Biotin - A Potential Culprit

[Changexpert]

Biotin is known as a silver bullet for hair growth. Some people even use biotin for healing stomach and digestive issues. One very popular post from Curezone incorporated high dosage of biotin along with MSM and zinc carnosine to "heal" leaky gut (http://www.curezone.org/forums/fm.asp?i=870274#i). Unfortunately, this protocol turned out to be not very effective and magnified digestive issues for most people. Since I was suffering from both hair loss and gut issue, I tried high dosage of biotin for three months (up to 13,000 mcg/day). I was gradually getting worse every day in both hair and digestive issues, but despair really screwed up my judgment.

For the last month, I dropped all supplements that contained biotin, and ironically, I saw improvement in hair, digestive issues, and libido. I fell in for biotin again starting last week and after only 5 days, my hair loss worsened. So this got me very curious to do some research on too much biotin. It turns out biotin can inhibit spermatogenesis, carboxylase activity, which is tied to beta-oxidation of fatty acids in the mitochondria (fat metabolism), and adipogenesis.

Inhibition of spermatogenesis explains why my libido has been decreasing gradually. For females, there has not been studies on too much biotin and oogenesis, but my guess is that too much biotin would have similar inhibiting effects. Fat and carbohydrates are much easier to use as energy source compared to protein, which is why many people crave sugary and fatty foods when they are stressed; it is a natural coping mechanism. However, decreased beta-oxidation limits conversion of fat into energy and reduces the overall mitochondria activity, resulting in fatigue. Also, decreased beta-oxidation results in lower carnitine level. Lastly, adipogenesis is related to production of fat cells, but I do not understand the details behind this, so I do not want to make any hasty conclusion.

I realize that not many people on this forum take biotin in high dosage, but if you do or have done so in the past, it might be worthwhile to dig into more studies related to biotin interaction.

PS: Please keep in mind that biotin is a sulfur group vitamin

Source:
Inhibiting effect on spermatogenesis - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25039897
Inhibiting effect on carboxylase activity/adipogenesis - http://www.jbc.org/content/277/19/16347.full
Adipocyte - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adipocyte#Cell_turnover
Adipogenesis - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adipogenesis

 

[nandixon]

...It turns out biotin can inhibit spermatogenesis, carboxylase activity, which is tied to beta-oxidation of fatty acids in the mitochondria (fat metabolism), and adipogenesis.

...Fat and carbohydrates are much easier to use as energy source compared to protein, which is why many people crave sugary and fatty foods when they are stressed; it is a natural coping mechanism. However, decreased beta-oxidation limits conversion of fat into energy and reduces the overall mitochondria activity, resulting in fatigue. Also, decreased beta-oxidation results in lower carnitine level...

Source:
...
Inhibiting effect on carboxylase activity/adipogenesis - http://www.jbc.org/content/277/19/16347.full
...

Thanks for posting. Just wanted to mention that, in the reference, it's not biotin itself that inhibits acetyl-CoA carboxylase activity, but rather a chloroacetylated biotin analog that the researchers made. That enzyme actually requires biotin to function. (Perhaps too much biotin might be detrimental through interference, but that particular reference doesn't indicate that.)

 

[Martial]

It honestly astonishes me how intelligent everyone is here. When I read posts it sounds like at least more then 65% of the posters and commentators have their PHD. Sorry got a bit off topic but I just always found it interesting lol. Great information and thank you for sharing!

 

[PeterPositive]

I realize that not many people on this forum take biotin in high dosage, but if you do or have done so in the past, it might be worthwhile to dig into more studies related to biotin interaction.

Source:
Inhibiting effect on spermatogenesis - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25039897

Thanks, this is very interesting.
I am not able to understand how the percentages in the abstract of the rat study would translate to a human dose of biotin. Any ideas?

Thanks