3 side effects of biotin supplements you should watch
Biotin is a supplement that is becoming more popular among people when it comes to ingest to help treat hair loss, poor skin and problems with sugar. Biotin helps with these conditions, but there are also some potential risks that you should consider.
When it comes to biotin, deficiencies are quite rare due to the large variety of biotin-rich foods that patients can take advantage of to make sure they are consuming enough of this vital co-factor. We need to make sure that we eat enough biotin in our daily diets due to the importance of biotin in several different physiological processes. Pharmaceutical companies are also aware of these potential risks and numerous biotin supplements are available in the market. There are multiple compounds on the market that advertise biotin for hair growth or as a treatment option for hair loss, something that has helped to treat brittle nails , or even something that can help treat acne. As we have seen in previous research, biotin may benefit certain groups of patients suffering from biotin deficiencies. This supplement is something that does not come without its own set of risks, so in this article, we will cover some of the potentially dangerous side effects of biotin supplements that you need to become familiar with before taking this medication.
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Possible side effects of too much biotin
Biotin is an essential cofactor in some important reactions throughout the body. When levels are low, patients run the risk of having problems with their immune system, high sugar levels and superficial changes such as hair loss, changes in the skin and fragility of the nails. Biotin is something that we can not produce ourselves, so we must make sure that we eat foods rich in biotin.
One of the potential risks of an excess of biotin in your diet may come from the metabolism of sugar. Biotin is one of the first signals needed to start the production of factors such as insulin, so when you take too much biotin, your insulin levels may be higher than normal and, as a result, you may have hypoglycemia. Biotin also has an effect on the liver and negatively regulates the cells responsible for glucose production when levels are too low in the body. These two effects may combine and lead to low blood sugar levels if you are taking high doses of the drug potentially.
Patients with biotin, in theory, may have symptoms associated with low blood sugar levels as a result of overuse of biotin. This would include headaches, sudden weakness, concentration problems and dizziness.
Is it safe to use?
Now that you know some of the potential risks of biotin excess, I'll look at whether the risk is worth the reward when you take this medication. For starters, biotin is a vitamin that is soluble in water. This means that when you take more biotin that your body can process, it will naturally dissolve in the kidneys and be excreted in the urine. Because our bodies need such low levels of biotin daily, taking high doses of biotin supplements will simply lead to having a very high amount of biotin in the urine.
To expand even further at this point, it is almost impossible for our body to take too much biotin in their body. Even mothers who are currently pregnant and taking more biotin in their diets are protected from the effects of biotin according to current research. Studies show that the concentration of biotin in breast milk varied depending on the intake of biotin, but the levels were only a fraction of what the original intake was after going through the mother's metabolism before passing to the newborn baby born. The risks of not having enough biotin in children's diets far outweigh any theoretical risks that patients may face having too much biotin in their diets, so make sure that their levels are high enough.
Some animal studies indicate that excessive biotin may have some effect on a female reproductive cycle. The studies showed that the animals have a small number of cells responsible for making sure that the females have sufficient nutrients for development and high levels of estradiol compared to the mice of the normal groups. Although it is difficult to draw parallels in the human population, biotin is something that requires further studies in the future to determine if there could be any impact on female reproductive cycles.
In general, patients who use biotin for hair growth as a treatment for hair loss do not need to worry about the possible risks that could occur. The properties of biotin are naturally protected from the adverse risks of having too much biotin in your diet, so naturally, you will eliminate too much biotin when you ingest too much. At the end of this investigation, there are no side effects of the biotin supplements that you need to worry about as they are now.