What Are Water Soluble Vitamins?
This category includes Vitamins C, Folate or Folic Acid, and all the B-vitamins. Vitamins in this class are absorbed quickly and readily excreted, with minimal to no storage by your body.
An important exception is Vitamin B12, it is critical to many metabolic processes and therefore your body actually reabsorbs it in the part of the small bowel named the ileum. This is why it takes a long time to develop a B12 deficiency and why it is a somewhat rare deficiency in developed countries.
People with certain types of autoimmune processes such as pernicious anemia, longtime strict vegetarians, and those who have had a significant portion of their ileum removed or injured by inflammatory bowel diseases are more susceptible to B12 deficiency.
Safety and Toxicity of Water Soluble Vitamins
Yes, water soluble vitamins have a lower risk of buildup and toxicity, but you still can have toxic effects from certain ones:
Vitamin B6 can cause nerve problems (peripheral neuropathy) in very high doses. This happens at doses of 1000mg a day, which you can’t get from food alone. Rarely this can happen from as little 300mg per day.
High doses of Niacin (Vitamin B3) can cause flushing. This is not a toxicity, but actually a side effect. When niacin is used as a prescription medication for high cholesterol sometimes patients are advised to take aspirin with it to minimize this side effect.
Alcohol Misuse and Thiamine
Thiamine (B1) is very important for brain function and is often low in alcoholics. In fact, if anyone has even a question of possible alcohol abuse in the hospital they are often started on thiamine.
Alcohol use depletes your body’s Thiamine, and can lead to an irreversible psychosis known as Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome.
Metabolic Syndrome
Metabolic syndrome is a group of risk factors that together increase your risk for:
Coronary artery disease (heart attack)
Cerebrovascular disease (stroke)
Type 2 Adult Onset Diabetes
Recent research discovered that people with metabolic syndrome had lower levels of:
Vitamin B1 (thiamine)
Vitamin B3 (niacin)
Vitamin B6 (pyridoxine
Vitamin C (ascorbic acid)
Biotin and Muscle Cramps
Biotin is a water soluble B vitamin also called vitamin H. A recent research study tried using Biotin on patients that were getting painful muscle cramps during dialysis, since these patients are low in water soluble vitamins:
Biotin supplementation of 1000mcg (1mg) per day reduced cramps promptly.
Vitamins lost in Kidney Injury or Dialysis
Water soluble vitamins can be lost during dialysis – patients are more likely to have low levels or be deficient of several water soluble vitamins, especially on the restricted dialysis diets.
A recent research article suggests that supplementation with the following vitamins may be helpful in persons with dialysis:
Vitamin B1 (thiamine)
Vitamin B6 (pyridoxine)
Vitamin B9 (Folate/folic acid)
Vitamin B12 (cyanocobalamin)
Vitamin C (ascorbic acid)
