VITAMIN B12 INFORMATION

The Vitamin B12 information presented here is an excerpt from Dr. Elson M. Haas' work Staying Healthy with Nutrition. - Vitamin b12 (Cobalamin) is named the "red vitamin," as it is a red crystalline compound. B12 is unique in that it is the only vitamin that contains an essential mineral - namely, cobalt. Cobalt is thereby needed to make B12 and so is essential for health. B12 is unique also in that it is required in much tinier amounts than other b vitamins. Only 3-4 mcg. (micrograms, or thousandths of a milligram) are needed at minimum; however, higher levels, up to 1 mg are often used therapeutically.

Vitamin B12 is a very complex molecule. Besides cobalt, it also contains carbon, oxygen, phosphorus, and nitrogen. Cobalamin is stable to heat, though sensitive to heated acid or alkali solution, slightly sensitive to light, and destroyed by oxidizing and reducing agents and by some heavy metals.

Vitamin b12 was isolated in 1926 as the factor that treated a feared disease, pernicious anemia - termed "pernicious" because it could be fatal, most often from neurologic degeneration. But the substance cobalamin, when given orally (actually liver was used as the cure; it contains high amounts of b12), did not cure all of the people with the disease, and some people still developed pernicious anemia. It was later found that a mucoprotein enzyme produced by the stomach (by the parietal cells that also make hydrochloric acid) was also needed for vitamin B12 to be absorbed into the body from the intestines. This enzyme has been termed the "intrinsic factor," while vitamin B12 is the "extrinsic factor." Aging, stress, and problems with the stomach or stomach surgery can weaken the bodies ability to produce the "intrinsic factor"; also, some people appear to have a genetic predisposition that makes them more prone to pernicious anemia. Hydrochloric acid helps the absorption of B12; if acid production is weak, the absorption is lessened. Calcium and thyroid hormone assist as well. Aging more likely lessens some of the many factors needed for ideal absorption of B12, so deficiency symptoms are more common in older people.

Cobalamin is absorbed primarily from the last part of the small intestine, the ileum. In the blood, it is bond to a protein globulin to be carried to the various tissues. The body actually stores vitamin B12, so deficiencies may take several years to develop. The highest concentrations of B12 are found in the liver, heart, kidney, pancreas, brain, testes, blood, and bone marrow - all active metabolic tissues. The "red vitamin" is very important to the blood.

Cobalamin is made in nature by microbial synthesis - produced by bacterial in the intestinal tracts of animals and stored in their tissues. Some B12 is made durring fermentation of foods as well.

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1. Prescription for nutritional healing / Phyllis A. Balch, James F. Balch.