Are you low on energy?
Well, that's an easy fix.
All you have to do is take this vitamin B12 supplement and all of your energy problems
will be solved.
Catching my sarcasm here, it's vague marketing claims just like that one that has made vitamin
B 12 one of the more popular vitamins that people actually take.
The question is, can you take too much of it?
Are there any side effects?
I'm going to cover that and more in today's video and as always for the best nutrition,
health and fitness advice, make sure you subscribe to my channel and hit that little notification
bell so that you're notified every time I post a new video every Wednesday.
Is vitamin B12 deficiency a real thing?
Yes, definitely.
Do.
Some people need to utilize vitamin B12 as a supplement for them specifically 100% in
this video, I'm going to explain to you the reasons why you may not want to reach for
that vitamin B 12 bottle every single day and why you may not want to run off to the
doctor to get a vitamin B 12 shot every time you think that you're a little bit low on
energy and make sure that you stick around to the end of the video where I'm going to
give you two specific blood tests that you would need to verify if you actually have
a vitamin B 12 deficiency.
First off, why do we want B12 in our diets?
Well, a B12 deficiency can lead to multiple different things.
It can be visual disturbances.
You can have peripheral nerve issues, you can have exercise intolerance, shortness of
breath, it can cause dizziness upon standing, and this is just to name a few things that
can happen if you don't have enough B12 in your diet.
I know that a lot of people out there assume that if you take too much of a vitamin and
mineral vitamin or mineral, that your body recognizes that it's a vitamin or mineral
and it just excretes whatever it doesn't need.
I wish this was true, but unfortunately, it's not.
People are like, well, it's a vitamin, it's a mineral.
It can't possibly be bad for you, not the case.
There are several vitamins and minerals that can definitely have some issues.
If you take too much of it, too much vitamin a and your diet could potentially cause organ
damage.
Too much vitamin C can lead to you having kidney stones.
Too much zinc can actually weaken your immune system and cause a deficiency in your copper
and that's just to name a few things.
While we do want to make sure that we are getting an adequate amount of vitamins and
minerals in our diet, we definitely want to make sure that we're paying attention, that
we are not over supplementing with vitamins and minerals, especially the ones that can
potentially have negative side effects.
Question for you.
Are you taking a B12 supplement now?
B12 by itself, maybe be 12 that's in a multivitamin.
Something along those lines.
Are you taking it and if so, how much are you taking on average?
Let me know below in the comments cause I'm curious to hear everybody's feedback on this.
So what happens if we get too much B12 from supplementation?
There are three specific studies that I want to reference in today's video and kind of
help give you an understanding of why you may want to pay attention to the amount of
vitamin B 12 that you're taking and make sure that you actually need it before you start
supplementing with it.
The first study that I want to talk about was published in the journal of clinical oncology
and what the researchers found is they gave high doses of vitamin B six and high doses
of vitamin B 12 specifically to the involved in the research study and they found that
it had potentially several negative side effects, but the biggest impact that they found specifically
was on lung cancer.
And what they found was that this tripled or potentially even quadrupled your risk of
lung cancer from having too much vitamin B six and B 12 in your diet.
Also in 2009 in the journal of American medical association, they found that taking higher
doses of B12 and folate or essentially vitamin B nine led to the increased risk of multiple
types of cancers as well as just an all-around increase in mortality.
And the third study that I wanted to discuss was in 2013 and it was in the journal of the
national cancer Institute.
And in this study specifically when they started it, the people that were involved in the study
did not have cancer and they did have them all tested for their vitamin B 12 status at
that time.
And what they found was that the people that had the highest vitamin B 12 status also had
the highest incidents of getting cancer specifically in the first year after being tested and showing
the high vitamin B12 levels in the blood.
Now here's the thing.
Most of these studies don't actually point as specific causation saying that if you have
high vitamin B 12 that is going to give you cancer.
Most of this is just correlation and we all understand.
Hopefully, that correlation does not equal causation.
Just because something is related doesn't mean that it's a definitive cause of that,
but that also doesn't mean that we should just ignore these studies either.
The main thing that I'm trying to get a point across is that I want people to understand
that B12 is just thrown out there like it's not a big deal.
Take the supplement, go take the shot.
Most of this is done without really ever knowing if you actually need more vitamin B 12 and
finding out if you need more.
Vitamin B 12 is very, very simple.
Knowing that there are multiple studies out there that are showing a correlation between
high vitamin B 12 levels and different types of cancer than why rescue.
Why not know for sure that you need the vitamin B12 before you worry about supplementation
or if you do supplement with it, supplement it with it more in the short term instead
of the long term and verify this through blood work.
There was a quote specifically from the National Institute of health and they stated that vitamin
B12 supplementation seems to have no beneficial effect on performance and the absence of a
nutritional deficit.
So basically what they're saying here is that if you don't need vitamin B 12 if you are
not deficient in vitamin B12, that supplementing with it didn't show any increases in performance.
So a lot of the times in these situations, why take the risk of supplementing and taking
more vitamin B 12 if you can verify that you do not need it.
Where do we go from here?
We need to be able to confirm that you have a vitamin B12 deficiency before you worry
about supplementing with it or getting any type of injections of vitamin B 12 or anything
along those lines.
If it's something you're considering doing.
Finding this out is relatively easy and it really only takes two tests.
The first one, of course, is going to be checking vitamin B12 levels in the blood.
That's obviously a really good start.
How much vitamin B12 do you have in your blood?
Are you deficient?
Are you in the right range?
Do you have too much?
That's the first one.
Then from there there's a secondary test that helps us to understand things a little bit
better and this specific test, basically what it tells us is if the B12 is getting into
the cell and doing its job, just because you have a specific vitamin nutrient or anything
that's in your blood, it doesn't do any good in your blood that that specific nutrient
needs to get into the cell in order to be able to do its job.
So verifying that you have the right levels that are, that are in your blood is great,
but we also want to be able to verify that as actually getting into the cell and being
utilized.
And this test is called methylmalonic acid.
Having this test it specifically.
We'll let you know if you are getting vitamin B 12 in your cells.
If you have any type of deficiency, what you'll find is that the methylmalonic acid will actually
be increased.
It will be raised if it's at more of a normal level, a little bit lower level than the Beto
is more than likely getting into the cells and doing its job.
B12 on its own is an essential nutrient and we do need to make sure that we are getting
enough of it from our diet.
It is very important as efficiencies can cause problems, but at the same time, we want to
make sure that we are not getting too much vitamin B 12 as there are multiple correlations
potentially to increased cancer risk.
The overall theme here is to make sure that you need vitamin B 12 before you just start
supplementing with a lot of it thinking that there aren't any negative side effects because
there's just a vitamin and it can't possibly be bad for you if you enjoy this video.
I would appreciate it if you would smash that like button and make sure to subscribe to
the channel.
I'll see you guys in the next video.