A Man Ate 100 Zinc Vitamin C Gummies Everyday. This Is What Happened To His Spinal Cord. GC is a 55 year old man, presenting to the
emergency room with a broken hip. His daughter Kaycee tells the admitting nurse
that GC had been moving kind of funny over the last few months. She heard a loud thud in the stairwell, as
her dad cried out “Help!! I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.” Earlier in his life, GC didn’t pay attention
to his health. When he was younger, he had some problems. His classmates made fun of him because he
was bigger than everyone else, and so he withdrew in to his food. He developed in to an adult who couldn’t
control himself, as his family found him hoarding excess food, and secretly eating every last
bit. In his 30s, GC had health problems. He had diabetes and gout. His big toe would hurt all the time. 
As the years passed, GC started losing
feeling in his hands and feet because of his diabetes. One day he stepped on something sharp. It cut his foot, and he didn’t realize anything
had happened until he saw red puddles in the shower. He realized he couldn’t keep living like
this. One doctor he saw wanted to start him on a
variety of medicines. He refused after looking online and found
a doctor who recommended and would do gastric bypass surgery. This doctor would cut in to his abdomen. They’d create a small pocket of his stomach. Then, they would reroute his GI tract in to
the end of his small intestines. The small stomach pouch limited the amount
he’d eat, so that he’d feel full while eating less food. And the reroute would limit the amount of
calories he’d absorb. After surgery, doctors warned GC that he would
need to control his nutrients, because the bypass can cause some deficiencies in vitamins
and minerals. GC’s diabetes cleared up, but he started
redirecting his excess habits. GC started getting cocky with his health. Fixing his diet, made his blood sugar control
better. Those doctors, were trying to pump me full
of meds for my diabetes, but I fixed it myself, he thought. 2 years ago, GC caught the flu. This was the sickest he had been since changing
his life. He vowed to never get ill again, and started
reading online forums about boosting immunity. He remembered doctors telling him he might
eventually have vitamin and mineral deficiency because of his gastric bypass. He came across some online videos that told
him zinc and vitamin C were absolutely the best ways to keep the immune system strong. Everyone in this internet group made it clear—
this was undoubtedly the best way to prevent any illness. And it’s simply impossible to take too much
Vitamin C and Zinc because they’re water soluble, meaning that any extras will dissolve
in the urine and be excreted from the body. And that’s a great guarantee that the kidneys
will always catch any extras that the body doesn’t use. He went to the pharmacy and started buying
as many bottles of zinc and Vitamin C as possible. He joked that he was reliving his past life,
but this time was different. Instead of collecting high blood sugar, he
was going to collect the strongest immune system ever made by humans. GC started with the combination Zinc / Vitamin
C gummies. These were delicious, just like candy, without
the calories and with only all of the health benefits. If there’s no limits here, might as well
eat the whole bottle, he thought. Anytime GC felt a runny nose or sore throat,
he’d eat an extra handful of Zinc Vitamin C gummies. Sometimes the pharmacy would be sold out of
his favorite brand of supplement. He read online that denture adhesive cream
contained zinc. And, if it was good enough for grandma to
put in her mouth, then it was good enough for him to eat as a zinc immune booster. Anytime he was out of his preferred vitamin
brand, he’d eat a tube of denture cream instead. 4 Months ago, GC started feeling a numbness
in his hands and feet. But it wasn’t that he couldn’t feel anything
anymore, it was that all he could feel were pins and needles, like his hands had fallen
asleep, but the pricks were 100 times more intense, all the time. He had experienced this earlier in his life
and thought it was familiar, but it wasn’t. This was on top of him losing his sense of
taste. His sides would start hurting. Sometimes it’d pulse, and he’d feel like
throwing up. But he was usually able to keep it all down. One day, Kaycee noticed her dad was walking
kind of funny. She asked him about it but he didn’t know
what she was talking about. Everything seemed to be ok, and he told her,
don’t worry, everything’s fine, as he chewed on more Zinc Vitamin C gummies. As the days passed, the pin pricks and the
pain in his sides started intensifying. He had trouble not only walking, but also
standing. And finally when one day he struggled to walk
down a flight of stairs, he fell. Instantly, he knew something was wrong with
his hip as he cried out for help, and he’s brought to the emergency room where we are
now. At examination, doctors find that GC is alert,
and oriented. He was clearly in pain, but he was coherent. His brain’s in tact, so maybe he really
did just slip. Doctors’ main focus was to fix his broken
hip. And surgery appears to go smoothly. GC is going to need physical therapy, but
something’s wrong. A blood test finds that GC’s red blood cells
are larger than normal, called macrocytosis. They cant ask him to stand because he just
had hip surgery. But they find that the reflexes in his arms
are more responsive than normal. His arms were also weaker than normal. His feet had some trouble sensing vibrations. And his daughter confirmed that this had been
happening for at least a few weeks. Since he was alert and oriented when he presented
to the emergency room, then it means that his brain is fine. But reflexes in the arms go through the spinal
cord. Feeling certain things in the feet also happen
in the brain, but those impulses have to go through the spinal cord. All of this indicating that maybe he didn’t
just slip by accident, but that something is actually wrong with GC’s spinal cord. And because he has a history of gastric bypass,
then that problem could be caused by a vitamin deficiency. Another blood test finds that GC’s Vitamin
B12 levels are on the lower end of normal. B12 is needed by the body to help the mitochondria
in the cells make energy. It’s also needed to make DNA, explaining
his big red blood cells. Without enough Vitamin B12, the nerves start
to get damaged. And cells don’t form properly because DNA
parts aren’t being made. Nerve damage explains why he fell while his
brain’s mostly in tact, because his gastric bypass surgery didn’t allow him to properly
absorb nutrients, the doctors thought. They gave him some vitamin B12 injections
to fix this, even though it seemed to be borderline. He got better, and he was discharged as his
condition started to improve. When he heard about having B12 deficiency
in the hospital, GC took this as instructions to double down on all vitamins and minerals. He needed another boost to his immune system
anyways, because hospitals are dirty places, so might as well eat even more Zinc Vitamin
C gummies to prevent any infections that could be from the hospital. As the days passed with after several hundred
Zinc Vitamin C gummies, GC’s side started hurting again. His sense of taste started fading, again. And then Kaycee started to notice he wasn’t
making as much urine as before. GC started acting funny while stammering about
not being able to feel his hands and feet. And as Kaycee walks in on her dad in his room,
she finds him rolling around on the floor, confused, and he’s brought to the emergency
room again. At examination this time, doctors find that
GC’s kidneys are shutting down. Quickly, they find out that he has calcium
oxalate crystals in the little bit of urine he’s able to make. These crystals don’t dissolve in water,
and they can build up and stick in to the kidneys, blocking flow, not only causing them
to fail, but also causing the tubules in the kidneys to necrose. Asking his daughter, what GC’s been eating,
she was hesitant to say, because she knew that her dad didn’t trust doctors. She downplayed the Zinc Vitamin C gummies
and made it seem like he took the daily recommended amount. Peanuts and spinach too have a lot of oxalate
too, and maybe that could be the cause if he ate a lot of it. Maybe he drank antifreeze, or a lava lamp—
those get broken down to oxalate too. But this wasn’t his only problem. The nurse noticed that GC’s movements were
spastic. Neurology consult finds that his reflexes
in his arms were more exaggerated than normal, and his feeling in his feet was diminished
again. All of this looking like Vitamin B12 deficiency
again, but something’s wrong. He doesn’t have low B12 levels in his blood,
and all chemicals associated with vitamin B12 were normal. And while his levels were low when he got
his hip surgery last time, they really weren’t low enough to be causing his problems. An MRI of his head was normal, but imaging
of his spine suggested some kind of neurodegeneration. Specifically, the kind that happens during
a long term Vitamin B12 deficiency. Nitrous oxide if GC had been doing balloons
recently could cause inactivation of vitamin B12 causing deficiency. But this isn’t what happened. He doesnt have a Vitamin B12 problem, and
he never did. This same degeneration happens when someone
has certain STD’s, but he didn’t seem to have those either. Doctors order another blood test and find
that GC has low copper presence in blood. They ask him again about what he eats, and
they especially want to know what kind of supplements he takes. And when his daughter hears the question,
she finally blurts out about her dad’s excessive Zinc Vitamin C habits, eating hundreds of
gummies daily and even going so far as to eat Denture Paste to get additional zinc,
and this tells doctors what they need to know. GC was in kidney failure. Specifically, kidney failure caused by calcium
oxalate. Vitamin C is broken down to oxalate in the
body. In massive doses, it COULD cause kidney stones,
in men. We say “could” because this comes from
a study involving a questionnaire about taking vitamin C supplements. And those men who said they did take those
supplements, had a higher incidence of kidney stones. So is that strong evidence? Maybe. But there is some scientific rationale that
Vitamin C does get broken down to oxalate in humans and that could form a solid crystal
with the calcium floating around in the blood, and these crystals can collect in the kidneys. But based on the data we have now, it’s
not entirely clear Vitamin C always does this to everyone. There are cases where someone receives a massive
megadose of vitamin C in the hospital and then going in to kidney failure hours later
too. But sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesnt. The risk, and the variable incidence, is enough
to at least say, don’t eat 100 Vitamin C gummies or tablets everyday, and this could
be the cause of GC’s kidney failure.. But kidney failure, wasnt the cause of GC’s
pins and needles feeling in his hands and feet. His kidneys didn’t cause him to walk funny,
to fall down the stairs and shatter his hip. Kidney failure usually causes build up of
things in the blood, because if they were working properly, the kidneys would be filtering
things out, so that wouldn’t cause low copper presence in blood. And the kidneys are NOT the reason why part
of GC’s spinal cord appears to have degenerated, bringing us back to zinc and copper. Both of these are metals. They’re not heavy like mercury or lead,
and that’s a good thing because it means they’re generally more stable. More stable means less reactive so Zinc and
Copper are less likely to rip, tear apart and destroy things in the body. Copper and Zinc’s place on the periodic
table of elements indicates that they can have a positive 2 charge, positive meaning
they’re missing 2 electrons, a particle that creates a negative charge. The body doesn’t like it when things have
charges in the body, because that makes them unstable and reactive. And so if copper is plus 2, then it means
something with a negative 2 charge would act on it. On the periodic table, counting back from
right to left, shows elements that have negative 2 charges, so, they have 2 electrons to give. Oxygen is one of them, and that’s everywhere
in the body, but it tends to behave in a way that doesn’t give out 2 electrons in this
case. Meaning sulfur is the chemical that binds
to zinc in the body. And because sulfur is in proteins, then this
starts to explain all of GC’s problems. Actually, metals reacting with sulfur is a
central idea for why things like lead and mercury are toxic in humans. In the cells of stomach, and the small intestines,
are proteins called metallothioneins. Metallo referring to metals and thionein deriving
from thio- (θείο) Greek meaning sulfur. These sulfur rich proteins neutralize metal
ions that come from our diet. In normal function, some copper in the stomach
and intestines bind metallothionein and get excreted in the feces. The remaining copper gets absorbed in to the
body and is used for essential processes. If too much zinc is around, it tells the body
to make more metallothionein. It has a plus 2 charge too and it’s not
too different from copper, at least from this standpoint. And more metallothionein means that all the
copper is inactivated by it and none of it gets absorbed in to be used in the body. This is a problem because the brain is the
most copper rich organ in humans. We know the brain needs copper to develop
properly, because there’s a disease called Menkes’ Disease, that prevents copper transport
to the brain in young children because of a genetic mutation. People who have this disease see their brains
deteriorate, atrophy, and never fully develop. And most of those patients never live past
childhood. All of this explaining GC’s neurologic problems,
that he developed since eating excess zinc everyday, it simply forced his body to deplete
all copper stores, and without copper functioning in the body, the nerves start to degenerate. The damage could be permanent, but we still
don’t know exactly how all of this works. If GC is a fully developed adult, and hes
been eating zinc supplements to the tune of hundreds of Zinc Vitamin C gummies daily,
and going so far as to eat denture paste for additional zinc, then that excess zinc is
causing copper deficiency. The solution is to give him to copper, and
tell him to cut it out with the zinc. You want to take some supplements to boost
your immune system then fine, but dont do it by eating denture paste out of the tube. Or by eating whole bottles of gummy vitamins,
every day. As the days pass with copper supplementation,
GC’s condition starts to get better. He’s discharged from the hospital and is
able to go to physical therapy for his hip. And as he finally learned a lesson about his
excess, he made a recovery. Thanks so much for watching. Take care of yourself. And be well.
Maybe more fitting for general /r/Supplements but I do love this guys videos. At least one other of his vids highlights someone that ate entirely too many vitamin gummies, whichended in a broken bone and organ damage. Careful with those tasty gummies.
-emia, means presence in the blood.
I too, am a fan of the chub
I'll go out on a limb here and say that zinc gummies were just one of this guy's problems lol. That said, I do think it illustrates just how far one has to go with vitamin overdosing to stray into the territory of irreparable damage or death. Internet bros have screetched at me for occasionally using 50 mg of zinc or higher doses of vitamin A for a specific purposes and I just have to roll my eyes and log off.
This channel is on point, I learn a lot in every video.