Vital to life
Written: Feb 05 '04
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Everyone needs B12 to live.
Cons: Self-medication is usually safe, but often a waste of money.
The Bottom Line: I in general advocate the taking of vitamins as seldom necessary, and less important than minerals. But B12 is one to keep in mind.
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| porokai's Full Review: Vitamin B-12 (Cobalamin) |
B12 is a most important vitamin, and deficiency serious. Most pharmacists sell it in tablets of only 50mcg,which is useless as a therapeutic dose and probably only vegans would benefit from such a daily prophylactic dose.
Loss of the intrinsic factor to absorb B12 can occur in heavy meat eaters as well as others, and many G.P.'s still insist that the resulting low blood serum B12 levels can only be corrected by intramuscular injections. Such pernicious anaemias can result from stomach surgery, gastric atrophy (common in the elderly), and hypochlorhydria (deficiency of stomach acid caused by lack of the enzyme pepsin).
B12 is present in cheese, yeast and egg yolks as well as meat, and iron is not involved, since the molecule is based on cobalt. Norms are occasionally altered; acceptable blood serum levels would I expect be lower in New Delhi than New York. In the west, factors are junk foods among the young, and 'tea and toast' diets in the elderly. Flesh foods are rich in B12, so the problem is not one of dietetic intake so much as ability to absorb it.
Health shops sell oral B12 in tablets around 500mcg as a rule, but recommended initial doses may in some cases be 1000 to 2000mcg per day.The Schilling test for B12 deficiency is now largely obsolete. And serum B12 testing is increasingly being supplemented with the more sensitive measurement of homocysteine and methylmalonic acid levels, though these are expensive and not available in many countries. Whereas most G.P.'s still insist that oral B12 is useless when the intrinsic factor is lacking, others say that the sublingual 'dots' are OK. However, the American Academy of Physicians categorically state that it is now accepted oral B12 is safe and effective, preferred even. even when the intrinsic factor is lacking.
Vegans sometimes question the source of B12; this is now I think exclusively of plant origin. Since a high proportion of customers are vegans or the stricter vegetarians, brands which fail to state this on their packets will experience reduced sales volumes.
Recommended:
Yes
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porokai
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Reviews written: 7
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