Vitamin B12 Deficiency – What to do? | Q&A with Dr. Dirk Kuhlmann

In this article, Dr. Kuhlmann explains exactly what vitamin B12 is, what we need it for, what deficiency symptoms can occur and how we can best absorb it. Here is the video briefly summarized:

What do we need vitamin B12 for?

Vitamin B12 is required for many functions in energy metabolism. All our performance functions depend on B12, among others. In addition, vitamin B12 supports in detoxification processes, blood formation, DNA formation and many more processes.

What are the symptoms of vitamin B12 deficiency?

A deficiency initially leads to a significant loss of performance – both cognitively and physically. This leads, for example, to constant fatigue, sleep disturbances, sensitive psyche or physical loss of performance.

How does a vitamin B12 deficiency arise?

A deficiency arises for two reasons: either too little vitamin B12 is absorbed, or the body consumes too much of the vitamin.

Who does not take enough vitamin B12?

The most famous group of people who take up too little B12 is that of vegetarians and vegans. Vitamin B12 is added to 99 on animal products. For this reason, vegans in particular should pay attention to sufficient supplementation.

But even all-eaters can suffer from a deficiency. The reasons for this are often due to problems in the digestive tract. These include inflammation of the mucosal, too low an intrinsic factor or too little stomach acid.

Who consumes too much vitamin B12?

This group of people includes all those who are physically or psychologically stressed in all respects – e.g. high-performance athletes, workaholics and parents. In addition, stress can have a negative effect on our digestive tract and thus worsen the absorption.

What is vitamin B12?

Vitamin B12 (cobalamin) can be used in four different compounds, but these compounds have different properties.

A distinction is made between the connections in inactive and active. Inactive compounds include cyanocobalamin and hydroxocobalamin. Inactive in this case means that the liver must first convert the vitamin into an active form before we can use it.

The two active forms are adenosylcobalamin and methylcobalamin. These two compounds do not need to be split first, but they can be used directly by the body and are therefore available much faster than the inactive B12 compounds.

Which B12 connection makes the most sense?

Due to the faster and better availability of active connections, these connections should be preferred. Recent studies also show that a large number of B12 deficiency subjects cannot absorb the inactive forms at all.

Nevertheless, the use of hydroxocobalamin may be useful. The B12 connection has excellent storage properties. Thus, the body can use the hydroxocobalamin to create a B12 storage and thus better bridge the gaps.