Warning about treatment with supplements, sublinguals, patches, sprays

[Laura5]

Apologies if this has already been posted - I thought it was interesting.

Blog post from the Dutch B12 Deficiency Research group:

b12researchgroup.wordpress....

[Allyson1]

I thought these parts were particularly interesting:

"Hydroxocobalamin facilitates both pathways (conversion to methylcobalamin and adenosylcobalamin) and it works in a more natural way. There are pathways in the complex metabolism/conversion to active forms that we (& the clinical chemists who we work with) do not know yet and which we therefore deliberately do not want to skip."

Regarding Methylcobalamin:

"The comment “it skips the conversion process and helps directly in the active form” we think of as an unscientific approach – to put it mildly."

And:

"The stories about problems with methylation are also heavily exaggerated by tablet sellers and the so-called figures on this (90% or 80% cannot methylate) are incorrect. Rather, it is vice versa: perhaps about 5 to 10% of the patients have reduced methylation. We experience this as a sales trick (sublingual tablets)..."

I really do think they're on to something. In the US I hear so many alt med claims about MTHFR and methylcobalamin sublinguals being the end-all-be-all, "natural" form and all other forms being poison. It's very marketing-driven. But it seems methylcobalamin can have very high side effects.

I am not familiar with this Dutch organization but I like their cautious approach.