A dietitian on TikTok has warned against taking extremely common supplements due to the less thought about risks.

Trying to keep your body in tip top shape can actually prove quite a difficult task and a dietitian has now issued a warning for people who regularly take supplements.

Nichole, who goes by oncology.nutrition.rd on TikTok, suggested people could be increasing their risk of cancer by taking too many supplements or supplements that exceed the suggested daily amounts.

Are supplements as healthy as we’ve always thought? (Getty Stock Image)

Speaking in a video shared on the platform earlier this month, she warned against common tablets taken like vitamin C or IV vitamins.

She said: “Supplements increase cancer risk. Hi, my name is Nichole and I am a cancer dietician, let’s talk more about this.

“A lot of people will take high-dose supplements to try to reduce risk of cancer or improve their health. People will say ‘vitamin C or IV vitamins or things like that are better for you, give your body more’… that is incorrect.”

She also addressed the suggestion and belief that you would simply urinate out the excess that your body can’t process.

She continued: “You don’t just pee out excess supplements your body has to process it, specifically your liver. When you have high levels, like 200 percent of daily value… and check those supplements they will say like 10,000 percent daily value, 8,000 percent, 25,000 percent daily value.

“That high level of excess will then become a free radical and start to damage and break down your cell DNA. It will harm your cells at high levels. You are never going to reach those high levels with food, never.

“You can sit down and have 25 kiwis. You are never going to be able to reach that high level of supplement that is in all those supplement pills. Eat foods to get your micronutrients deficiencies unless you have a prescription from your doctor, food is enough.”

People on social media were not entirely convinced, however, and highlighted specific situations where supplements benefited them.

This isn’t to say it did not also increase their risk of cancer, though.

One user commented: “The key here is the daily value (like you briefly mentioned), especially for pregnant (or in my case TTC) people, I think there’s a ton more nuance than ‘supplements are harmful’.

Not everyone agreed on the dieticians advice, however (TikTok/@oncology.nutrition.rd)

And another said: “This isn’t specific enough. Yes, high dose vitamins can cause cancer. However, taking a broccoli extract supplement, for example,to reduce the risk of prostate cancer, has shown efficacy.”

While some people had their reservations, Nichole’s claims are not new and a study previously carried out by the University of Colorado indicated that people who took extra vitamins and minerals were more likely to have health problems.

In the 2015 study, taking more than the recommended dosage of a beta carotene – often promoted as a supplement to boost the immune system – was found to increase the risk of developing lung cancer and heart disease by up to 20%.

Prof Tim Byers, associate director for cancer prevention at the university’s cancer centre, said, as per The Guardian: “We have discovered that taking extra vitamins and minerals do more harm than good.

“We found that the supplements were actually not beneficial for their health. In fact, some people actually got more cancer while on the vitamins.”

A woman has shared a stark warning after receiving a shock skin cancer diagnosis at the age of 29.

Courtney Mangan was given just an 18 percent chance of survival when she received the devastating news that she had stage 4 skin cancer.

At the time, Courtney, who hails from Australia’s Gold Coast, had been to her doctors on two separate occasions about a mole that she was concerned about.

But her worries were dismissed, and it wasn’t until she sought out medical advise from a skincare specialist that Courtney was given the bad news that it was already ‘too late’.

“I had a mole on my back that I never really saw – but my family told me it started to change and urged me to see a doctor,” she recalled.

“The specialist checked my whole body and said everything looked normal but I expressed my concern about the mole on my back so he took a cutting and sent it to pathology.”

Courtney continued to tell Daily Mail Australia that she quickly received the call she didn’t want to get from her doctor, who confirmed that her mole had come back as level four melanoma and that she needed to see another specialist in Brisbane.

Courtney’s had to go through many tests and surgeries since her diagnosis (courtneymangan/Instagram)

“I immediately went numb – my uncle had died from melanoma just a few years prior,” Courtney, now 38, said of the moment she was told the news.

“My whole world changed in that moment. I couldn’t think of it as anything other than a death sentence.”

But at this point, she hadn’t received her stage 4 diagnosis.

It wasn’t until Courtney began to experience more symptoms that she was told her cancer was stage 4.

A year after doctors removed the mole on her shoulder that was cancerous, Courtney developed a lump in her arm.

She thought that one of her symptoms was her IBS at first (courtneymangan/Instagram)

Then she started to experience pain while she ate – something she initially believed was because of her irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).

But an endoscopy then confirmed that she had a mass in her bowel and, after operating on her, Courtney was told her cancer had spread to her internal organs and was now stage four.

Another mass was later found in her thigh, but doctors were unable to remove it.

Fortunately, Courtney has now been cancer free for three years, but she says you can ‘never really shake’ the fear of her illness coming back.

“There’s a dark cloud hanging over you all the time,” she added.

If you’ve been affected by any of these issues and want to speak to someone in confidence, contact the American Cancer Society on 1-800-227-2345 or via their live chat feature, available 24/7 every day of the year.

A fitness trainer has opened up about how he was diagnosed with cancer, explaining how he ‘brushed off’ an ’embarrassing’ symptom.

Dilan Patel, from Ilford in the UK was age 25 and living a normal life when he started to notice some unusual symptoms.

Taking to his TikTok, @dnafitnessuk, Dilan explained how his body was ‘screaming at him’ for two years, but he always put the unusual symptoms down to something else, whether it was working hard in his career or pushing it at the gym.

Dilan was just 25 when he started experiencing symptoms that would leave to a devastating diagnosis (Getty Stock Photo)

“You won’t believe it… I was 25 years old, living my life like any other young adult – working hard, working out, hanging with friends, and trying to figure out my future,” he wrote on the video sharing platform.

“Life felt normal. I had no reason to think anything was wrong. But then something strange started happening.”

Dilan explained that the unusual symptom would happen in the middle of

“I’d wake up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat,” he continued. “I mean SOAKED. My clothes, my bed – everything would be wet. It happened 2-3 times every single night. At first, I just thought, ‘Maybe I’m getting too hot under the covers?’ So I brushed it off.

Something wasn’t quite right with Dilan’s body (Getty Stock Photo)

“Weeks turned into months, and the night sweats didn’t stop. Looking back now, there were other signs, too. I was exhausted all the time, but I just thought it was because I was working long hours.

“My skin was unbelievably itchy – so much so that I carried lotion around with me everywhere, convinced it was just dry skin. I even noticed lumps on my neck, but I thought they were my muscles growing from all my workouts at the gym.

“Everything had an explanation – or so I thought.”

Dilan explained how after two years of symptoms, he started feeling worse, so went to see his doctor.

It was during this time that he was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of cancer that develops in the lymphatic system.

“But eventually, I started feeling worse so I went to the doctor. Nothing could’ve prepared me for what they told me,” recalled Dilan. “At just 25 years old, I was diagnosed with Stage 4B Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

“Five tumours. It had even spread to my lung. I couldn’t believe it. I’d spent so long brushing off my symptoms, convincing myself they weren’t a big deal.

“But my body had been screaming at me for almost two years. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from this experience, it’s to pay attention to your body.

“Those little signs and symptoms? They’re there for a reason. Don’t wait until it’s too late.”

A fever can also be a symptom (Getty Stock Photo)

Hodgkin lymphoma mostly affects people between the age of 20 and 40 and those over 75, with slightly more men than women diagnosed with the illness.

It is a relatively aggressive cancer and can quickly spread, but it is also one of the most easily treated.

Symptoms include night sweats; unintentional weight loss; a fever; a persistent cough or feeling of breathlessness and persistent itching of the skin.

If you’ve been affected by any of these issues and want to speak to someone in confidence, contact the American Cancer Society on 1-800-227-2345 or via their live chat feature, available 24/7 every day of the year.

A woman diagnosed with stage 4 cancer at the age of 22 has revealed an unusual symptom to look out for.

Mariena Browning from Pocatello, Idaho, in the US revealed that she was diagnosed with melanoma, a form of skin cancer, despite not displaying typical symptoms.

In the vast majority of cases a sign of melanoma is noticing that a new mole has appeared on your skin, or an existing one has suddenly changed.

But in Mariena’s case this symptom did not show up, which is rare in cases of melanoma but does sometimes happen.

Not only that, but Mariena was not someone who would necessarily be considered at high risk of developing the health condition.

Risk factors can include things like family history, as well as lifestyle factors such as smoking, not wearing sun scream, and using tanning beds.

Unfortunately, due to not displaying the usual symptoms associated with the condition, medics only diagnosed Mariena when they found another symptom.

This was a lump on her groin which they found to be malignant.

Unfortunately because her condition was skin cancer, this meant that she was initially diagnosed with stage 3 cancer indicating that it had begun to spread.

While skin cancer is often treatable if caught early enough, unfortunately because it wasn’t displaying the most common symptoms in Mariena’s case this led to a series of gruelling treatments.

Sharing her experience, Mariena urged people to take basic steps to ensure that if the worst does happen they can at least catch it early.

She told Self magazine: “Now that I know how crappy and intense melanoma and its treatment can be, I’m a huge advocate for sun safety, sunscreen use and yearly skin checks with a dermatologist, even though mine didn’t show up in the more traditional way.”

Mariena posted about her experience with cancer. (Instagram / marienabrowning)

Unfortunately, Mariena ended up being diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, with eight in ten patients at stage four dying within five years.

She had to endure several unpleasant treatments, with side effects including ‘a scary bout of liver problems that turned my eyes yellow due to jaundice’, along with ‘a steroid treatment that made me super angry (and hungry)’.

She also had to endure a ‘claustrophobic’ course of radiation therapy after the cancer spread to her brain.

Now, it’s now been six years since her initial diagnosis however, and happily Mariena has made a fantastic recovery, stopping treatment altogether in 2021.

She has moved into a new chapter of life after becoming a mom.

In an Instagram post in 2021 about her journey, she wrote: “I’d still love more than anything to spread Melanoma Awareness and help women know that even though sometimes your world gets flipped upside down it’s still possible to find the happy and as my grandpa always says ‘keep smilin’ even when it feels like life isn’t fair or you’re so far behind everyone else.”