Has anyone seen this product and is the IF legit to get the B12 in.

[WorkingProgress]

nutriadvanced.co.uk/intrins...

[deniseinmilden]

If it's as good as it might be then the company ought to fire their marketing team for such a lousy write up!

It's quite a good source of methylfolate - (and if anything might be too much for some people), less so of B12.... although if the IF works, it could be a useful source.

If the B12 isn't absorbed in the ratios it suggests, I'd be wary of the methylfolate masking the B12 deficiency symptoms instead of fixing the problem.

Some people can't take methylfolate and even in those of us for whom it is essential, it can still give us a stonking headache if we don't balance it against our diet correctly and inadvertently take too much, whereas you can't OD on B12.

That said, whoever invented the idea definitely knows something about B12 deficiency and it's possibly a good product. It's a good idea, I just can't be sure of its performance in practice.

I would rather do my jabs and take my methylfolate separately, as I need it, just because its so easy that way, but certainly for some it's probably worth a try!

Cost is good compared to buying the active ingredients individually.

[WorkingProgress in reply to deniseinmilden]

I agree. I too supplement my methylfolate separately but was thinking if this could work and they got the B12 levels right and the intrinsic factor actually did it's job then maybe it would be a useful back up. That's is providing the rest of the pathways in the individual"s body are functioning correctly to get it in.

[deniseinmilden in reply to WorkingProgress]

Yes, exactly!

It looks worth a try, doesn't it!

[FlipperTD in reply to deniseinmilden]

Scientist, not medic.

It's interesting, and 'back in the old days' when we had the Schilling Tests, we could discriminate between simple B12 deficiency and someone lacking Intrinsic Factor. It's what we used to diagnose PA. We had capsules containing B12 and IF; B12 was absorbed, even in PA. William Bosworth Castle of Boston's famous [infamous?] experiments using 'hamburger meat treated with normal human gastric juice' relied on him swallowing the mince and then regurgitating it. His gastric juice was clearly facilitating the absorption. The earlier experiments of Minot, Whipple and Murphy used raw liver, and that worked too, and we assume that was due to 'mega-doses' of B12 but without added IF.

So there's little doubt that oral B12 and IF can be absorbed. It should be remembered that in B12 deficiency, treatment with folate is not advised until the B12 situation has been rectified.

In my opinion, treatment of this type needs the support and supervision of a sympathetic doctor.

[Budsa]

Some interesting articles available via that link.

[Gaudygoat]

I'm not a chemist and others on this sight might be able to provide some insight but my thinking is that if you could just put intrinsic factor into a tablet and that would enable people to absorb B12 then you could do away with all the injections, save the NHS millions and there would probably be a Nobel prize for the creator.You can transfer intrinsic factor as I recall reading that an early experiment was to give patients with PA regurgitated stomach content which included IF and that was shown to help but there must be a reason why it isn't an effective cure for PA.

I'd be interested in learning why this isn't the solution, but I'm afraid that I'm highly sceptical and until I hear otherwise I shall be carrying on self injecting.

[WorkingProgress in reply to Gaudygoat]

I agree as we would all love to do away with injections and illness in general. Maybe one day this will be a standard "off the shelf product that works" or something similar. That would be great for us all but I too am very weary of it.

[JanD236 in reply to Gaudygoat]

As PA sufferers have IF antibodies maybe this is the reason it hasn’t been put forward as a cure?

[helvella]

I note that the British National Formulary says:

Apart from dietary deficiency, all other causes of vitamin B12 deficiency are attributable to malabsorption. There is little place for the use of low-dose vitamin B12 orally and none for vitamin B12 intrinsic factor complexes given by mouth. Vitamin B12 in larger oral doses [unlicensed] may be effective.

bnf.nice.org.uk/treatment-s...

That is, they dismiss any possibility of oral Intrinsic Factor being of any use whatsoever. Yet (somewhat speculatively) appear to endorse high dose oral B12 without IF. I also wonder why they emphasise "given by mouth"? I can't think of any other even vaguely sensible routes for B12+IF complexes! Yet they positively chose to change from the word "orally".

I also note that much of the cost of B12 injections comes from the poor management of the delivery. Imagine getting a token (paper or electronic) which you can take to a local B12 injection service - maybe a local pharmacy. Rather than make an appointment and possibly also need a prescription for the vial of B12.