posted 12th February 2023
What Is Vitamin B12? An Essential Nutrient for Blood and Nervous System Function. An essential nutrient, cobalamin—better known as vitamin B12—benefits your body in many ways. These include helping your body produce energy, boosting memory and mood, making red blood cells and DNA, and improving your heart health.
Vitamin B12 is water-soluble, which means that your body can't store it in fat tissue. As a result, you need to get this vitamin through food. Sources of vitamin B12 include clams, beef, chicken, salmon, milk, eggs, and fortified nutritional yeast.
What Does Vitamin B12 Do?
Vitamin B12 helps your body produce energy by converting carbohydrates into glucose. Vitamin B12 also helps the nervous system function effectively. Working together with vitamin B9 (folate), it helps iron function better and helps the body to make healthy red blood cells. Together, folate and vitamin B12 work to produce S-adenosylmethionine (SAMe), a compound that assists with mood and immune function. Hydrochloric acid in the stomach separates vitamin B12 from the protein in food. Vitamin B12 is then absorbed by the body and combined with a protein made by the stomach called intrinsic factor. If a person can't naturally make intrinsic factor, they have pernicious anemia. This means that they have difficulty absorbing vitamin B12 from dietary supplements and all foods.
Health Benefits of Vitamin B12
Vitamin B12 has many health benefits. It is known to help memory, mood, the nervous system, iron levels, heart health, hair, nails, and skin.
Blood Health
Vitamin B12 is an important factor in helping the body produce healthy red blood cells. When the body is deficient in or has low levels of vitamin B12, this can cause red blood cells to improperly develop. As a result, the red blood cells become larger and irregular in shape. This prevents them from moving from the bone marrow to the bloodstream. (This is how megaloblastic anemia is caused.) Anemia can cause weakness, fatigue, and other ailments over time, because your body doesn't have enough red blood cells to give oxygen to your organs.
Brain Health
Studies show that vitamin B12 can help with brain and nervous system function, memory, mood, and depression. Research has concluded that patients and people in the general population with depression have both low folate and low vitamin B12.3 Other studies have shown that vitamin B12 deficiency leads to poor memory.
Skin Health
Vitamin B12 is known to help the skin, hair, and nails. Deficiency in the vitamin leads to discolored patches, skin hyperpigmentation, vitiligo, reduced hair growth, and more.
Heart Health
Studies show that vitamin B12 reduces homocysteine levels in the blood. Homocysteine is an amino acid that's connected with an increase in heart disease. Researchers have found that people who have modestly elevated homocysteine levels have higher rates of heart attack and stroke.
One of the most common early signs of vitamin B12 deficiency is fatigue or lack of energy. Vitamin B12 supplements have long been touted as the go-to product for a surge of energy. All B vitamins play an important role in your body's energy production, though they don't necessarily provide energy themselves.
If you're vegetarian or vegan, it may be that you aren't able to get enough B12 as you are excluding those food groups. B12 can be found in some breakfast cereals and nutritional yeasts and in supplements.
Vitamin B12 and other B vitamins play a role in producing brain chemicals that affect mood and other brain functions. Low levels of B12 and other B vitamins such as vitamin B6 and folate may be linked to depression and anxiety. Vitamin B6 is required for making the calming neurotransmitter called GABA and for formation of other neurotransmitters, seratonin, dopamine and adrenalin. Prolonged stress depletes supplies of all B vitamins, and in particular B12.
Not only is B12 used up by adrenaline production but the stress hormone cortisol thins the stomach lining and compromises its function. We use Hydroxocobalamin (1mg/1ml), which is the medication offered on the NHS. It lasts longer than Cyanocobalamin, a synthetic alternative.
What are the benefits of vitamin B12 injections?
Vitamin B12 enhances the metabolic function of the cells helping to boost energy release and support overall wellbeing. There are multiple benefits of B12 on physical & mental health as well as emotional well-being.
It may boost energy levels reducing tiredness & fatigue. It's been shown to boost immunity to support optimum physical health. It may boost metabolism helping to support fat burning & weight loss, and there's growing evidence of boosting mental well-being reducing anxiety, stress & emotional instability. Vitamin B12 injections have also shown to help improve sleep patterns and stop certain types of hair loss.
How often can I have a vitamin B12 injection?
Vitamin B12 is a water-soluble vitamin. Water-soluble vitamins dissolve in water. After the body uses these vitamins, leftover amounts leave the body through the urine. This means the frequency can vary. We recommend a vitamin B12 injection every 1 to 3 months to ensure optimum levels are maintained, though you can choose to have them occasionally when you feel your body needs a vitamin boost. If you have a significant deficiency identified from a blood test, a loading programme is advised - please contact us at the clinic to discuss this further.
