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Vitamin B6 (Pyridoxine)
A water-soluble B vitamin that your body uses as pyridoxal-5-phosphate, the working form behind more than a hundred enzymes: the ones that handle amino acids, make neurotransmitters and process homocysteine. It carries ten authorised EU health claims and sits in six of our formulas. It also has one of the lowest upper limits of any vitamin we use, 12 mg a day, which is why the engine counts it across everything you take.
WHAT WE ARE ALLOWED TO SAY
Ten claims. All of them authorised.
These are the wordings on the EU register for vitamin B6, and we do not paraphrase them into something that sounds stronger. All ten carry the same condition: the product has to be at least a source of vitamin B6 under Regulation (EC) 1924/2006. Our formulas serve 1.4 to 3 mg, which is 100 to 214% of the NRV.These are the wordings on the EU register for vitamin B6, and we do not paraphrase them. All ten need the product to be at least a source of it. Our formulas serve 100 to 214% of the NRV.
Vitamin B6 has no authorised claim for stress, anxiety, sleep, premenstrual symptoms or nausea in pregnancy. Our file notes 10 to 50 mg a day where it has been used for some of those, far above anything we serve. It is the headline claim on only one of its six formulas, B12 + folate, where we lead with its role in normal homocysteine metabolism. That is a claim about metabolism, not about your heart or your memory.
WHY P5P
The claims are the same. The form is already active.
The ten claims attach to vitamin B6, not to a particular form, so the form is not a claim argument and we do not use it as one. Our file names pyridoxal-5-phosphate as the form of choice, and all six formulas that carry B6 use it. It is the coenzyme form, the one your enzymes actually work with, so it is active as it is.
The cheaper form. Your body has to convert it to P5P before it can use it, a step that depends on vitamin B2. A reasonable option that we did not pick.
Pyridoxal-5-phosphate, the active coenzyme form. Our notes prefer it over pyridoxine because it may carry a lower risk of nerve damage at the same working dose. That debate is not settled, and we say so.
Soluble in water, neutral in taste, best kept between pH 5 and 7, and sensitive to light. Our form file does not mark it as stable in liquid, and every VION dose is a liquid. How that is handled is not documented yet.
Our figures on how it behaves in your body are partial. Our file puts oral absorption at around 75%. Bound to your tissues as P5P it lasts 15 to 20 days, but its half-life in blood is not documented. It acts over days to weeks rather than hours, leaves through the kidneys as 4-pyridoxic acid, and is not broken down by the CYP liver enzymes at nutritional doses. None of this is an authorised claim.Our file puts its absorption at around 75% and its time in your tissues at 15 to 20 days; its half-life in blood is not documented. None of this is a claim.
WHERE IT APPEARS
Six of the twenty-nine carry vitamin B6.
Always in the morning dose, always a small amount, and always next to other ingredients: B12 and folate, the other B vitamins, magnesium. Six small doses add up, which is why the engine counts B6 across your whole plan and not one formula at a time. All six are still pending clinical validation, and each has its own exclusions, listed on its page.
THE CEILING
12 mg a day, across everything you take.
In 2023 EFSA lowered its upper limit for vitamin B6 to 12 mg a day for adults, from 25 mg, and it holds in pregnancy and breastfeeding too. It is one of the lowest limits of any vitamin we use, and it applies to your total, not to each formula. Our six formulas carry 1.4 to 3 mg each: even if all six were in your plan on the same morning, your total from us would be 10.6 mg, under the limit. A formula that would take your total to the limit is blocked before it is recommended.EFSA's upper limit for vitamin B6 has been 12 mg a day since 2023, and it applies to your total. All six of our formulas together would come to 10.6 mg.
Our file sets a conservative rule of no more than 5 mg of B6 in any one formula, so that two can share a plan without reaching the limit. Our highest is 3 mg. Our dose file lists 10 mg as a minimum effective dose, carried over from an older range; we aim at the recommended intake with a margin instead, far from the limit. EFSA's adult reference intake is 1.6 mg for women and 1.7 mg for men. That is a reason to include it, not a permission to promise anything.
EFSA based the limit on damage to the sensory nerves, with tingling, loss of coordination and heightened sensitivity to touch and light. It was described at 1 to 6 g a day over 12 to 40 months, and there are cases at 50 mg a day or more taken for long periods. It usually reverses when you stop, but it can leave after-effects. Other agencies land elsewhere: 100 mg a day in the US, 25 mg in France for diet and supplements together, and 5.4 mg in Germany's BfR proposal for a food supplement, a figure some combinations of our formulas go past. We work to EFSA's 12 mg.
Contraindicated if you take levodopa for Parkinson's without carbidopa: B6 blocks its effect. With existing peripheral neuropathy, avoid more than 10 mg a day over time; with neuropathy (diabetic, alcohol-related or unexplained) or isoniazid treatment, the dose is only adjusted under clinical control. Caution with high doses in liver disease. In pregnancy and breastfeeding our file considers it safe at the recommended 1.9 to 2.0 mg a day. Under 18 the EFSA limits are lower: 2.2 to 2.5 mg from 4 to 11 months, 3.2 to 4.5 mg from 1 to 6 years and 6.1 to 10.7 mg from 7 to 17. Supplements with more than 10 mg a day should be discussed with a healthcare professional. The formulas add their own exclusions: Cognition & memory is ruled out with liver disease; Energy & vitality with liver disease or vitamin K antagonist blood thinners; Stress & nervous system with liver, heart, thyroid or autoimmune disease, hyperandrogenism, sedative medication, pregnancy, breastfeeding or if you are under 18; Acute energy with those blood thinners, pregnancy, breastfeeding or if you are under 18; Daily athletic with those blood thinners, liver, heart or thyroid disease, hyperandrogenism, sedative medication, pregnancy, breastfeeding or if you are under 18. B12 + folate lists no exclusions of its own.
WHAT IT REACTS WITH
Documented pairs, not hunches.
Vitamin B6 is one of the 140 ingredients in our library, so it has 139 possible partners. We have documented 11 of them, out of the 443 pairs on file, plus one medicine. Nine are classed as complementary, most of them because B6 is the cofactor the other one needs: 5-HTP and L-tyrosine on the way to serotonin and dopamine, melatonin further down the same path, folate, B12 and L-methionine in the homocysteine cycle, and magnesium, zinc and caffeine. The other two bind it in your gut.
B6, B12 and folate work together in the cycle that processes homocysteine. Whenever folate or L-methionine is in a plan, the engine makes sure B6, B12 and folate are all there, and folate never goes without B12. With folate and with zinc, our note is to watch the B6 total so it stays under 12 mg. Magnesium and B6 are a classic pairing, and one study we cite tested them against magnesium alone in stressed adults with low magnesium.
Both bind B6 in your gut. Charcoal can cut how much you absorb by 30 to 90%, so it never shares a dose and stays at least 3 hours away. White clay stays at least 2 hours away. No VION formula carries either, so this matters if you take them separately.
Without carbidopa, B6 speeds up the conversion of levodopa before it reaches the brain and cuts its effect: rated high severity, so high doses of B6 are avoided. With levodopa plus carbidopa there is no restriction. Consult your healthcare professional if you take isoniazid, cycloserine or anticonvulsants: B6 may interfere with the treatment. With isoniazid, TB guidelines recommend B6 alongside it, but that dose is for your doctor to set. Our file also lists hydralazine, penicillamine, oral contraceptives and theophylline, which are not in our drug table yet.
Our file names riboflavin (B2) as a partner, because the enzyme that activates B6 depends on it, and it sits next to B6 in Energy & vitality, but that pair is not in our table yet. Nor are most of its other formula partners, from vitamin C and ginseng to ashwagandha and rhodiola. Across the library, 443 of the 9,730 possible pairs are documented, which is 4.55%. The rest are not "safe", they are simply unchecked, and we would rather write that down than let the number look like a badge.Riboflavin (B2) and most of its formula partners are not in our table as pairs with it yet. Across the library, 443 of the 9,730 possible pairs are documented, which is 4.55%. The rest are not safe, they are simply unchecked.
SOURCES
Everything on this page, with its reference.
Reviewed by VION nutrition team · last reviewed 16 September 2026Read the introduction to Vitamin B6 (Pyridoxine) →
140 INGREDIENTS · 64 IN USE TODAY
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