# Why do some multivitamins turn my urine yellow?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-some-multivitamins-turn-my-urine-yellow/357269
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [May 18, 2006, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-some-multivitamins-turn-my-urine-yellow/357269 "2006-05-18T15:47:32Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)
#### Post date: [May 18, 2006, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-some-multivitamins-turn-my-urine-yellow/357269/1 "2006-05-18T15:47:32Z")
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?
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### Author:  [@AuntiePasto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePasto)
#### Post date: [May 18, 2006, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-some-multivitamins-turn-my-urine-yellow/357269/2 "2006-05-18T16:07:58Z")
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.
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### Author:  [@KarlGauss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGauss)
#### Post date: [May 18, 2006, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-some-multivitamins-turn-my-urine-yellow/357269/3 "2006-05-18T16:11:30Z")
I’m pretty sure that it’s the B-2 (riboflavin) that’s making your urine deep yellow.
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### Author:  [@KarlGauss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGauss)
#### Post date: [May 18, 2006, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-some-multivitamins-turn-my-urine-yellow/357269/4 "2006-05-18T16:13:22Z")
I’m pretty sure that it’s the B-2 (riboflavin) that’s making your urine deep yellow.
Ah, [here’s a cite](http://answers.yahoo.com/question/?qid=1006030615291).
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### Author:  [@Szlater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Szlater)
#### Post date: [May 18, 2006, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-some-multivitamins-turn-my-urine-yellow/357269/5 "2006-05-18T16:14:54Z")
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.
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### Author:  [@Szlater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Szlater)
#### Post date: [May 18, 2006, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-some-multivitamins-turn-my-urine-yellow/357269/6 "2006-05-18T16:15:55Z")
[cite](http://urology.stanford.edu/articles/abnormal_urine.html)
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### Author:  [@Unix\_Geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unix_Geek)
#### Post date: [May 18, 2006, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-some-multivitamins-turn-my-urine-yellow/357269/7 "2006-05-18T16:18:30Z")
And too much iron will make your feces turn green.
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### Author:  [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)
#### Post date: [May 18, 2006, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-some-multivitamins-turn-my-urine-yellow/357269/8 "2006-05-18T16:52:28Z")
> [@Szlater](#):
>
> 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.
Hmmmm. Does the government know that their daily recommended allowance is too much? My multivitimens aren’t offering more than the Government RDA.
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### Author:  [@Szlater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Szlater)
#### Post date: [May 18, 2006, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-some-multivitamins-turn-my-urine-yellow/357269/9 "2006-05-18T17:00:26Z")
> [@Khadaji](#):
>
> 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.
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### Author:  [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)
#### Post date: [May 18, 2006, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-some-multivitamins-turn-my-urine-yellow/357269/10 "2006-05-18T17:07:30Z")
> [@Szlater](#):
>
> 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.
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### Author:  [@Unix\_Geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unix_Geek)
#### Post date: [May 18, 2006, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-some-multivitamins-turn-my-urine-yellow/357269/11 "2006-05-18T17:52:07Z")
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.
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### Author:  [@Szlater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Szlater)
#### Post date: [May 18, 2006, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-some-multivitamins-turn-my-urine-yellow/357269/12 "2006-05-18T18:07:51Z")
> [@Khadaji](#):
>
> 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.
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.
> [@](#):
>
> 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.
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. 🙂
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### Author:  [@mazinger\_z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mazinger_z)
#### Post date: [May 18, 2006, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-some-multivitamins-turn-my-urine-yellow/357269/13 "2006-05-18T18:47:17Z")
> [@Szlater](#):
>
> 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.
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).
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### Author:  [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)
#### Post date: [May 18, 2006, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-some-multivitamins-turn-my-urine-yellow/357269/14 "2006-05-18T19:02:16Z")
> [@mazinger\_z](#):
>
> They laughed at me for taking multivitamins.
[Just this morning on NPR](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5413257).
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### Author:  [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)
#### Post date: [May 18, 2006, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-some-multivitamins-turn-my-urine-yellow/357269/15 "2006-05-18T20:59:30Z")
> [@Khadaji](#):
>
> Hmmmm. Does the government know that their daily recommended allowance is too much? My multivitimens aren’t offering more than the Government RDA.
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.
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### Author:  [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)
#### Post date: [May 18, 2006, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-some-multivitamins-turn-my-urine-yellow/357269/16 "2006-05-18T21:07:41Z")
> [@Max Torque](#):
>
> 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.
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### Author:  [@AuntiePasto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePasto)
#### Post date: [May 18, 2006, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-some-multivitamins-turn-my-urine-yellow/357269/17 "2006-05-18T22:28:22Z")
> [@Khadaji](#):
>
> 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.
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### Author:  [@Cub\_Mistress](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cub_Mistress)
#### Post date: [May 18, 2006, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-some-multivitamins-turn-my-urine-yellow/357269/18 "2006-05-18T23:52:13Z")
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.
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### Author:  [@Szlater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Szlater)
#### Post date: [May 19, 2006, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-some-multivitamins-turn-my-urine-yellow/357269/19 "2006-05-19T00:20:49Z")
> [@Cub Mistress](#):
>
> 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.
> [@BBC Horizon](#):
>
> **NARRATOR** : But recently there’s been a piece of research that suggests Dina could be missing any benefit from her vitamin E supplements. And it’s all because of how she takes them. She’s often in a rush, skips breakfast, and so swallows her pills with a glass of water on an empty stomach. The idea that Dina could be missing any potential benefit from vitamin E came from Maret Traber at the Linus Pauling Institute. Vitamin E is a fat soluble vitamin, that means it has to be eaten with some fat to be absorbed. So popping a pill just with water on an empty stomach like Dina does, might be almost no good at all. In an experiment Professor Traber gave volunteers a vitamin E pill and a glass of virtually fat free skimmed milk. She then analysed their blood to see just how much vitamin E had been absorbed. The results were striking.
>
> **MARET TRABER** : When the subjects took their vitamin E pill with a glass of milk, hardly any was absorbed. I think the implication of our study is that if you take a vitamin E pill, you’d better take it with some food, you’d better take it with some food that has fat in it, or you’re not doing yourself any good.
>
> **NARRATOR** : In other words, if Professor Traber is right, then anyone who takes vitamin E without a fatty meal could be wasting their time. But there was something unusual about her experiment. Professor Traber used specially manufactured pills, she did not use a commercially available product. Horizon decided to investigate Professor Traber’s ideas further. Just how important was it to take a vitamin E pill with a fatty meal? We commissioned King’s College London, one of the world’s leading research centres on vitamin E, to run the experiment. In charge was Professor Frank Kelly. The pills he would test had been bought in a high street chemist. Dina and four other volunteers agreed to take part in a ground-breaking study. Each volunteer was told to make sure they had an empty stomach, then they were given a vitamin E pill with three different drinks. Day 1, a glass of water and no fat at all. Four days later, a glass of full fat milk. After another four days we upped the fat content again and gave them a milkshake containing over forty per cent fat. After each pill was taken, the volunteers returned every four hours to give a blood sample so we could see how much of the vitamin E they had absorbed. If Professor Traber’s theory was right, the volunteers should absorb very little of the vitamin E when the pill was taken with water, and they should absorb it very well when it was taken with the fatty milkshake. With the blood samples complete, Professor Kelly analysed the data. And after several weeks of nervous waiting, Dina returned to get the results.
>
> **PROFESSOR FRANK KELLY** : So, it’s time for the, the truth.
>
> **DINA WEST** : Good.
>
> **PROFESSOR FRANK KELLY** : Here are the results. You were actually subject number 5 in the study.
>
> **DINA WEST** : Ok.
>
> **PROFESSOR FRANK KELLY** : And you can see here that this is with water.
>
> **DINA WEST** : Yes.
>
> **PROFESSOR FRANK KELLY** : This is with full fat milk, and this is with the milkshake. So, contrary to our expectations.
>
> **DINA WEST** : Yes.
>
> **PROFESSOR FRANK KELLY** : You actually have absorbed as much with water as with either the other two diets. So, the water was as good for you as the milk and the milkshake, which as I say was a surprising result to us.
[The rest of the programme](http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/vitamins_trans.shtml) is pretty interesting.
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### Author:  [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)
#### Post date: [May 19, 2006, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-some-multivitamins-turn-my-urine-yellow/357269/20 "2006-05-19T01:30:18Z")
> [@Cub Mistress](#):
>
> 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.
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.