
she was quite frustrated that this had happened to her,
(09:51):
that she didn't know that vitamin B6 was in her
supplements and she was sort of speaking about, you know,
crying to her partner, wondering what was happening to her
and whether it was going to stop. And she said,
you know, that she's a health professional, and she can't
believe that there's not more stringent regulations on these vitamins.
S1 (10:10):
And it's interesting because I noticed that one Brisbane pathologist
told the ABC just earlier this month that he has
seen a massive increase in the number of people coming
forward to get blood tests to check for B6 toxicity.
So is this increase in people being tested? Is it
being seen elsewhere in Australia? And is there a particular
group of people who are sort of walking up to
test for this?
S2 (10:29):
Yeah. So vitamin B6 toxicity can be diagnosed with a
simple blood test that you can get at your GP
in the Brisbane pathologist that you mentioned in that ABC
story had seen a doubling in B6 toxicity cases or
positive blood test results since January. And, you know, that
accounts for more than 10,000 a month. So a lot
(10:52):
of people in Australia are taking vitamins. A lot of
people are finding that they have vitamin B6 levels above
the recommended limit, and they didn't even know that they
were taking B6.
S1 (11:06):
We'll be right back. And so I'm just wondering, is
this almost something of like a perfect storm, for lack
of a better term? Because I know when we spoke
before recording, you mentioned that, you know, many, many years
ago there might have been a number of older women,
let's just say, who'd be taking magnesium, say, for cramps
in their legs or something like that. But now there's
(11:28):
this wellness trend and just a huge swath of people
now take vitamins. Is that right?
S2 (11:33):
Yeah. I think that's something that we see in the
people that I have spoken to. I think Jillian is
someone who took magnesium supplements for things like cramp when
she was playing sports. Now we're seeing more and more
younger people like Dominic. They listen to podcasts or they
read stories about sort of benefits of taking supplements or multivitamins.
(11:54):
And there does seem to be in this class action
or the people who've put themselves forward for it. There
seems to be a lot of young people who are
also involved in that. So I think there definitely is
a trend of people who are taking supplements. And I
spoke to a researcher at the University of Sydney for
my story, Professor Joanna Harnett. She's a complementary medicine expert
(12:19):
in pharmacy. And she said over nearly half of Australians
surveyed take multivitamins. So not all of those have B6.
Not all of those are magnesium or these things, but
it just shows the scale of, I guess this industry
and Blackmores is such a massive company. It's it's an
Australian success story really. But then there is this sort
(12:42):
of looming legal action.
S1 (12:44):
And it's so interesting because I believe you've also found
that the symptoms of B6 toxicity, they're actually similar to
B6 deficiency. So in some cases, people who are trying
to help themselves are actually harming themselves by taking more
of the supplement when they should actually stop. Is that right?
S2 (13:00):
Yeah. That's right. And that's one of the really interesting
things I found with doing this is that when you have, say,
reduced cognitive function or a bit of tiredness, bit of fatigue,
even those peripheral neuropathy symptoms, they're all symptoms of vitamin
B6 deficiency. They're also symptoms of vitamin B6 toxicity. So
(13:21):
you might have someone that's taking these supplements to address
some sort of deficiency in their life, but then they
end up sort of going the other way and overcompensating
when those symptoms don't resolve. So you have, I guess,
this sort of perfect storm of people doubling down on
taking vitamins, when in actual fact they should be pulling back.
S1 (13:42):
That's that's wild. I mean, that is just wild. It's
like someone's punking these people. I mean, that's just crazy.
But I wanted to ask you about this class action
investigation because you've mentioned this previously, there's 300 Australians who
I guess are speaking to this Melbourne injury law firm.
And just to be clear, the lawyer representing these people
hasn't yet filed a class action lawsuit against Blackmores. So
(14:03):
I have to ask, is this because the lawyer isn't
sure he's got enough evidence to prove the case? You know,
perhaps that there's sufficient evidence of cause and effect between
taking the vitamins and these people suffering.
S2 (14:14):
Yeah. So, Nick, man, who's the principal at Polaris? He
said that look, the link between high doses of vitamin
B6 and peripheral neuropathy. So that's the twitching and numbness
has been established for a long time. We've known that.
So the evidence is there for that. Nick's sort of
said to me that class actions are quite legally complex.
(14:36):
You're acting on behalf of a whole group of people
who have a range of symptoms, might have been taking
different supplements as whole, different factors. So it often takes
lawyers years to collate evidence, find lead plaintiffs who can
get on board and kind of, you know, their case
is suitable for interrogation. So this thing will take time.
(14:59):
I think they expect that by the end of the year,
they will possibly have some documents filed to court. They're
also waiting for Blackmores to respond to them with some documents,
and they haven't ruled out the possibility of this extending
to other manufacturers of multivitamins. So Blackmores themselves have about
(15:19):
40 vitamins on the market that have B6 in them.
But of course there's many, many more manufactured by all
sorts of companies that also contain B6.
S1 (15:29):
Wow. And so what have you heard from the TGA
in reaction to these people coming forward? And is there
any suggestion that perhaps the TGA is at least in
part to blame? Because I was quite shocked by one
line in your story, which noted that last month the
TGA said that there was no scientific consensus on a
safe threshold of B6. And as a layperson reading that,
(15:51):
I thought, surely if there's no scientific consensus on how
much of a vitamin is safe to take, perhaps like
we shouldn't be taking it.
S2 (15:57):
Yeah. So I think this has been a sort of
moving feast a bit for the TGA to get on
top of. And they have, I think in 2020, they
made some changes that required all supplements containing daily doses
of more than 50mg of B6 to carry a warning statement,
which sort of tells people to stop taking if they
experience tingling or numbness. That threshold was lowered to ten
(16:21):
milligrams in 2022, after they hadn't seen that sort of
public awareness of the issues sort of take hold. There
has been a little bit of criticism of the TGA,
I think, just in regards to that threshold. It's sort
of been considered that. So there's the recommended daily intake,
which is around two milligrams. The safe upper limit has
(16:41):
been considered sort of around 100mg. Previously it was maybe 200mg.
Grams where they've seen real issues with that. I think
the real problem with this is that people don't often
don't just take one vitamin. So one product, one tablet
might contain 50mg or it might contain 25mg. But as
(17:03):
well as your magnesium, you might be taking zinc or
you might be taking ashwagandha, or you might be taking
whatever other supplement that contains B6. And so the cumulative
effect of that is that your intake of B6 is
above 100mg, and that over time, has led to really
significant problems for a lot of people. There are some
(17:26):
cases as well, where people have developed those symptoms and
their intake has been much lower than 100mg, so there's
still a lot to do on it. Last month, the
TGA announced that they were considering making all supplements with
more than 50mg of vitamin B6, putting them behind the
counter So scheduling them so that if you need or
(17:49):
you want to purchase a product with more than 50mg,
you have to speak to a pharmacist and they can
explain to you the risks that won't take effect until
February 2027. A lot of people are saying that's not
soon enough, but I think the other piece of this
is just that people don't know that they're taking this.
(18:09):
And so there's other recommendations that the TGA have made
around making sure that people are aware of this, building
public awareness, and that if they do experience any of
these symptoms, that they speak to their GP or they
consider stopping taking these vitamins. It's also important to say
that Blackmores says that all its products, including those containing
(18:30):
vitamin B6, are developed in strict accordance with the Tga's
regulatory requirements. But Nick man, that's the lawyer from Polaris.
He said that companies have a duty to protect customers
and that the strong precedent for successful legal claims against
the manufacturers of products approved by regulators, but later proven
(18:51):
to be harmful. So asbestos is a really good example
of this, where that was approved for sale by regulators
and used widely. And then, of course, we've had numerous
class actions, legal actions against the manufacturers of that since.
So it's worth keeping in mind that while they meet
TGA requirements, the goalposts can shift sometimes.
S1 (19:15):
And so it's one of the takeaways that essentially if
people are taking any vitamins, they kind of should, I
guess get it cross-checked with a pharmacist or a GP first,
because I mean, for one thing, you noted earlier that
B6 isn't even always listed as B6 on the actual bottle.
It might be called pyridoxine or pyridoxal or pyridoxamine. So,
you know, most people, myself definitely included, I would have
(19:35):
no idea what that is. So do you reckon people
should just take everything to a doctor or pharmacist and say, hey,
am I going to overdose if I take this?
S5 (19:44):
Well, it's always good.
S2 (19:45):
To get, I think, independent, expert advice. I know that
there's obviously challenges with seeing a GP at the moment,
which we're all familiar with. So I think that that's important,
but that's not just part of it. I think the
other consideration that we have to make to is that
I think that when people think about supplements, vitamins, they're
(20:07):
naturally occurring and people make a connection between them being
natural and being good for you. And one of the
things that Joanna Harnett said to me was that people
who use these complementary medicines so multivitamins believe it's natural
and therefore safe, but everything at a certain dose can
(20:28):
be harmful to the body, including these things that are
derived from nature. So it's important to know what you're taking.
But it's also important to keep track of your symptoms
and know what is happening to your body. When for.
S1 (20:42):
Sure. Wow. Well, I know there was a lot of
interest in the newsroom when I told people we were
going to be reporting on this because, like you say,
so many people take vitamins. So thank you so much
for your time.
S2 (20:53):
Thanks so much for having me, Sam.
S1 (21:03):
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by Josh towers.
Our executive producer is Tammy Mills. Tom McKendrick is our
head of audio. To listen to our episodes as soon
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(21:29):
And to stay up to date, sign up to our
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important news in your inbox every morning. Links are in
the show. Notes. I'm Samantha Selinger Morris. Thanks for listening.
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is the morning edition. I'm Samantha Selinger Morris. It's Wednesday,
July 23rd. You may be like half of all Australians
who now take a multivitamin to improve their health, but
are they safe? Melbourne dad Dominic Noonan O'Keefe had no
(00:24):
reason to think that the multivitamin he took recently to
boost his energy would be anything but. And then one day,
he sat at his desk and felt like his brain
was exploding. Today, health reporter Angus Thompson on the hundreds
of Australians who've joined a class action investigation against wellness
giant Blackmores, and the Australians who are unintentionally poisoning themselves
(00:48):
with over-the-counter supplements. So, Angus, just to start off, can
you tell us how you actually stumbled onto this story?
Because I imagine many listeners would be like myself. They've
never taken B6, at least not knowingly, and they don't
know anything about it. So how did this all kick off?
S2 (01:07):
Yeah, I was like you, Sam. I hadn't heard of B6,
vitamin B6 until I think January last year when I
got an email from a reader, Gillian Clark, who had
been taking magnesium supplements for decades. Initially it was to
help with cramps after she'd been playing badminton. So Gillian
was 86 when I interviewed her last year. She started
(01:30):
losing feeling in her feet around 2012, and she was
diagnosed with peripheral neuropathy. So that's when nerve damage leads
to tingling and numbness in your fingers and toes. But
neither her GP or her neurologist could find the cause
of this, and the symptoms gradually worsened. Eventually, she worked
(01:52):
out that the two magnesium tablets she was taking each
day contained vitamin B6 at levels 80 times the recommended
dose for her age group. Um, so a lot of
that's a lot. Yeah. Then I did some research and
I stumbled upon an article in the Medical Journal of Australia, uh,
where Sydney neurologists Professor Matthew Kiernan described a 40 year
(02:16):
old gym enthusiast who came to him with uncontrollable twitches,
which he eventually worked out was the result of vitamin
B6 toxicity. Uh, then after we published that story, I
had dozens of emails in my inbox with people who'd
been through similar things.
S1 (02:33):
That's incredible. So can you take us through what vitamin
B6 actually is and what sort of products it can
be found in, and how many? Because it's only upon
reading your stories that I've realized it's actually in a
lot of products. Right?
S2 (02:45):
So vitamin B6 is an essential nutrient that supports things
like healthy brain function and converting food into energy. Most
people actually get enough B6 through their diet. So foods
like chicken, fish, legumes are all really good sources of
the vitamin, but it's also added to other processed foods,
(03:06):
energy drinks, diet shakes, supplements, and of course, the vitamins
that we're speaking about today, which sometimes people do have
vitamin B6 deficiency and do need these vitamins. Other people
don't even know that they're taking these. They're taking magnesium supplements.
They're taking zinc supplements that might have vitamin B6 as
an additive. Vitamin B6 is registered in more than 1500
(03:30):
over-the-counter supplements, from magnesium to zinc to ashwagandha to all
these products that people take for their wellness. And 80%
of them contain levels well above the recommended daily amount
of 1.7mg.
S1 (03:45):
Which brings us to your latest story. Because you've reported
that a lawyer is investigating a class action lawsuit against
wellness giant Blackmores on behalf of a really a growing
number of people who have unknowingly poisoned themselves with vitamin B6.
So what is going on? And just how dangerous is this?
S2 (04:02):
Yeah. So back in May, Melbourne based law firm Polaris
Lawyers announced they were launching a class action investigation against Blackmores,
the wellness giant, on behalf of hundreds of patients who
have developed twitches, migraines, nerve damage and other neurological symptoms
after they've taken their supplements.
S3 (04:24):
Hundreds of Australians are ready to join a class action
against health supplement giant Blackmores over the allegedly toxic levels
of B6 in its vitamin supplements. Patients have experienced neurological symptoms,
including twitches. The medicines watchdog is considering restricting access to
products containing vitamin B6 linked to the growing number of
(04:47):
toxicity cases.
S2 (04:49):
So vitamin B6 has generally been considered toxic only when
consumed in high doses over a long period. So if
you remember Gillian Clark, she'd been taking it for 20 years.
But the Therapeutic Goods Administration, so that's the medicines watchdog
last month noted there was no scientific consensus on a
safe threshold and announced that they were looking at changing
(05:11):
a few things in terms of the regulation of that.
So symptoms include nausea, hypersensitivity and nerve damage, which leads
to that tingling and numbness that we mentioned. So often.
A lot of these supplements won't say that they have
vitamin B6. They'll often say that they have a form
of B6, which if you look on the back of
your supplement label, this will say pyridoxine, pyridoxal, pyridoxamine. And
(05:36):
these have been associated with about a thousand adverse events
reported to the TGA since 2010. Mind you, these are notifications.
These haven't been investigated by the TGA. These are just
people saying I've developed these symptoms after taking this supplement.
The most common symptoms reported include nausea. Hypersensitivity. Peripheral neuropathy,
(05:58):
which is that damage to the nerves that we spoke
about before.
S1 (06:01):
Well, I wanted to ask you about the experience of
one man you spoke to. This is Melbourne dad Dominic
Noonan O'Keefe, because he took some multivitamins and says he's
experienced some long term injuries as a result. And they're
pretty extreme. He's one of the people who's taking part
in this potential class action against Blackmores. So tell me
about him, because I was pretty shocked when I read
just how bad his symptoms were.
S2 (06:23):
Yeah. So Dominic, who lives in Frankston down in Victoria,
he started taking vitamins about eight weeks out from the
birth of his daughter, honor. He had decided to start
taking them because he'd heard from podcasters such as Andrew
Huberman that it helps with things like fatigue and sort
of general wellness. So at first he didn't really notice
(06:43):
much of a difference. Either way, he didn't notice himself
getting better. He didn't notice any of the symptoms that
he would later get. But it started as a sort
of generalized fatigue, which he just put down to sleepless
nights with a newborn baby, which, you know, a lot
of people can sympathize with.
S4 (07:03):
I started feeling this kind of generalized fatigue, kind of
like you're hungover from a big night out and it
wasn't going away. Like, I couldn't sleep it away. I
couldn't nap it away, I couldn't recover.
S2 (07:19):
But a couple of months later, he was standing at
his desk in Melbourne CBD, and he said he felt
like his brain just exploded.
S4 (07:29):
And I felt like this stiffness and fullness in my neck.
And then all of a sudden it was like an
explosion went off in my brain. It felt like it
was my brain. Most overwhelming thing I've ever experienced. I
couldn't hear anything properly. Like, everything was just overwhelming, like
(07:50):
pain in my head. I thought in that moment I
thought I was dying. I was just panicking. It was
like a yeah, I can't really describe it because it's
kind of even hard to remember what it was like.
It was just so.
S2 (08:01):
And that was he later worked out, was a form
of neuralgia, and he's described the extent of his symptoms
as almost unbelievable. He thought that he had motor neurone disease.
He thought that he had Parkinson's. He began this sort
of investigation where he went to his GP. He went
to a physio. He went to specialists. He got scans,
(08:22):
he got blood tests. Nothing was coming up. So eventually
one day, a few days before Christmas, he was talking
to his step sister, who asked him if he was
taking vitamins because she had a colleague who had suffered toxicity.
So he went and got a blood test because he
checked his vitamins and sure enough, they had B6 in them.
(08:44):
He went and got a blood test, and then within
days he had a diagnosis of B6 toxicity.
S1 (08:49):
I mean, that's a shocker. It's not often you hear
of someone saying that they feel like their brains exploded.
I can only imagine the terror of feeling something like that.
But you spoke to another person. This is Katrina Pakulski.
She's a dentist from Sydney. Well, tell me about her experience,
because it's pretty emotional. What happened to her?
S2 (09:06):
Yeah, it definitely Katrina is similar to Dominik in the
sense that otherwise healthy, very health conscious. She's a dentist.
She works in Sydney's south. She switched to Blackmores magnesium
supplements in June last year, and within three months she
had body twitches, restless leg and an auditory hallucination. So
she was hearing sounds and things like that, not voices,
(09:29):
but sounds. She stopped taking the supplements after discovering the
link between her symptoms and B6 toxicity. And while most
of her severe symptoms have since subsided, she still has
lingering numbness in her fingers. And when I spoke to her,
she was quite frustrated that this had happened to her,
(09:51):
that she didn't know that vitamin B6 was in her
supplements and she was sort of speaking about, you know,
crying to her partner, wondering what was happening to her
and whether it was going to stop. And she said,
you know, that she's a health professional, and she can't
believe that there's not more stringent regulations on these vitamins.
S1 (10:10):
And it's interesting because I noticed that one Brisbane pathologist
told the ABC just earlier this month that he has
seen a massive increase in the number of people coming
forward to get blood tests to check for B6 toxicity.
So is this increase in people being tested? Is it
being seen elsewhere in Australia? And is there a particular
group of people who are sort of walking up to
test for this?
S2 (10:29):
Yeah. So vitamin B6 toxicity can be diagnosed with a
simple blood test that you can get at your GP
in the Brisbane pathologist that you mentioned in that ABC
story had seen a doubling in B6 toxicity cases or
positive blood test results since January. And, you know, that
accounts for more than 10,000 a month. So a lot
(10:52):
of people in Australia are taking vitamins. A lot of
people are finding that they have vitamin B6 levels above
the recommended limit, and they didn't even know that they
were taking B6.
S1 (11:06):
We'll be right back. And so I'm just wondering, is
this almost something of like a perfect storm, for lack
of a better term? Because I know when we spoke
before recording, you mentioned that, you know, many, many years
ago there might have been a number of older women,
let's just say, who'd be taking magnesium, say, for cramps
in their legs or something like that. But now there's
(11:28):
this wellness trend and just a huge swath of people
now take vitamins. Is that right?
S2 (11:33):
Yeah. I think that's something that we see in the
people that I have spoken to. I think Jillian is
someone who took magnesium supplements for things like cramp when
she was playing sports. Now we're seeing more and more
younger people like Dominic. They listen to podcasts or they
read stories about sort of benefits of taking supplements or multivitamins.
(11:54):
And there does seem to be in this class action
or the people who've put themselves forward for it. There
seems to be a lot of young people who are
also involved in that. So I think there definitely is
a trend of people who are taking supplements. And I
spoke to a researcher at the University of Sydney for
my story, Professor Joanna Harnett. She's a complementary medicine expert
(12:19):
in pharmacy. And she said over nearly half of Australians
surveyed take multivitamins. So not all of those have B6.
Not all of those are magnesium or these things, but
it just shows the scale of, I guess this industry
and Blackmores is such a massive company. It's it's an
Australian success story really. But then there is this sort
(12:42):
of looming legal action.
S1 (12:44):
And it's so interesting because I believe you've also found
that the symptoms of B6 toxicity, they're actually similar to
B6 deficiency. So in some cases, people who are trying
to help themselves are actually harming themselves by taking more
of the supplement when they should actually stop. Is that right?
S2 (13:00):
Yeah. That's right. And that's one of the really interesting
things I found with doing this is that when you have, say,
reduced cognitive function or a bit of tiredness, bit of fatigue,
even those peripheral neuropathy symptoms, they're all symptoms of vitamin
B6 deficiency. They're also symptoms of vitamin B6 toxicity. So
(13:21):
you might have someone that's taking these supplements to address
some sort of deficiency in their life, but then they
end up sort of going the other way and overcompensating
when those symptoms don't resolve. So you have, I guess,
this sort of perfect storm of people doubling down on
taking vitamins, when in actual fact they should be pulling back.
S1 (13:42):
That's that's wild. I mean, that is just wild. It's
like someone's punking these people. I mean, that's just crazy.
But I wanted to ask you about this class action
investigation because you've mentioned this previously, there's 300 Australians who
I guess are speaking to this Melbourne injury law firm.
And just to be clear, the lawyer representing these people
hasn't yet filed a class action lawsuit against Blackmores. So
(14:03):
I have to ask, is this because the lawyer isn't
sure he's got enough evidence to prove the case? You know,
perhaps that there's sufficient evidence of cause and effect between
taking the vitamins and these people suffering.
S2 (14:14):
Yeah. So, Nick, man, who's the principal at Polaris? He
said that look, the link between high doses of vitamin
B6 and peripheral neuropathy. So that's the twitching and numbness
has been established for a long time. We've known that.
So the evidence is there for that. Nick's sort of
said to me that class actions are quite legally complex.
(14:36):
You're acting on behalf of a whole group of people
who have a range of symptoms, might have been taking
different supplements as whole, different factors. So it often takes
lawyers years to collate evidence, find lead plaintiffs who can
get on board and kind of, you know, their case
is suitable for interrogation. So this thing will take time.
(14:59):
I think they expect that by the end of the year,
they will possibly have some documents filed to court. They're
also waiting for Blackmores to respond to them with some documents,
and they haven't ruled out the possibility of this extending
to other manufacturers of multivitamins. So Blackmores themselves have about
(15:19):
40 vitamins on the market that have B6 in them.
But of course there's many, many more manufactured by all
sorts of companies that also contain B6.
S1 (15:29):
Wow. And so what have you heard from the TGA
in reaction to these people coming forward? And is there
any suggestion that perhaps the TGA is at least in
part to blame? Because I was quite shocked by one
line in your story, which noted that last month the
TGA said that there was no scientific consensus on a
safe threshold of B6. And as a layperson reading that,
(15:51):
I thought, surely if there's no scientific consensus on how
much of a vitamin is safe to take, perhaps like
we shouldn't be taking it.
S2 (15:57):
Yeah. So I think this has been a sort of
moving feast a bit for the TGA to get on
top of. And they have, I think in 2020, they
made some changes that required all supplements containing daily doses
of more than 50mg of B6 to carry a warning statement,
which sort of tells people to stop taking if they
experience tingling or numbness. That threshold was lowered to ten
(16:21):
milligrams in 2022, after they hadn't seen that sort of
public awareness of the issues sort of take hold. There
has been a little bit of criticism of the TGA,
I think, just in regards to that threshold. It's sort
of been considered that. So there's the recommended daily intake,
which is around two milligrams. The safe upper limit has
(16:41):
been considered sort of around 100mg. Previously it was maybe 200mg.
Grams where they've seen real issues with that. I think
the real problem with this is that people don't often
don't just take one vitamin. So one product, one tablet
might contain 50mg or it might contain 25mg. But as
(17:03):
well as your magnesium, you might be taking zinc or
you might be taking ashwagandha, or you might be taking
whatever other supplement that contains B6. And so the cumulative
effect of that is that your intake of B6 is
above 100mg, and that over time, has led to really
significant problems for a lot of people. There are some
(17:26):
cases as well, where people have developed those symptoms and
their intake has been much lower than 100mg, so there's
still a lot to do on it. Last month, the
TGA announced that they were considering making all supplements with
more than 50mg of vitamin B6, putting them behind the
counter So scheduling them so that if you need or
(17:49):
you want to purchase a product with more than 50mg,
you have to speak to a pharmacist and they can
explain to you the risks that won't take effect until
February 2027. A lot of people are saying that's not
soon enough, but I think the other piece of this
is just that people don't know that they're taking this.
(18:09):
And so there's other recommendations that the TGA have made
around making sure that people are aware of this, building
public awareness, and that if they do experience any of
these symptoms, that they speak to their GP or they
consider stopping taking these vitamins. It's also important to say
that Blackmores says that all its products, including those containing
(18:30):
vitamin B6, are developed in strict accordance with the Tga's
regulatory requirements. But Nick man, that's the lawyer from Polaris.
He said that companies have a duty to protect customers
and that the strong precedent for successful legal claims against
the manufacturers of products approved by regulators, but later proven
(18:51):
to be harmful. So asbestos is a really good example
of this, where that was approved for sale by regulators
and used widely. And then, of course, we've had numerous
class actions, legal actions against the manufacturers of that since.
So it's worth keeping in mind that while they meet
TGA requirements, the goalposts can shift sometimes.
S1 (19:15):
And so it's one of the takeaways that essentially if
people are taking any vitamins, they kind of should, I
guess get it cross-checked with a pharmacist or a GP first,
because I mean, for one thing, you noted earlier that
B6 isn't even always listed as B6 on the actual bottle.
It might be called pyridoxine or pyridoxal or pyridoxamine. So,
you know, most people, myself definitely included, I would have
(19:35):
no idea what that is. So do you reckon people
should just take everything to a doctor or pharmacist and say, hey,
am I going to overdose if I take this?
S5 (19:44):
Well, it's always good.
S2 (19:45):
To get, I think, independent, expert advice. I know that
there's obviously challenges with seeing a GP at the moment,
which we're all familiar with. So I think that that's important,
but that's not just part of it. I think the
other consideration that we have to make to is that
I think that when people think about supplements, vitamins, they're
(20:07):
naturally occurring and people make a connection between them being
natural and being good for you. And one of the
things that Joanna Harnett said to me was that people
who use these complementary medicines so multivitamins believe it's natural
and therefore safe, but everything at a certain dose can
(20:28):
be harmful to the body, including these things that are
derived from nature. So it's important to know what you're taking.
But it's also important to keep track of your symptoms
and know what is happening to your body. When for.
S1 (20:42):
Sure. Wow. Well, I know there was a lot of
interest in the newsroom when I told people we were
going to be reporting on this because, like you say,
so many people take vitamins. So thank you so much
for your time.
S2 (20:53):
Thanks so much for having me, Sam.
S1 (21:03):
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by Josh towers.
Our executive producer is Tammy Mills. Tom McKendrick is our
head of audio. To listen to our episodes as soon
as they drop, follow the Morning Edition on Apple, Spotify,
or wherever you listen to podcasts. Our newsrooms are powered
by subscriptions, so to support independent journalism, visit the page or. Subscribe.
(21:29):
And to stay up to date, sign up to our
Morningedition newsletter to receive a summary of the day's most
important news in your inbox every morning. Links are in
the show. Notes. I'm Samantha Selinger Morris. Thanks for listening.
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