Nosebleeds tied to vitamins?

[Moonhawk]

DD12 has been getting a lot of nosebleeds recently. About a month ago they started using a new brand of multivitamin, after a few months of none. she says in the past 2 weeks she’s had 9 nosebleeds, all at night, usually between 12-3am. For 4/5 days she did not get a nosebleed, she had forgotten to take the vitamins. Is this coincidence, or is there any link possible? We do live in a dry climate and it also got much more dry these past 3 weeks, so I’m inclined to think it’s that, but she sees a connection and is resistant to taking the vitamins unless she is assured it’s not connected. She also experienced a mild concussion yesterday, so she isn’t really excited for being a guinea pig and taking vitamins if they will give her a nosebleed on top of everything. 

[SKL]

Is fish oil involved?  I have read that it can increase nosebleed risk.  This happened to one of my kids.  A whole lot of blood before I realized the connection.

[Katy]

Unless it has a blood thinner like fish oil or turmeric in it, I doubt it. I think the most common cause of sudden nose bleeds is bad allergies, but it can also be a symptom of a few other problems in blood.  I'd probably take her to the pediatrician just to be sure, but also try antihistamine and washing all her bedding in hot water, and maybe eating lower histamine foods for a while (limit pork, aged beef, and cheese).  Sometimes hormones can make allergies worse.

It has been an extremely bad allergy year in much of the country.

[kbutton]

I vote dry climate. Maybe you can get her to use a nasal mist for a while before attempting vitamins again.

I used to get them at various times of year, especially dry times, and they often seemed to start in the middle of the night. My parents had to buy a really nice humidifier to use all winter. 

I think what happens at night is that the bleeding can drain into your sinuses when you lie down and you don't notice it for a while, and then you have a ton of blood that is backed up when your sinuses fill up (or one sinus if you are a side sleeper). If you have a bleed because you're injured or have thin blood, you shouldn't blow your nose, but I found that when I had these middle of the night bleeds, if I blew my nose, usually a big wad would come out, and it would go from 45 minutes of bleeding to a predictable concentrated mess with a little time for the bleed to clot up. YMMV, and you might ask a doctor if that's a safe thing to do.  

[Terabith]

It doesn't seem likely, but if there is a correlation, I'd probably try dropping the vitamin for awhile and see if that changes anything.

[Acadie]

Going off the vitamins could have three potential benefits--reducing stress post-concussion, testing the hypothesis that the vitamins are related to the nosebleeds and letting your kid know you're listening and trying to work with them. 

At one point in grad school, when there was construction right outside my window early every morning, I developed severe heartburn and bloating, and got all kinds of testing done which came up negative. My doctor chalked it up to academic and environmental stress so I worked really hard to reduce stress!

Then I ran out of my multivitamin, didn't have time to replace for a while, and my symptoms all resolved. It was really eye-opening to me that symptoms severe enough to compromise my health and quality of life could be caused by a multivitamin from the health food store that was supposed to be good for me! 

I can't really picture a mechanism by which a multivitamin would cause nosebleeds, but what would be the harm in dropping the multi for a while, and if the nosebleeds stop, resume and see what happens then?

[Laurie]

3 hours ago, SKL said:

Is fish oil involved?  I have read that it can increase nosebleed risk.  This happened to one of my kids.  A whole lot of blood before I realized the connection.

Fish oil/omega 3 and Vitamin E have a blood thinning effect for me, too.   And I've just recently discovered that quercetin does this as well.