It's constantly brought up like a monster lurking in the closet. What shall we ever do about B12? Can our diet be natural if we require supplementation, etc.

I've been doing some research on the topic, and decided to write an article, which is here: [www.raw-food-health.net]

I probably didn't manage to touch on everyone's concerns, but I'm willing to expand it if anyone has additional questions/suggestions.

good article

I had a teacher in college that touched on sup's .. he said north americans are particularly guilty for over supplementing and trying to micromananage ones health which can lead to all sorts of whacked out imbalances, especially if you dont have any sort of understanding on basic biology, anatomy and physiology, and basic chemistry (all readily free on the internet if you google it)

i think a good thing to do in my experience is too get regular blood tests (fore me regular is twice a year) and if you are deficient in something that deal with it .. otherwise supplementing or oversupplementing (in some cases) for soemthing when you dont need it is a waste of time and money best used elsewhere

i think stressing out over it all too can be counterproductive .. how can one ever achieve optimum health when one is having a freakout over every little this that and the other thing not to say its not important but in my experience its better to find out for sure rather than wonder and waste money

...Jodi, the banana eating buddhist




Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/29/2009 06:34PM by Jgunn.

That's a great article Rustic, well written and researched.

Apparently another source is from our own pets, unless we are over sterile and disinfect ourselves after handling them.

[www.drmcdougall.com]

Really great article, Andrew. This is waaaaaay more information than I've ever found myself. Thanks for posting!

Great article. Thanks for doing the research!

how about eating 2-3 raw egg yolks a day (free range eggs)
A lot of people do this,
They are very nutritious, full of b vitamins Vitamin D and B12 and zinc calcium iron e.t.c.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/29/2009 08:09PM by paulieGB.

paulie that is not an option for someone wanting to be vegan

...Jodi, the banana eating buddhist

nice article, thank you RB

that was a well written article, way to go!

RusticBohemian, you said that supplementing with Vitamin B12 is not harmful, and I give you credit for that!

And I very much like what you said about B12 in organic soils.

However, I don't believe that a raw food, low-fat vegan diet has the potential to supply sufficient B12 -- unless a person supplements with B12, or eats their own @#$%& (like all the other primates).

I hope you don't mind my attempt here to present an alternative point of view, based on my own experience and research.

For the past 23 years, I've been 100% vegan - no lapses - and very close to 100% raw. My food has been as close to 100% organic as possible, most of it grown by my husband and myself on our own organic farm.

In the process of fertilizing our trees, I've often found myself literally covered in manure from head to foot. For hours. It's underneath all my fingernails and inside all my cuts and scratches (which are usually numerous from working on the farm).

In addition, herds of wild pigs and flocks of runaway chickens thrive in our orchards. We supply for them a sanctuary from hunters and developers; and in return, those critters have blessed us by leaving their excrement around our trees.

We've had several dogs and cats - all strays, some living with us for their entire lives.

Our farm has no previous chemical history. Our fruits and veggies grow on top of 800-year-old lava flows covered with several rare inches of alluvial soil, built by native forest trees and ferns.

It's my understanding that all animals produce B12, so we humans MUST produce our own B12 too. I also believe that being vegan is the compassionate choice, and I suspect that therefore, God/nature would not require us to supplement.

But those understandings/beliefs leave out the fact that ALL OTHER PRIMATES get a portion of their B12 from eating their own @#$%&!

The NATURAL PRIMATE TENDENCY of EATING ONE'S OWN @#$%& (!) is, I believe, a VERY IMPORTANT FACTOR that's missing from your article.

Your article does note (in your quote from Jack Norris, RD) that researchers say B12 is produced in our bodies in an area of the colon that's too low to be absorbed.

B12 produced in the colon is excreted along with our @#$%&. If we eat @#$%& regularly (like the other primates), we'll get enough B12. Personally, I'd rather supplement; but, if B12 supplements ever became unavailable, I'd eat @#$%& just like my monkey brothers and sisters.

We vegans would be getting a lot more B12 from eating our own @#$%&, than we'd ever get from handling fertilizer and/or petting our cats and dogs (or brushing our hair for that matter).

And the extremely minute trace amounts of B12 that might be found in fruits and veggies - even organic ones - are FAR from sufficient.

We humans are programmed to think of our @#$%& as "yucky", "dirty", "digusting", etc. And in most cases, when we consider all the dead carcasses and junk that people eat, those descriptions would be entirely accurate.

But other primates and other animals too, including dogs, do not consider their @#$%& to be "yucky", "dirty", or "disgusting". Most other primates also eat insects, or other meat, but that doesn't appear necessary for B12 intake, since primates also eat @#$%&.

So the "@#$%& thing" is another factor for vegans to consider when it comes to the entire B12 issue.

It could even be that eating our own @#$%& provides a "natural" built-in incentive for keeping our food intake healthy. For example, if a monkey ate something rancid that produced bad smelling @#$%&, the monkey might avoid the rancid food in the future, since his/her @#$%& smelled/tasted bad. And consider the self-diagnostic possibilities. And the possible recognition of an unbalanced ph, etc.

We humans are SO far removed from our natural primate selves.

Onto my own personal experience. After my first 15 years of being 100% vegan, and nearly all raw/organic, I began to have the classic tingling fingers/toes of B12 deficiency.

I began supplementing with Vitamin B12. The symptoms slowly receded, and after about a month, they were gone. I don't blame people for experimenting. I did. But if you do, try to keep an open mind, look out for symptoms down the road, and hope that your symptoms will be recognizable before a deficiency does any permanent harm. You're taking a risk.

For those with children, unless you find a verifiable source concluding that B12 supplements are harmful, I would err on the side of caution, and have your vegan children take B12 supplements.

Or, eat @#$%& (sorry)!

Vetrano's articles don't rely on verifiable research.

Comparisons involving the "population of India" are somewhat beside point, since the population of India is not vegan, nor raw.

Comparisons involving a low-fat raw vegan diet haven't been reliably verified by disinterested neutral researchers.

I think the best, most thoroughly researched articles on B12 are from The Vegan Society. Here's one:

[www.vegansociety.com]

I don't mind at all.

In the article I conclude science hasn't done enough research for me to rule out B12 supplementation as unnecessary.

I even quote a prominent raw foodist I respect who says he needs it.

I'm always open to the idea that I may be wrong, and because of the looseness of the article, I've noted that if people feel the need they should go ahead.

Yet I find the fact that fasting cures anemia and raises B12 levels of great weight.

I'm not a purist on this point. If I felt there was a need tomorrow, I'd start taking pills without regret, and would continue using them if they worked, or until I could find an element of my life causing a shortfall.

Obviously I know nothing of your diet, but I would point out that most cooked and raw vegans significantly more fat than is ideal, or include overt fats regularly. This has a number of negative affects on the body. I almost never eat them because of these issues.

I'd also note that statistically speaking, vegans are no more likely to have deficiency problems than anyone else, as I cite in the article. You could have been a meat eater and still had problems.

Best of health to you.

-Andrew



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/30/2009 01:31AM by RusticBohemian.

Good stuff, Suncloud. I'm curious about your references to great apes eating @#$%&. I worked with orangutans, bonobos and pan paniscus for a few years, and I never directly observed them eating their own excrement. Not that I doubt you. I wouldn't put the eating of ANYTHING past great apes -- especially in captivity -- including their own @#$%&. I'm just casually curious about your references. We regularly observed them eating their own vomit, in fact, not just eating their own regurgitation, but relishing it, adoring it, fighting with each other over its consumption.

They're really quite bizarre animals, all the great apes, and the most bizarre of them are probably we who are now reading and worrying.

There has been some research into the possibility that mercury damages B12 (it oxidizes the cobalt atom) so the question might not be "Are we ingesting enough B12" but rather "How much B12 is being destroyed in our body?".

Great article, Andrew (and interesting posts in this thread) - thanks!

Thanks RusticBohemian. I recognize and appreciate your effort to present both sides of the issue.

I don't agree though that "...statistically speaking, vegans are no more likely to have deficiency problems than anyone else."

I'd like to add some referrences for vegan parents. Perhaps these should be included in every article about B12 (each link is followed by an excerpt):

[www.rawfoods.com]

"Consistent research for decades has shown that vegans and live food people of all ages and sexes have a much higher risk of becoming B-12 deficient...This deficiency is particularly true with newborn babies, especially babies of vegan live-food nursing mothers who are not using B-12 supplementation...This lack of B-12 in the mother's diet during pregnancy has been associated with a lack of myelin production, which is the coating of the nerves. It takes somewhere between one and twelve months to develop, and manifests itself as failure to thrive and slow developmental progression. The babies are often lethargic, lose their ability to use muscle adequately, and even their sensory attunement decreases. They also have irregular macrocytic anemia...

"The good news that one major study in the United Kingdom in 1988 showed, in studying 37 vegan children was that there was normal growth and development in children who were breastfed for 6 months at a minimum, when there was B-12 supplementation."

[www.veganhealth.org]

"Infants breast-fed by vegan mothers who do not supplement with B12 and do not receive B12 fortified foods or supplements often develop severe B12 deficiency and nerve-related disorders."

[www.vegansociety.com]

"Two subgroups of vegans are at particular risk of B12 deficiency: long-term vegans who avoid common fortified foods (such as raw food vegans and macrobiotic vegans) and breastfed infants of vegan mothers whose own intake of B12 is low...

"Infants typically show more rapid onset of symptoms than adults. B12 deficiency may lead to loss of appetite and failure to thrive. If not promptly corrected, this can progress to coma or death. Again, there is not entirely consistent pattern of symptoms. Infants are more vulnerable to permanent damage than adults..."

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Shane, I appreciate your asking for references on my previous claim that other primates ingest B12 when they eat their own feces. The practice of eating feces is called "coprophagy". Observers have said that coprophagy occurs for many reasons: psychological stress, food scarcity, a need to eat something warm, physical illnesses, mastication of seeds, and adding nutrients. It's important also to note that primates - including apes - eat insects and even small animals. The point is that wild primates get their B12 from known dietary sources: other insects/animals, and their own feces.

[www.springerlink.com]

(scroll down on this one until you get to the first page of the article, in VERY small print). The article begins with info on orphaned chimpanzes released in Concouati Douli National Park, but also mentions dietary habits previously observed in wild apes:

"Coprophagy appeared during major periods of feeding on fruits of Dalium spp... in a group of orphaned chimpanzees..."

"Among wild chimpanzees, periods of food scarcity may also induce coprophagy, as observed at Gombe, Tanzania during the 1981 dry season (Goodall, 1986). Among wild mountain gorillas, coprophagy may be correlated with periods of heavy rain when foraging activities are reduced...(Fossey and Harcourt, 1976; Harcourt and Stewart, 1978; Hiladik (?), 1978; Akers and Schildkraut, 1985)."

(I believe Harcourt and Stewart's article is called "Coprophagy by wild mountain giorillas"

"Coprophagy may also reflect medical problems: it occurs in wild chimpanzees when feces are diarrheic and contain undigested parts of food (Goodall, 1986)...

"Coprophagy may be adaptive, allowing the upkeep of ciliates that digest cellulose (Collet et al, 1984) and assimilation of the vitamins synthesized in the hindgut, which are absorbed only in the foregut (Oxnard, 1966; Hiladik, 1981)."

[www.bioone.org]

According to bioone the article:

"Among anthropoid primates, coprophagy has been observed in captive and wild apes (chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans and gibbons: Hill, 1966; Gilloux et all, 1992; Warniment and Brent, 1997; Nash et al, 1999; Faraldo and Taylor, Graczyk and Cranfield, 2003; Krief et al, 2004), Old World monkeys (baboons and rhesus macaques: Brent et al, 2002; see also Graczyk and Cranfield, 2003), and New World monkeys (marmosets, tamarinds, and capuchin monkeys: Anderson et al, 1991; Clark, 1994; Wisman, 1999; Taylor 2002).

There's also an interesting article on chimpanzees, but for some reason, the link required installing Japanese. The article is entitled "Coprophagy by the semi-habituated chimpanzees of Semliki, Uganda", by Payne, Webster, and Hunt:

"Individuals were observed to defecate directly into their own hand and raise the feces to their mouth. They then manipulated the feces in their mouths using their lips, spitting out seeds and indeterminate fecal matter."

For specifics on bonobos, you might try googling "bonobos, coprophagy". Unfortunately, the good articles payment.

Whatever reasons apes may have for ingesting feces, we do know that wild apes receive B12 from a variety of known dietary sources, including insects, small animals, and their own feces.

We also know that consuming small amounts of human feces is sufficient for reversing human B12 deficiency. I'll refer to this link again:

[www.rawfoods.com]

"Human research has also shown if you eat your feces, you will get enough B-12. Dr. Herbert sponsored research in England where vegan volunteers with a documented B-12 deficiency were fed B-12 extractions made from their own feces. It cured their B-12 deficiency. So, there is a natural vegan way to do it. It may not be the most tasteful way, however."

Finally, here's an interesting pro-raw vegan article entitled, "Yesterday's Food Will Become Tomorrow's Food", by Dr.David Ryde:

[goinside.com]

"The author speculates that Ancestral Man of 3 - 5 million years ago was a herbivore and an opportunist carnivore; man might also have been a coprophagist."



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 03/30/2009 10:41PM by suncloud.

At 'hacres' about ten years ago they practiced mostly raw vegan without a B12 supplement, believing they were eating as God intended. They learned with the Donaldson study and now they take precautions.


Conclusion
There are many ways to get your vitamin B12 but you must get it in your diet or
ensure that your body makes it. You will not have excellent health without it.
Please take this information to heart, take precautions, and keep all of this in
eternal perspective.

[www.hacres.com]

hey rustic

nicely researched article thanks a bunch for writing this.. can see u put a lot of work into it however, can we get a discussion going on with this thing that you wrote:


<<Various other algaes like dulse, which has been tested at between 3 and 3.9 µg/30g (3), as well as spirulina, chlorella and a few other seem to offer some promise of sufficient B12 levels to put a dent in our needs. Yet these are not actually vegan, and are considered as much animal as plant. (4)

Additionally, these sources contain significant amounts of concobalamin analogues of B12, which interfere with the absorption of true B12, occupying the body's B12 receptors and lessening our absorption ability. (5). On our tests, which are not very accurate, these analogues are perceived as actual B12.>>

I am specifically interested in what u said in the last paragraph. they seem to be a bit contradictory. can anyone discuss, clarify, edify, elucidate...?

Hey Suncloud

Apparently humans need very little B12, and have reserves in our liver. These reserves are good for around two to three years according to the literature. I was interested in your reference to being raw vegan for fifteen years prior to aquiring B12 deficiency symptoms.

Hence, you must have been ingesting enough B12 for around twelve/thirteen years.

It follows logically that there must have been some change to your diet around the fifteen year time period that resulted in deficiency.

Can you think of any changes made during that time? Not only diet, but farming practices/animal loss etc.

Consideration must also be given other reasons for the 'tingling' extremities. Rustic mentioned that 'fasting' resulted in a withdrawal of these sensations.

Sounds like you have a beautiful farm Suncloud.

Cheers geo

Interesting questions geo! I'll try to answer as best I can.

>geo Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Hey Suncloud
>
> Apparently humans need very little B12, and have
> reserves in our liver. These reserves are good for
> around two to three years according to the
> literature. I was interested in your reference to
> being raw vegan for fifteen years prior to
> aquiring B12 deficiency symptoms.

> Hence, you must have been ingesting enough B12 for
> around 12/13 years.

First, I don't know where the "two to three years" figure comes from. But, even if it's always so, people often don't have recognizable symptoms until long after they've begun to be deficient.

If I'd been clinically tested many years earlier, maybe some level of deficiency could have been detected, even though I had no outward symptoms.

According to Dr. Stephen Walsh of the Vegan Society, "In the absence of any apparent dietary supply, deficiency symptoms usually take five years or more to develop in adults, though some people experience problems within a year. A very small number of individuals with no obvious reliable source appear to avoid clinical deficiency symptoms for twenty years or more." [www.vegansociety.com]

I could have been deficient for many years before the onset of symptoms.

And/or, I could have had symptoms that I didn't recognize.

And/or, I might have ingested just enough B12 from manures to slow down the onset of deficiency. In other words, maybe I was taking in some B12, but not as much as I was using up. That's quite likely. If I'm ferting on a rainy day, I'm like the manure mud monster. But trees/veggies don't require fertilizing on a constant basis, so I wasn't taking in B12 all the time.

And/or, all the great organic food could have slowed down the onset of deficiency.

> It follows logically that there must have been
> some change to your diet around the fifteen year
> time period that resulted in deficiency.

> Can you think of any changes made during that
> time? Not only diet, but farming practices/animal loss etc.

Basically there are only two changes that come to mind:

-As more trees began to mature and give fruit, I was able to eat less store-bought and more home-grown.

-I'd been gradually eating less and less cooked food. 23 years ago, I ate cooked vegan food about once every 3 weeks. By the time I became deficient, I was eating cooked food maybe around 5 times a year. Along the way, I did start eating nuts and seeds, but that was 11 years earlier.

> Consideration must also be given other reasons for
> the 'tingling' extremities. Rustic mentioned that
> 'fasting' resulted in a withdrawal of these
> sensations.

The tingling gradually went away when I started taking the B12 supplements. That indicates to me that the tingling was a symptom of B12 deficiency. This was not at all a pleasurable sensation. It was more like a constant electrical shock. I can't remember if there was a difference when I fasted; but even if there was, I'd still have to eat sometime!

Can fasting cure a deficiency? No. Fasting is very healing. These days, along with being 100% raw, I do a 36-hour water fast twice a week. I've water fasted several days at a time, several times. But Fasting and a raw food diet are not magic. All wild creatures fast and eat a raw food diet. It's not so special. It's just normal.

All plants and animals (including humans) do need sufficient amounts of certain nutrients to be able to survive, flourish, and multiply. Certainly not as much as the RDA, but enough.

Being a farmer all these years and tending to the nutrient needs of my trees, has perhaps allowed me to acquire a practical sense of it. For instance, we started with maybe 7 banana plants. Just those 7 plants have turned into thousands. People come here all the time and get maybe 30 banana starts. They take them home and don't fertilize them. They might get one tiny banana stalk on each plant, and then the plants die. Next year, they come and get more starts.

That's OK. Live and learn. If a person really wants their own bananas, they'll learn. Or, if they don't, that's OK too. Better that they learn, but they're always welcome to come here and get more bananas.

Cheers to you too geo!

Geo, something I missed in my response to you.

It may possibly be true that fasting could help a person whose B12 deficiency was caused by an inability to absorb B12, rather than a lack of B12 in the diet. When meateaters are B12 deficient, it's often because they have a problem with B12 absorption. Since they can't absorb what they're eating, they're usually given shots to reverse their condition.

When I noticed my symptoms, I began to take one oral supplement a day. If I'd had an absorption problem, I wouldn't have been able to absorb enough B12 from the oral supplements to reverse my symptoms.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/01/2009 07:31AM by suncloud.

Appreciate your come back Suncloud. I've a couple of journal articles stored away somewhere that mentions the couple of years storage of B12. One recent article says there's no consensus to what level B12 becomes deficient. I think that may be due to wide variations from one person to another.

Yes, absorption problems sounds logical for the fasting fix. I'm really beginning to believe that somewhere down the line humans lost the ability to absorb enough. I would've thought that a raw diet would have enough B12 bacteria, obviously not. Think I'll just take suppliments while they're available rather than eat my own @#$%& though

Cheers Suncloud and thx geo

.. one of the OP's sources, Dr. Virginia Vetrano talks at length about B12 in @#$%& [naturalhygienesociety.org] of humans and the consumption of @#$%& by some species, in order that the discussion of B12 may be complete.

"B complex is fairly insensitive to heat, but is water soluble and will be found in the juices of vegetables which are thrown away in many households. During the cooking process of meat, 20 to 50 per cent of vitamin B-12 is lost, according to authorities. Can we not assume that much of this vitamin in vegetables is also lost in the cooking process and that by eating more raw fruits, vegetables and nuts more vitamin B-12 will be saved.
Some animals, such as fowl, get cobalamin by eating manure which is a rich source. Ruminants are furnished B-12 or cobalamin by microorganisms which produce it in their digestive tracts; but in slighted man, vitamin B-12 is only synthesized by microorganisms in the large bowel where it can't be absorbed. Absorption of vitamin B-12 in man, we are taught, takes place mainly in the terminal ilium. It seems that man has no alternatives except to take pills or eat dead animal organs or worse yet, become a coprophagist and eat feces, or die of pernicious anemia. If we have to become coprophagists and eat dung, activated sewage sludge, dried estuarine mud, dead parts of animals, and vitamin pills to derive so-called essential nutrients for life, strength and health, then something is surely wrong. Nature did not look out for man."

Dr. Vetrano believes Nature will provide as long as humans eat a Hygienic diet.

"I hold that if it is not in fresh fruits, vegetables and nuts and bacteria do not manufacture it where man can absorb it, then man does not need it. The diet to which man is constitutionally adapted should furnish all the requisites of good nutrition. If it isn't present in the diet and bacteria do not produce it where it is absorbable by man, then what can we think except that nature must have made a big mistake."

...that leaves the question whether humans are "constitutionally adapted" to a diet of purely organic raw fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds, or if we may be missing B12 sources that our ancestors naturally found thru foraging. I think I am missing such sources and so I take a multi for B12, D and iodine as a precaution.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 04/01/2009 12:52PM by loeve.

What's very relevant to Dr Vetrano's position on this matter is whether, as a Natural Hygienist, she eats even the tiniest amount of raw dairy, as some Natural Hygienists do, in addition to the diet of fruit, veg, nuts and seeds that they see as 'optimal'.

The constant problem I come up against in researching B12 is that whenever we come across a vegan who has apparently gone many years without supplementing, or whenever we come across a tribe/culture who are apparently healthy and long-lived on a vegan diet, on probing I've so often found that the indidividual, or culture, is only 99% vegan, ie the odd bit of raw cheese has slipped in! Which of course does rather confuse the issue, as we all know that we don't actually need very much B12 and that bit of dairy every so often could be what's keeping the individual symptom-free...

So does anyone know for sure about Dr V, rather than simply via hearsay? I did e-mail her on this a while back but never got an answer.

..as far as I can see Dr. Vetrano keeps personal dietary habits private but has offered professional opinions on B12 for Natural Hygiene publications.

"There is no such thing as a B12 deficiency, even in 100% raw vegan food eaters. They do not have to eat dirt, animal products, or take pills to secure coenzymes of B12. Bacteria in the intestinal tract make it for us, and the metabolically usable and necessary forms of coenzyme B12 are contained in unprocessed, fresh natural plant foods, particularly in nuts and seeds. The real problem in so-called B12 deficiency is a failure of digestion and absorption of foods, rather than a deficiency of the vitamin itself.

Vitamin B12 coenzymes are found in nuts and seeds as well as in many common greens, fruits, and many vegetables. If we ate 100 grams of green beans, beets, carrots, and peas we would have half of our so-called daily minimum requirement of Vitamin B12 coenzymes providing our digestion and absorption are normal. From Rodale's The Complete Book of Vitamins, page 236 we find the following clarification: “As you know, the B complex of vitamins is called a ‘complex’ because, instead of being one vitamin, it has turned out to be a large number of related vitamins, which appear generally in the same foods.”

[www.roylretreat.com]

..the idea from Rodale's used to imply that if plants supply some B vitamins then they generally supply B12 as part of the "B complex" is new to me.

.."...The real problem in so-called B12 deficiency is a failure of digestion and absorption of foods..." Sublingual B12 is known to be absorbed significantly better I gather.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/08/2009 01:37PM by loeve.

Thanks, Loeve.

I was aware that this was her position (although thanks for posting it, as it's of interest to all, and should also help to keep the B12 debate in this thread rather than in my other one :-)).

I'm 'on the fence' re B12 myself, but would say that this idea of not needing any because we make it all ourselves is controversial, and, as Dr V is in her eighties and, I understand, healthy, it would nevertheless to be so good to know if she is in fact vegan, wouldn't it? Whether she is herself a living testimony to her 'stance', ie whether she has been vegan unsupplemented for 20+ years and not suffered any adverse consequences?

I just have this feeling that she is probably vegetarian rather than vegan, but would love someone to tell me that this is not so.

I suffered from low energy and headaches, amongst other things, for a long time, after finding out that I had hypothyroidism, everyone just blamed it on that. Eventually I found out that I had severely low B12 levels. After a year of shots and sublingual supplements, I still have low B12 levels. They are rising, so it is not an absorbtion issue, but are still below normal. And with the supplementation, I have been feeling better and better every month.
I do not know all of the scientific terms or what exactly the government thinks your levels should be. I work with my doctor, my chiropractor and a nutritionist... so those are the opinions that I go by, along with my own instincts. So, my recommendation is that it is better to be safe than sorry and wait around to see what damage it MIGHT cause.

I really don't like to supplement, but feel it's best after all the research. Hmmm I know one person who eats one free range egg each week for their B12 instead of takng supplements. Doesn't sound too bad to me, as I'm sure our ancestors ate the odd egg they came agross.

Cheers geo

I think at this point, with the knowledge I have of B12, ethics aside, if somehow I decided to become an omnivore again (consuming plant and animal matter, so what people often refer to as a "vegetarian" if I don't eat meat but do eat dairy and eggs), I would still take a sublingual B12, because that's the best way to take it for absorption, from what I've read, regardless of your diet.