Breakdown of the B vitamins and what their functions are.

[EllaNore]

Hello everyone, I find myself confused about all the different functions of the b vitamins and what each one does. I found this page that I thought had some really good information on it.

Hope it helps.

lcca.com/blog/The-ABCs-of-v...

[Thrones12]

great link EllaNore many thanks x

[EllaNore in reply to Thrones12]

You're very welcome MrPeaccock.

[Thrones12 in reply to EllaNore]

😘

[Technoid]

Thanks EllaNore, Its not bad but I do have some grumbles (I like to grumble of course LOL)

"For those of you who may be vegetarian or vegan, you can get your daily B12 through plant milk, breakfast cereals and soy products."

This is terrible advice. I've not seen many soya products fortified with B12 at all and although many plant milks and breakfast cereals are fortified with B12, its certainly not universal. Ironically, if you shop mostly in health stores they often do not stock the fortified plant milks and the breakfast cereals available there are also more natural/organic and thus unlikely to be B12 fortified. But even if you did try to rely on fortified plant milk and fortified breakfast cereal for your B12, you could easily get into trouble. My plant milk is fortified with 0.38 mcg of B12 per 100ml which is par for the course. You'd have to drink 6 times this normal serving to barely reach the RDA. Pretty risky. In theory it might be possible but I think it would be madness to rely on getting B12 this way. Special K in some countries seems to have very high amounts of B12 but still.. eek.

They also say the symptoms of overdose (they are talking in general terms about all B vitamins *grumble* ) will subside after you stop the supplement. That depends. If you were taking wild doses of B6, say 100mg for months/years and continued taking them even after the onset of neurological problems from the B6, then those neurological problems would eventually become as difficult to resolve as the neurological damage from B12 deficiency. It would take considerable effort to do this to yourself but its possible if you went crazy on B6 dosages for a long enough time.

"Always let your doctor or nurse know if you decide to, or are already, taking a vitamin supplement. He or she will be able to determine if that supplement is right for you."

Hmm. well.... been there, done that and ended up on this forum 😅 . You could get decent advice, you could get nonsense or life-threatening advice as we can all see reading some of the spectacularly dumb prescriptions and dietary advice given by medical professionals to those here or to friends and relatives. I would get a second opinion from a registered dietician/nutritionist in the case of supplementation. Doctors are (mostly) ill-informed and not properly trained in nutrition. Thats ok, to an extent as its not their primary expertise. The problem is that they pronounce on it like they are, and are often unaware of the extent of their ignorance and do not refer questions since they do not realize they are out of their depth.

[EllaNore in reply to Technoid]

Gosh technoid I'm glad you straightened all that out. Thanks. I didn't realize that was all incorrect. Thanks for straightening it out.

[Technoid in reply to EllaNore]

sorry for the rants. 😜 Its generally a good article for a lay audience, theres just a few nuances like above that get me wound up as Im a nutrition obsessive 🤓

[EllaNore in reply to Technoid]

That's okay. I respect your knowledge very much. And if I post something that's not 100%, I hope someone would correct it. It's all good. Thanks for the clarifications.

[EllaNore in reply to Technoid]

I have to admit when I read the part where they said talk to your doctor or medical care provider about the vitamins you're taking etc and that they'll help you, I was shaking my head but the rest I thought was pretty good information for the most part.

[Technoid in reply to EllaNore]

Yes, mostly good and they explain in clear and simple terms.

[EllaNore in reply to Technoid]

That was actually what I liked, it was very simplified. With reading being so overwhelming sometimes it was kind of nice.

[Cherylclaire Forum Support in reply to Technoid]

I often find that the warnings given for "too much" B12 sound exactly like B12 deficiency symptoms !

The only side-effect, as far as I'm aware, that is commonly experienced is acne-type spots initially - which seems worth the discomfort. I have noticed that if I have an unexpected return of symptoms, a blip, then I can expect the spots to follow as I recover. So even that a good sign, perhaps.

[wedgewood in reply to Technoid]

I agree 100% !

[Lurcher-lady in reply to Technoid]

How very true Technoid. Another thing that I have wondered about (probably incorrectly) is that if B12 primarily comes from soil then is there going to be less of it in animals that are kept in unnatural conditions (sheds) or chickens kept indoors and not fed from the ground. Doesn’t affect me as I eat neither but was just wondering.

[EllaNore in reply to Lurcher-lady]

We deplete the nutrients in our soil terribly. I live in Iowa where we grow most of the world's corn and soy. I see them spraying the fields with chemicals, and putting powdery white substances into the dirt and tilling it in to the soil. Who knows what's in that?We overwork and overuse our soil. The nutrients in our foods grown by farmers etc are depleted of nutrients. They do rotate their crops. And some of the farmers are trying to farm more naturally by leaving the cut corn stalks in the ground and tilling it into the soil. When a tree drops its leaves, the leaves are supposed to break down and feed the tree. But we rake them up and we clean up our yards and the trees are depleted of all their nutrients and eventually they get weak and diseased and die.

It's the same thing with our food. So we put man-made nutrients into the soil and work it into the food and that's what we're eating. A bunch of crappy food grown in mass amounts that lack the nutrients that we need. How do we know the farmers are putting accurate amounts of nutrients into our soil? Who's giving the farmers this information?

We spray bug spray on everything, deplete our soils and we wonder why there's so much disease. We grow chemically grown foods to be larger to feed the masses of people. We give our hogs and cows drugs to make them bigger to feed more people. This is not natural. TV is full of commercials full of sweets and terrible foods for us. One has to be very health savvy to wade through all of the baloney out there and find a way to eat what's best for us. Thus we look for vitamins to take to give us what we don't get from our food. It's really just a vicious cycle. The more people we have to feed the worse our food is going to get. It's kind of scary. The movie Soylent Green comes to mind.

[scnuke]

I tend to agree with Technoid. When I was in my Nuclear Medicine rotations, as we were studying background for the old Schillings test, the professor told us that it was a virtual certainty that without exogenous B12 supplementation, all vegetarians (this was long before vegans and lots of fortified foods) would eventually develop pernicious anemia. Other B vitamins, while still mostly water soluble, can cause many issues if over done. But thank you EllaNore for a good article.

[EllaNore in reply to scnuke]

Right! At least it's creating a conversation and correcting misinformation. So I guess posting this even though it's not a great article is invoking conversation and now we know articles like this are not always correct. How many people are reading this and believing every word of it? Sad.