I take a multi vitamin every day. Some of the ones I buy turn my urine a bright yellow. Is it a dye that they use?
Nope, it’s the vitamins themselves. Most vitamins are water-soluble, and so you pee them out pretty quickly. I’m forgetting which ones in particular, but several of the water-soluble vitamins are fluorescent, and that’s what’s turning your urine bright yellow.
I’m pretty sure that it’s the B-2 (riboflavin) that’s making your urine deep yellow.
I’m pretty sure that it’s the B-2 (riboflavin) that’s making your urine deep yellow.
Ah, here’s a cite.
Excess water soluble vitamins are eliminated in your urine. Riboflavin and Vitamin C can change the color to a yellow or orange.
It just means that you’re taking too much.
And too much iron will make your feces turn green.
Hmmmm. Does the government know that their daily recommended allowance is too much? My multivitimens aren’t offering more than the Government RDA.
Do you eat actual food? There’s plenty of vitamins in meat, fruit and veg. If you eat food, it’s likely that you’re getting all you need from that.
Vitamin supplements are really only useful for people who don’t get enough
vitamins, through say illness. Healthy people shouldn’t need to take them.
Last year my stomach perferated and the doc disconected it from my esophagus. My esophagus now goes straight to the small intestine. As a result he feels that there is enough malabsorbtion to warrant taking a daily supplement. Not that I don’t trust you, but I’m gonna go ahead and keep following his advice - after all, he saved my life. 
I’m not really asking for advice here - I was wondering what caused my urine to go yellow.
I am still curious, because sometimes I take one brand and then when that runs out I’ll buy whatever is on sale. Some of them turn my urine yellow, some of them don’t. They all seem to give the same amount of vitimins. I usually compare just to be sure.
The vitamins/minerals may been in the different pills may be in different forms. For instance iron could be in the form of Ferrous Fumarate, Ferrous Gluconate, Ferrous Sulfate or Iron-Polysaccharide. Each form can give you your daily recommended dosage, but each form is handled by your body in a slightly different manner. You have to dig a little deeper into the actual ingredients, not just that they both provide 110% of the recommended daily requirements of a certain vitamin/mineral.
See now that makes sense. I wasn’t giving you medical advice, just offering an opinion. I’ve had major gastrointestinal surgery too (albeit for an entirely different reason), and my consultant monitors my vitamin B levels because of the potential for malabsorbtion in anyone who has had surgery to the gut. The best way of supplementing vitamin B I’m told is via regular injections rather than pills, because IIRC it’s not well absorbed through the stomach after surgery. All that being said, most people have a 4 year or so supply stored up, so the symptoms of vitamin b deficiency only start to show up after that is depleted.
Pernicious anaemia, which is the result of Vitamin B deficiency, is rather unpleasant.
As Unixgeek said, different pills are formulated differently. Also, if you are absorbing some vitamin B, then the excess will be excreted. Afterall it’s being absorbed because its coming out in your urine. If it wasn’t being absorbed at all it would be coming out in your faeces (just passing straight through).
That being said, if your doc says take em, you should probably take em.
How true is this? I don’t mean to sound skeptical or anything. I’ve heard this from my friends’ parents, who are doctors. A couple were educated in the Philippines, and the other half were educated in India. They laughed at me for taking multivitamins. They even laughed at the cost (I had gotten a free pack from the gym, otherwise, it’s $30 for 90 day supply). My diet isn’t that varied. Otherwise, I’m what my doctor calls super-healthy (he, too, would like to see my body fat percentage drop, but my vitals are really good).
That’d be surprising. Most of the multivitamins I’ve seen contain something like 300%, 500%, or even more of the RDA of many of the B vitamins. Apparently, the idea is that they pass through the body so quickly that they have to put in extra so that at least some of the stuff will absorb.
I’ve just rechecked - go on and be surprised. Mine only include (up to) 100%. Some of the minerals are less, but none are more.
Just because your urine suggests that you are excreting vitamins doesn’t mean that the government’s daily dose recommendation is incorrect. RDAs are based on the assumption that you are consuming the nutrients gradually throughout the day. This is important, because as other posters have mentioned, water-soluble vitamins will not remain in your system long if they are not immediately absorbed, and your body cannot absorb the entire day’s worth of vitamins at once. Thus, taking 100% of your RDA of most vitamins in one sitting does not ensure that you get as much of that vitamin as you need during the day. It would be better to have smaller quantities of the vitamin, dispersed over many hours.
I don’t know whether this will make any differerence in the neon pee, but my doctor stressed the need to take a multivitamin with food, preferably a full meal. Her reasoning is that it enhances the absorption. YMMV.
It’s supposed to help the absorption of fat soluble vitamins especially vitamin E, but, BBC Horizon put this to the test and found that it didn’t affect the absorption one way or the other.
The rest of the programme is pretty interesting.
I take it with my breakfast. I’m not sure it counts as a “full” meal, but then, I can’t really eat what most people would call a full meal anymore.