It’s worth noting that some manufacturers add ingredients such as caffeine and guarana to supplements too. “So when you take that supplement it makes you feel a bit different, and because you feel a bit different you think, ‘Well, this must be working’”, says Whyte.

The quantity of what you take is also key – both in terms of how many supplements you take and what else you’re taking alongside. I used to think of my supplement collection as the key to future-proofing my body, but recently I’ve started to wonder if I’m accidentally overdoing it. “We call it ‘stacking’,” says Whyte. “This is the over-consumption of a given substance from multiple sources.”

This occurs when we unknowingly overdo it by consuming more vitamins than we need. Our daily diets should – our experts agree – generally contain everything we need in terms of recommended daily allowance (RDA). But add in a handful of vitamins too (even protein shakes, ‘powders’ and energy drinks will have a vitamin content) and you could very easily be soaring past your RDAs. Without you even noticing.

We don’t just do it accidentally, either. To counteract any lifestyle issues, we’ll often take more than is advised on the packet as ‘insurance’ or because we’ve self-diagnosed ourselves with a malady or deficiency – or if we’ve forgotten one day we’ll double up the next. But it doesn’t quite work that way. To avoid stacking, becoming label-savvy is important (ie you need to start checking them), as is knowing how certain ingredients are stored in the body. Vitamins such as A, K, E and D are fat-soluble, for example.

This means that your body holds on to them rather than excreting the excess out; if you take too much they can build up in your liver and fatty tissues, putting you at risk of health consequences such as gastric problems or hypervitaminosis (vitamin poisoning), which can lead to vomiting, blurred vision and irritability.

On the other side you have the water-soluble vitamins, such as C and B, which are removed by the body more easily – explaining my occasional fluro-yellow wee. Take too many of those and you’ll more than likely just pee everything back out again. It turns out that my morning vitamin cocktail might be problematic for other reasons, too.

“The biggest issue is when [supplements] interact with other medications and block or enhance their action,” says Dr Hazel Wallace, author of The Food Medic and The Food Medic For Life. “There is some evidence that St John’s wort is effective in the treatment of depression, but it can interact with medications such as oral contraceptives and warfarin, a blood-thinning medication. If patients are self-administering this while taking other medications, they could be putting their health at severe risk.”

This is what your supplements are really doing to your body