Veganism is lauded for its ethical, environmental, and health benefits. Vitamin B12 is typically lacking in plant-based diets. B12, unlike many other vitamins, is mostly found in animal sources.
“A vegan diet pattern will cause a deficiency of vitamin B12 – unless you manage the vegan diet yourself.” Vitamin B12 (also known as Cobalamin) is produced by microorganisms and is found in all animal-derived foods. “Plant foods cannot be considered a good source of functional vitamin B12. This is a problem since vegetarians will be confronted with a deficiency of vitamin B12 if supplements or vitamin B12-fortified foods are not consumed.” It seems that unsupplemented vegetarians take significantly lower levels of B12 and its biomarkers than non-vegetarians
Why this matters:
B12 is stored in the human body’s liver, but these reserves can last only a few years if no more B12 is taken. B12 deficiency also has serious implications for a patient’s health: it may involve a patient feeling tired, lead to macrocytic anemia, but most importantly, to the patient’s health, B12 deficiency can lead to neurological damage, which includes nerve damage such as numbness, or difficulty accessing or retrieving memories, or difficulty reproducing these memories into a walk.
The good news Is That Prevention is simple and inexpensive. Vitamin B12 in fortified foods (certain plant milks, nutritional yeasts, fortified breakfast cereals) and oral supplements contains crystalline Vitamin B12, which can be readily absorbed without the kind of processing the Vitamin B12 in animal sources requires. Various clinical trials as well as epidemiological work, have found supplemental doses of the nutrient essential for maintaining a certain level of Vitamin B12 among vegans. Some methods to adopt are an oral dose of 50-100 µg a day or higher amounts of 2,000 µg a week in one dose – better to check a reliable source for your prescription.
A few practical tips:
• Don’t rely on unproven “natural” sources (seaweed, spirulina) that could contain B12-like substances, ineffective in mammals.
• Get tested for the levels of B12 in your body when you turn vegan for the first time, when you are pregnant, breastfeeding, over sixty years of age, or when taking medication like metformin because of its effects on the levels of B12 in the
• “If pregnant or trying to become pregnant, you have to be more cautious since low B12 levels may present a development problem for babies.”
Bottom line: just because something is vegan, it doesn’t mean it’s deficient, but being vegan will increase the risk of deficiency unless you take supplements to stay within the levels. B12 is a nutrient that requires planning: a small step today (a pill or Vitamin B12 fortified milk) to avoid a huge problem in the future.