How drinking electrolytes with B6 nearly killed Blair Huddy

Editor’s Note: This story contains descriptions of medical trauma and suicide.

What you probably already know: Electrolyte powders and drinks are everywhere these days and they’re being increasingly marketed toward young women who are skipping the soda and alcohol and reaching for Liquid I.V., LMNT and Ultima drinks. Influencers, many of whom are women, are pushing the beverages even though doctors do not recommend them for everyday use. That’s exactly what Blair Huddy, 36, reached for not long after moving to the Boulder, Colorado area in late 2024, where the elevation and heat can cause hydration issues for many people, particularly those who enjoy hiking and outdoor activity. Huddy and her husband are avid hikers, so they went to Costco and grabbed some Liquid I.V. drink powders to help them stay hydrated. Liquid I.V. contains synthetic B6 at 110% of the recommended daily value, according to the nutrition label.

Blair Huddy’s story: “I started drinking one every day because we also really enjoy going on very long walks, often exceeding 10,000 steps,” Huddy says.

Almost immediately, Huddy started feeling dizzy, like the world was spinning around her. At first, she blamed the elevation change. But then the heart palpitations started. Her heart rate would jump up quickly when she stood up. She saw a cardiologist, who didn’t see anything obvious and instead prescribed anti-anxiety medication. Around the same time, she started having a severe fear of sleeping and a strong belief she was going to die in her sleep. She couldn’t shake it. After spending most of her life as a good sleeper, she was sleeping only a few hours a night.

Around then, the allergies started. Huddy had never had allergies but now she was having hay fever symptoms. When her father came to visit in March 2025, they went out to dinner, and she decided to try chicken liver for the first time. Chicken liver, it turns out, is extremely high in B6. It sent her into anaphylactic shock and she was rushed to the emergency room. There, they gave her epinephrine (EPI), which caused severe shaking and her heart to go into V-tach (ventricular tachycardia, or extremely fast heart rate). They prepped a defibrillator to shock her heart back into rhythm but thankfully did not have to use it.

“The next day, the cardiologist came in and they had no explanation,” Huddy says. “I had no reason to tell them, hey, I’m taking electrolytes every day. It just never crossed my mind.”

When she got home, the symptoms worsened. She was so dizzy she couldn’t sit up, she couldn’t eat because the nausea was so intense, her toes went completely numb, and she started to develop tinnitus — a noise or beeping in her ear. She stopped sleeping almost entirely and began hallucinating. Her hair started to fall out, she suffered frequent panic attacks. Doctors insisted it was anxiety or possibly bipolar disorder.

Then, in April 2025, she mostly stopped drinking Liquid I.V. because she couldn’t eat or drink anything at all. She didn’t realize it at the time, but her body immediately went into withdrawal and the symptoms got worse. She lost the ability to walk. She couldn’t bathe because the nerve pain was so intense and the ringing in her ears was getting louder. She got a blood test done on May 31 with every panel she could convince them to order. That night, her husband, who also consumed Liquid I.V. daily, suffered a heart attack out of nowhere. The next day, a nurse called her and told her that the levels of B6 in her blood were more than twice the upper limit and to immediately stop taking anything with B6 in it.

What the nurse didn’t tell her was that B6 has a half-life of 30 days, so every 30 days, half the toxin leaves the body. She stopped drinking Liquid I.V. June 1, 2025, and she was still at toxic levels until Nov. 17. The symptoms and inability to sleep plagued her through the withdrawal period and at one point, she became so depressed she attempted to take her own life. Fortunately, her attempt failed. To this day, though, she still suffers from severe tinnitus, where sometimes it’s so loud she can’t hear the TV, and sleep anxiety. But it’s slowly improving as the toxin leaves her body.

“What has remained is the extensive trauma from what happened,” Huddy says. “I think the reason I lived was so that I could help other people not go through what I went through. B6 is incredibly dangerous. And the medical community is incredibly under-informed.”

What happens next? The Netherlands and Australia have banned electrolyte and supplement companies from including B6 and are requiring high doses be prescription-only medication. Some multivitamins have thousands or tens-of-thousands of times the daily recommended amount and are often marketed for brain health, hormone balancing support and sports performance. Naturally occurring B6 helps your neurons talk to each other. But the synthetic version at high doses can disrupt the body’s ability to process natural B6 while also accumulating in the body to toxic levels. While few people have heard of the issue, a recent episode of the NBC show Brilliant Minds featured a patient suffering from B6 toxicity.

Huddy and her husband are recovering well, and she’s been able to go back to work. But she wants everyone to be aware of the dangers of overconsuming B6 and has even taken to stopping people in Costco when she sees those products in their cart. Not everyone will have the reaction she did, but little research has been done to determine who is most at risk.

“These drinks are marketed as everyday hydration solutions when they are really meant for extreme athletes,” Huddy says, “and consumers are being left to self-dose with no warning about cumulative exposure or any sort of risk.”