If you want your body and brain to function optimally you need to give it all the essential nutrients it needs and we need vitamin B12 for many things, from the nervous system to our blood and even one of the effects of low B12 can be weight gain. Low levels of this vitamin can have very serious consequences for our body.
Deficit symptoms
First of all, it is necessary to know if I have a low B12 level, not everyone can have a blood test and evaluate vitamin levels, so knowing what the symptoms of B12 deficiency are is key.
- B12 is important for our nervous system. Low levels of this vitamin can cause a burning, tingling or tingling sensation in the tips of the fingers and toes.
- We need B12 to produce myelin, which is the coating that surrounds all neurons. For this reason B12 is very important for the brain to function properly because it helps to form myelin, to insulate neurons and to allow electrical impulses, which communicate one neuron to another, to travel faster and this ultimately makes the brain more efficient.
- When we have low levels of B12, one of the symptoms we may experience is swelling of the tongue on the one hand and on the other hand the loss of the reliefs that give the tongue its taste buds.
- Fatigue can be caused by many different reasons, but coincidentally all of the B vitamins are related to energy production, so if you have chronic fatigue or if you are struggling to produce the amount of energy you need, incorporating B vitamins can be a great tip. B12 is important for producing a substance called adenine, which is an essential part of ATP (adenosine triphosphate), an essential final part of energy production, and for the same reasons that it can reduce your energy level, B12 can also affect your DNA, especially in forming new DNA and methylating it. When the methylation process does not work properly there is more risk of disease, and even a faster rate of aging because DNA is damaged faster.
- One of the most notorious symptoms is the mental sluggishness that we can have if the mind is not working well, you find it hard to remember things or simply do not think as fast as before. You have to know that B12 is necessary for the proper functioning of the nerves, but it is also necessary for the proper functioning of memory and is particularly related to a site in the brain related to the incorporation of recent memory and how this is transformed into long-term memory, key if you have to study or if you have an important meeting. Low levels of B12 increase our risk of long-term dementia. For these reasons it is important that you fix a B12 deficiency because it has serious consequences down the road. Many people who have been on very restrictive diets, low in B12 sources or without supplementing this vitamin, after a few years begin to suffer from mental slowness, less memory or difficulty concentrating. This is repairable, people with low B12 levels, who experienced these symptoms, when they recover their correct B12 levels, recover their normal neurological functioning.
- There are many causes of depression that can be physical, such as high levels of inflammation in your body, especially at the central nervous system level due to poor diet, allergies and even food allergies that work chronically with low levels of vitamin D, low levels of vitamin B12 or even low levels of omega 3, so these factors I always have to address because they are going to improve my mood. So there is a lot that we can look at on a physical level to improve mood before we consider that we are actually depressed and unfortunately, tests that show these things are not commonplace but once you know this information you can ask for them and know what to do.
- Finally, as a symptom we have anemia. Low levels of B12 can produce megaloblastic anemia. Its symptoms are pale skin, shortness of breath, fatigue, not because of energy as I mentioned before but because of the anemia itself and can even give us palpitations and as we need B12 to properly synthesize DNA all cells that are replaced quickly are the cells that will suffer when we do not have the amount of B12 as happens for example with red blood cells.
How to repair it
Once I understood that I have some of these symptoms the obvious question is how do I fix the B12 deficiency? First of all, by consuming foods rich in B12. We have to divide them into sources for omnivores and sources for vegetarians because for omnivores the richest option in B12 will always be the place where all animals store B12, the liver, eating liver can provide us with very high amounts of B12, but we can also find it in meat, fish, poultry and to a lesser extent in eggs and dairy products, that is why the ovo-lacto vegetarian has less risk of making B12 deficit than those people who do or who did veganism.
As sources suitable for a vegan diet we have others such as nutritional yeast, which has very good values of B12, but is usually fortified, algae such as nori, spirulina or chlorella, of which I recommend chlorella, because the other two have an analogous form of B12, which is not exactly what our body needs. Then we have other options like shiitake mushrooms, remember that many mushrooms are also rich in vitamin D and some fermented foods (like kimchi or natto) which are not usually rich in B12 per se, but because of the bacteria that develop in it and this is important because if your bacterial flora auto microbiota is extremely good it can produce a lot of vitamin B12 and it can produce a lot of vitamin K, but you have to feed it what those bacteria need, basically foods rich in soluble fiber like inulin and if you don’t like these foods you can consume soluble fiber, as a supplement which also helps you regulate your blood sugar which is easier because you are incorporating what your bacteria need without making the effort to eat something you don’t like.
We can compensate a B12 deficit with nutritional supplements, the more severe the deficit the more advisable it is to use supplements to recover the levels faster. In general terms, depending on the deficit, we can consume between 500 micrograms and 5 thousand micrograms, which is a large amount of B12, to quickly recover the deficit you have and then use a lower dose to sustain the levels if you are not going to eat sources of B12.
Forms of B12
Are all forms of B12 the same? The answer is obviously no, there is a synthetic form of B12 called cyanocobalamin. Our body can convert it to the form that we really need, but it requires an effort and requires several steps in your body with which it will continue to lose vitamin B12 on the way, for this reason we need very high amounts of these substances, in fact, when we take a supplement of cyanocobalamin it is normal to have hundreds of times the daily nutritional requirement.
Then we have the other form, methylcobalamin, which is better, but it needs the acid in our stomach to be used. The good news for people who consume animals is that the B12 found in meats, fish, eggs, etc. is the most similar form to methylcobalamin, and since it is easier to absorb, we usually need less of it. But if this is not your case, don’t worry, you can compensate for low B12 with either. Now the question is, I consume sources of B12 and I still have symptoms of low B12 or I had a test and I got low levels, why does this happen? all the nutrients that your body needs to be healthy have to, first, be consumed in sufficient doses, second, the food sources have to bring what they say they bring, third, you have to be able to absorb that nutrient, in this case for B12 we need a very acidic ph in the stomach, between 1 and 3 ph to be able to absorb B12 levels properly, plus you need a substance called intrinsic factor, and fourth your body has to be able to use it and metabolize it once it has already used it.
If you have little acid in your stomach it can be easily solved with a betaine or hydrochloric acid supplement. As we age our ability to produce stomach acid decreases. One drug that we discovered relatively recently that lowers B12 absorption is metformin, which is a substance that is now used for diabetes, so if you measure B12 in a blood test, it is advisable to measure methylmalonic acid and homocysteine, which are substances that go hand in hand with B12 levels and always remember that substances in the blood have a normal value and an optimal value, your body can survive or function in the ideal way, for which it is made and this is also true for the vitamins and minerals that we have in blood, we can have them just in the range or we can have it in optimal values, where our brain works better, we will have less risk of future dementia, we will have less cardiovascular problems associated with low B12, our genetics and our methylation will work better, among other things.
B12 is essential for our body to function well and is one of the vitamins that we most often lack, avoid this deficit to prevent many diseases and live better.