The Not-So Mysterious Case of Orange Palms

I was collecting some papers from a student yesterday and she noted that my palms were orange. Upon further examination, and consultation from several other students, indeed my palms were orange. I never even noticed. I drink a glass (about two cups) of carrot juice every morning, and without even realizing it, my body was slowly building up toxic levels of Vitamin A (beta-carotene). Vitamin A, along with D, E, and K, is fat soluble, thus too much of it can be toxic to the body. I learned this during a nutrition class while in college, but I never even thought to think how much is too much. According to the Mayo Clinic, adults and teenagers should limit beta-carotene to 6-15 mg per day. One cup of carrot juice has about 22 mg of beta-carotene, thus, I was taking about 44 mg of beta-carotene every day for some time. Hmmm...I guess that's pretty good cause for my orange palms.

This incident, along with some recent news I learned about vitamin E, led me to think about vitamins and supplementation in general. I've long stopped supplementing with vitamin E, but for awhile, I was taking vitamin E supplements during its hey-day when it was touted as being a powerful antioxidant. At some point, maybe during the nutrition class, I learned that vitamin E wasn't all that and could actually be dangerous, thus I stopped. Well, the Mayo Clinic just uploaded a video about some current findings with vitamin E, which I've shared on here. This brings me to vitamin D. I've been taking vitamin D supplements per the advice from a friend who is a physician, based on my low vitamin D levels which I had tested. I also blogged about vitamin D, and I find it (scary) ironic that I wrote "Vitamin D is the new vitamin E". I hope not! I am now going to take a conservative approach toward supplementation and cut back my dosage of vitamin D, and most likely cut it out altogether, and get all of my vitamins through a well-balanced diet.