B12 Deficiency Myths To Stop Believing

Are you wondering about B12 deficiency testing and understanding what your B12 levels are? Maybe you have been told that your B12 levels are not low enough to actually qualify as deficient. In this article, we look at what some of the B12 deficiency myths are, regarding testing and how to understand when your body needs more B12.
New B12 Book: geni.us/rTQTvd (Amazon)
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
This study (link below) looks at some of the myths surrounding vitamin B12 deficiency from both a functional assessment and also a more standard assessment of B12 deficiency. Before we get into what the myths are and the assessment techniques, we want to define what deficiency is to begin with. Generally speaking it means not enough, but not enough for what? When you are deficient you don't have enough B12 for your red blood cells to divide. You don't have enough to carry out the natural functions that the body is needing to do on a daily basis. This definition of deficiency is more of a functional way to look at it. The other way is using a reference lab.
When you do a test for deficiency this is done at a reference lab like Quest or Labcorp. They define deficiency based on what they have established as a normal and abnormal range. When you are using a reference range you do want to understand how they came up with that reference range. This informs you how it could be flawed and the assumptions involved. This is not to suggest that it is totally flawed. Still we want to understand where the reference numbers are coming from.
Serum B12 is the more standard way to check for B12 deficiency. How do they come up with their reference ranges? A lab creates a reference range by looking at a subset of the local population. For easy numbers, let's say they use 100 "healthy" people to use and check their B12 levels. Then they will average the numbers and take so many standard deviations above and below the averages to create the reference range. If you have twenty five people that are very deficient (in B12), it will really skew the results. (of the one hundred) They have to take a large enough sample size to make sure you're accounting for all subsets of the population. This also implies that you will miss people using this form of testing. Therefore you may miss out on some problems that are occurring from B12 deficiency. This is true for any serum blood test or any reference range. You will miss some of the people that actually have the problem when you are looking for deficiency or excess etc. This gets at the relative sensitivity of the test. Will the test pick up all the the people that have the problem or is it going to pick up half or or what is it?
There are many myths about B12 deficiency centered around how to look at serum B12 test results. Whether or not to interpret those as gospel or dig a little bit deeper and have stricter criteria for what we're considering deficient. It has been noted in case studies and research that even people with normal serum B12 levels can have low functional B12 using functional assessments of tissue levels. These myths are from that study The many face of cobalamin deficiency. The first B12 deficiency myth is no anemia, no B12 deficiency.
Some doctors will say if you don't have anemia then you don't have B12 deficiency. This s false because you have to be deficient in B12 for a long time in order for you to stop producing red blood cells. If you wait until you have anemia, then you are really are going to have a problems. You can have B12 deficiency even if your serum levels look ok. The question is do your tissues have enough. Sometimes problems like neuropathy, fatigue, and other things show up before there is anemia. In fact this happens quite often. People don't have anemia but they still have B12 deficiency. We know this because they respond when we give them B12. All their symptoms go away. Does that mean you have B12 deficiency? Yes, I should think so.
The second B12 deficiency myth is, you have no macrocytosis (or macrocystic anemia). In order for your cells to divide through mitosis they need enough DNA based pairs. These are things like guanosine cytosine etc. If you don't have enough of those, then the cells cannot replicate the DNA within themselves to pass it on to the daughter cell. B12 is one of the critical elements that is needed to produce those new cells. If you wait until you have Macrocytosis (or macrocytic anemia), a lot of your tissues will be deficient as well as your red blood cells. Obviously when you are anemic you don't have enough red blood cells. You can look at macrocytosis before you become anemic. Your red blood cells will start to get larger and that suggest B12 deficiency (there are other reasons this can happen though).

[@nicolesimon4459]

Hi, I just started my b12 injections a couple of days ago. I noticed some energy the first 24 hours but then that kind of stopped and I'm left with leg cramps and just left feeling kind of achey. I'm set to take my 2nd injection this Friday. My question is is that common to have muscle aches after injection. None of the aches were near the injection site. I took it in my arm and the aches have been in lower extremities Do you think my second injection will cause more aches or does it tend to get better? Thank you for tour help! I appreciate it!

[@swintegrative]

Not common. If you are using cyanocobalmin, try a different kind if it continues.

[@nicolesimon4459]

@@swintegrative thank you. I also had constipation after the injection sorry for all the info just wondering if this was common with b12 injection. So the two symptoms I noticed was achey legs and constipation. I've not decided if I will take a second one this week. I'm not 100 percent the symptoms were related to the shot but noticed them after? Again thanks for ur help!

[@nicolesimon4459]

@@swintegrative the kind I'm using is the cyan. Is that the better kind? Thank you!!

[@alec1113]

Hello , cyanocobalamin is chemical once injected it take a couple of days for the body to turn into Methylcobalamin.
Cyanocobalamin is the prominent source of b12 in the usa ,rest of world uses Methylcobalamin or hydroxocoblalamin. The condition you may have is pernious anemia. Let me know if you need more info 👍

[@CH-ep8he]

What does a low methylmalonic acid test indicate?

[@swintegrative]

nothing in particular

[@mindbodysoul8214]

I have HIGH B12 levels LOW IRON ANEMIA HIGH D3!😭😭😭