Dosage

[posthinking01]

Hello everyone, can someone tell me how much B12 I should take to get my levels up to a reasonable standard - everything is in Ug and not sure what the relates to i.e. mg or mcg or IU's.

Thanks for any help you can give me.

A

[Thyb]

ug is the Same as mcg micrograms. Can you post your recent B12 results with reference ranges

[posthinking01 in reply to Thyb]

Many thanks here goes

Serum vitamin B12 368 ng/L 200.00 - 900.00ng/L

[Nackapan in reply to posthinking01]

Your levels are well in range.Depends on your symptoms .

Some in range are ill .

Some out of range well

My husbands serum B12 was 186 .

No symptoms.

He takes 10mcg daily of Oral B12.

I thought it wasn't enough.

I was wrong .

Last reading was 378pg(180.0-914.0)

He obviously absorbs it find and just needs a daily low dose as a maintenence.

We all operate at different levels.

If symptomatic depends if dietary I.e you can absorb if you actually eat enough b12 rich foods .

Or an absorbtion problem in which case I my opinion b12 injections are mostly needed .

[Technoid]

That really depends on whether you can absorb B12 normally or not. If you have PA you may not be able to absorb B12 orally, or not enough to alleviate deficiency symptoms.

If you don't have PA, a good B12 dosage for older adults would be 500mcg, to account for other possible absorption issues and have a reasonable margin of safety.

[posthinking01]

Thank you both that is very very helpful and I will proceed with caution !

[Hockey_player]

If you have PA, then a high dose like 1000mcg = 1 mg sublingual B12 might help. Some people don't absorb enough even from that much and need injections.

[posthinking01 in reply to Hockey_player]

So a high dose would be 1000 mcg then - now I understand why my levels went up - thank you !

[FlipperTD]

A milligram is a thousandth of a gram; a microgram is a thousandth of a milligram. The confusion comes from the use of the Greek letter 'mu' which doesn't appear on the 'qwerty' keyboard. So, a lower case 'u' tends to be used for microgram. The correct character is 'μ'. Hence the confusion! The typical injection dose is a milligram, which is 1,000 micrograms.

[posthinking01 in reply to FlipperTD]

That's very interesting thank you - I'm afraid having learned at school all my inches yards poles chains etc. to the letter - I was reluctant 25 years before they intended to go metric to listen to anyone telling me I had now re-learn another measurement method - hence I have no clue as to mm and cm etc. etc. - so thank you for this !

[FlipperTD in reply to posthinking01]

As a scientist, I went into science in Avoirdupois units [sounds a bit French to me; don't trust it] and very quickly switched to Metric, and SI units. The use of Greek letters made it even more complex. However, I can still think in 'Rod, Pole or Perch', and 'Chains' as well. I have a large number of sixpences which I'm trying to think of for some purpose, and not drilling holes in them to use as washers!

[posthinking01 in reply to FlipperTD]

Agh sixpences etc those were the days ! Thanks for your reply - interesting.