I was listening to the vegan freak podcast the other day, and they were raving about the immediate effects of this:

[www.b12patch.com]

(I don't think it was a blatant plug, they mentioned the downsides to it- i.e. it's expensive!)

Apparently, you stick this patch behind your ear and wear it for 24 hours a day, and there's enough b12 to keep you going for a week.

Now, if a synthetic patch works like that against the skin- what if I were to walk around bare foot in a field where animals were kept for the most part of a day? B12 is present in faeces, and traces of faeces are everywhere- on the grass in the garden etc (I always walk around barefoot in the garden).

What ya'll think? :-)

*squish* "Eww... well... there's my RDA for B12!"

I think, that, unless someone thinks they can market a barefoot romp through a field full of feces for vegans in favor of B12 supplementation, you won't hear a word about it.

Seriously, our ancestors romped around outside like so. They also ate figs full of bugs that were, in turn, full of B12.

How much B12 is truly relevant to the raw vegan diet is still unknown. How well the body truly utilizes inorganic compounds in supplements is still a hot topic of debate.

I'd say--try it! See how it makes you feel. If you wanted to be Dr. Science, you could get your levels tested, then walk around in animal-roaming fields for X amount of days, and then get tested again. Being outside, getting fresh air and sunlight can never hurt, B12 or not. =D

They do say if you rub garlic on your foot, you can taste it. Feet are amazing things. If this is the case, only god knows what else we suddenly stopped absorbing with the advent of shoes and sidewalks.

Maybe a seagull could fly overhead and give you a "patch". Just kidding, heehee. I take a B12 sublingual but I can't help but think that we manufacture B12 in our guts. Until thats proven one way or the other I am playing it safe and supplementing B12.

b12?

I'll have to try the garlic thing, phantom!

Seriously, I would love to do some personal tests on this. B12 is such a fascinating subject, which I've been thinking about so much more- since going to great raw food sites- like this one :-)

Maybe when cats and dogs roll around on the grass/dirt, perhaps it isn't just about their own/other animals scent?

Cats/dogs eat raw meat, lick their bums (and other animals bums!) and lick their fur, and we spent hours stroking them. If a patch can transfer synthetic B12 through my neck, then how about real bacteria against my neck when my cat nuzzles me, licks my face?

Sorry to ramble!

LOL at the marketing poo for vegans ;-)

How would I go about getting my b12 levels tested for free, or at least, cheaply (reliable testing, not the standard thingymajig one which is supposed to be inaccurant)?

Hi Raw1228: [en.wikipedia.org]

it's the vitamin that vegans can only get from synthetic sources, apparently. there's a tonne of debate about it!

LOL, EZ. Once I was in Cornwall and a seagull did the most gigantic poo that missed my face by about an inch! B12 or not, I would not have been amused ;-)

>it's the vitamin that vegans can only get from synthetic sources,

No, not really, I mean, there is a way for a chemist to make it from smaller component parts, but it's very very difficult with lots of complicated steps and yields are very low, way too expensive and too much trouble, took dozens of years and hundreds of chemists working overtime to figure it out. Some guy (Robert Burns Woodward) got a Nobel prize for it but nobody uses his method.

The "synthetic" sources are still made naturally by bacteria, which is a lot nicer than eating the flesh of an animal who got it from bacteria. It just eliminates the middle man, the animal that had to give its life and/or products up.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/25/2008 01:52AM by arugula.

The patch probably works by supplying vitamin B12 through the skin. Walking barefoot would not work because the B12 that is produced by bacteria is held by the bacteria. You'd have to ingest the bacteria to get their B12. If you plan on supplementing with B12, make sure to get the methylcobalamin form and not the cyanocobalamin form which is a lot less effective and probably not good for you.

I heard somewhere that 98% of people that get b12 deficiencies are meat eaters.

a healthy gut produces it's own supply of b12. seems to me this would be the ideal way for a vegan to get it. i wonder what davey mason's b12 is like, maybe those tests he had done show it? hmm...

Coco they say that B12 production is too far down the large intestine to be absorbed by the body. But I don't doubt that there may be some "mutants" among us who can actually make do with this as a source.

Not even mutants, but just think about how many people--because their systems are so clogged with useless things--can't get normal absorption of a lot of basics.

So maybe, over time, as absorption improves, gut production becomes more of a viable source?

So many questions, that researchers must be bribed to answer~~~

>So maybe, over time, as absorption improves, gut production becomes more of a viable source?

I doubt it. They did a study on some of the Hallelujah Acres people, who were long term raw foodists, and they had very low B12 status. So now they recommend supps for B12 or fortified foods.

I don't think it's a safe bet for most people. I wouldn't even try it unless I were fabulously well-to-do and could afford periodic testing to make sure mine was still in the healthy range.

I wonder why more people don't have B12 problems ? I would think that very few people supplement B12 and I think cooking destroys most of the B vitamins. I went years and years and never even heard of B12 and I always felt fine. All the years before science discovered B12 people did OK. So why don't more people show symptoms of B12 deficiency now and throughout history ? How is it possible for people to have stayed healthy through the ages ? Maybe the body dosn't need much B12 and the little supplied in the colon is enough ? what do you think ?

Well, "they" have figured out that about 1 mcg per day (0.000001 g) is about right to keep problems from occuring in most people. But RDA is higher to provide a safety factor, and the amount required to keep homocysteine levels from being elevated is even higher than that (8 mcg per day).

Some people are good at recycling body stores and it might take a long long time for some problems (the overtly neurological ones, say unsteady gait) to manifest (20 years), whereas if they were to get their homocysteine levels checked they might see a problem right away. The main thing about this is heart attack risk or stroke which is minimal in a vegan with a healthy diet but it is also related to brain function, dementia, to kidney damage, eye damage, and many other things. Why risk it?

Throughout history, even if people didn't eat animals or animal products, their food supply was more contaminated with bits of feces so it probably wasnt' a problem. Also they didn't live all that long on the whole.

Context Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I heard somewhere that 98% of people that get b12
> deficiencies are meat eaters.

Yes, that's because the antibiotics in the meat, which were given to the factory farmed animal to keep disease down in the too crowded conditions, kill the b12 bacteria.

EZ rider Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I wonder why more people don't have B12 problems ?
> I would think that very few people supplement B12
> and I think cooking destroys most of the B
> vitamins. I went years and years and never even
> heard of B12 and I always felt fine. All the years
> before science discovered B12 people did OK. So
> why don't more people show symptoms of B12
> deficiency now and throughout history ? How is it
> possible for people to have stayed healthy through
> the ages ? Maybe the body dosn't need much B12 and
> the little supplied in the colon is enough ? what
> do you think ?

My sister went into the hospital with pnemonia, and they said that she was b12 deficient (along with being iron deficient and other things - it wasn't a sole cause of the pnemonia per say), so I HAVE experienced a relative with b12 deficiencies.

Apearantly, in this context of pnemonia, the b12 was needed to help build blood.

I think that most of the people who are b12 deficient are the elderly, so since most of us don't interact with the elderly, in a co-worker like situation where we gossip about our health problems, we don't notice that there are b12 deficiencies out there.

Yeah, most of the deficient are over 50, because the stomach doesn't secrete as much of the "intrinsic factor" required to separate the B12 from the flesh, egg, dairy, whatever. They are still eating their B12 but they can't get enough of it out of their food. This is whey the food board is recommending that those people should take supps instead of relying on food for it.