Scary overdose of supplement

Just had a real scare.  Pins and needles in the extremities that are most effected by PD were getting worse.  My neuro tracked it down to having more than twice the normal amount of B6 in my body.  Like a lot of pwp I take supplements to deal with imbalances caused by PD, but I wasn't taking B6, or B-complex, or even a multivitamin.

You can't get an overdose of B6 from food, so it had to be coming from a supplement (could have been B1, B2, magnesium, C).  I stopped all my supplements and the pins and needles are slowly improving.  It will take a few months to find out if there is any permanent damage.  So trying to make my PD better actually made things worse.

Which supplement had stuff in it that's not on the label?  Who knows?  But about one third of supplements have materials in them that aren't on the label - for example, "natural" pills to improve, um, male performance often turn out to have sildenafil in them - Viagra.  Not so natural.

How can I protect myself, when the FDA doesn't regulate supplements the way it regulates medicine?  There is actually a way - USP is a program that manufacturers can participate in, demonstrating that the contents of a supplement are actually what's on the label.  For more information on USP: http://qualitymatters.usp.org/what-letters-usp-mean-label-your-medicine

So I've gotten very conservative about supplements.  If it's prescribed and I get it via pharmacy, like my D2, that's fine.  If it is USP verified, that's fine.  Otherwise I'm not going to take a supplement.  Lesson learned. 

Image Pixabay and Free Vector