June 4, 2011. Bill Szydlowski
Cobalamin is a nutrient essential for genetic maintenance and blood and nerve cell repair. It’s more popular known as vitamin B12, and is present in meat and dairy products.
Essential for health, vitamin B12 deficiency symptoms can include a large number of problems that are difficult to trace to B12 specifically, and thus other risk factors need to be taken into account. There are only two common situations that will result in a lack of B12.
The first is people who are on a strict vegetarian or vegan diet. Since B12 is only present in large enough quantities in dairy and meat, people who avoid these foods could become deficient in a few years (B12 is stored for awhile in the liver). As a result, vegans should consider eating fortified breakfast cereals with fortified soy milk, or taking a daily B complex vitamin.
The second high risk group are those who may suffer from a lack of a certain stomach enzyme, usually from gastrointestinal diseases like IBS, or from old age. Elderly people especially are likely to have more problems with dementia and other brain wasting diseases due to a lack of B12. If you think you have a gastrointestinal disease or any other kind of stomach injury, you could become deficient in B12.
The symptoms of B12 deficiency include numbness in the hands and feet, weakness, depression, problems with memory and concentration, and possibly a wide array of other symptoms that can be difficult to identify precisely. Since they can mimic many other diseases, they must be coupled with one of the two high risk groups in order to suspect a lack of B12.
If you don’t fall into one of these two groups, it is likely that you do not suffer from a lack of B12 and there is no reason to have to supplement with it. There aren’t really any benefits from taking as long as you eat meat and dairy and fortified breakfast cereal, although there is some anecdotal evidence that it might be one of the effective natural remedies for anxiety, but research remains thin on this.
Updated June 4, 2011. Published March 11, 2011. Bill Szydlowski
