Please Pay Attention If You Are Vegan. Plants Are Not Reliable B12 Sources. Everyone Needs To

I’m moving on to vitamin b12 plants are not reliable vitamin b12 sources and I want to go through them some foods are thought to be b12 sources seaweed and algae especially they contain both active b12 and inactive b12 what we call non cobalamin coronoid and inactive non cobalamin core noted said they look like b12 they attach to b12 receptor sites and when you dry seaweed you actually convert some of the active b12 into inactive b12 and so we just need to be aware of that as well and so these foods even though there’s some like chlorella that that may have more of the usable b12 and may be a reliable source we only have one or two studies on five or six people and so it’s not we can’t yet say this is solid reliable source don’t worry about anything else so right now I would say don’t rely on seaweed as a matter of fact Sealy can actually contribute can contribute to a functional b12 deficiency because what it does is it it it you know you think you’re you’re getting the b12 you’re getting these analogs attaching to receptor sites so the real b12 can’t get on to the receptor sites so it’s just just to be aware of that we need to make sure we have an alternative source of b12 fermented foods like tempeh black tea or vegetables contain very little active b12 now it depends on where their be where they’re actually produced so for example there was just a study from Indonesia that showed that there was a fair bit of usable b12 in there tempeh now if you if you analyze the tempeh in the United States not so much why because in the United States the tempeh is made in stainless steel vats that are kept very clean whereas an Indonesian they’re doing them in old-fashioned wooden vats with with you know the b12 producing bacteria and in the wood and and they’re not as clean and so they get our b12 producing bacteria and and so it can be in some parts of the world a source but it’s not something you should actually rely on as a source organic vegetables contain very little if any act of b12 if you weight the dirt that you know and maybe you use to manure to fertilize you might get some b12 but it’s not not recommended you might get some pathogenic bacteria as well mushrooms actually are minor b12 sources but very minor they might supply 5% of the RDA internal production some people say if you eat properly you’ll produce enough internally and actually we all produce enough internally in our large intestine the problem is as we absorb most of the b12 in our small intestine and things don’t usually go backwards so so most of the b12 we make in our large intestine gets excreted in our stool so we can’t rely on internal production and let’s see vitamin b12 stores can last two to three years in adults many people however become deficient much more quickly I’ve seen people who become deficient within six months of adopting a plant-based diet so it it can happen more quickly in some people now breastfed babies born to b12 deficient mothers can develop b12 deficiency within months of birth and even sometimes within weeks of birth and and within months they can develop a very severe permanent brain damage and this is you know this is for me the the saddest thing to see happen it’s completely unnecessary women who are giving birth need to make sure they have a source of of vitamin b12 in their diets because what happens when parents you know ignore b12 and end up killing their baby because they’ve ignored b12 are causing severe brain damage is they end up in court and they end up going to jail and I’ve been contacted on a number of occasions by lawyers saying can you be an expert witness in this trial and and it is it’s it’s just so devastating for the parents went vegan because of all the right reasons but didn’t get well-educated on what they needed to do and we really need to make sure that doesn’t happen because when that hits the headlines I mean obviously nobody wants to see a child die or have permanent brain damage of course but also when that hits the headlines it sets us back 20 years because it becomes Exhibit A for why people are justified eating their meat this is what’s gonna happen if you’re vegan and people sit up and take notice so we need to take care of that b12 deficiency symptoms you start out with megaloblastic anemia and of course make a little blastic anemia you get all the typical signs of anemia fatigue weakness irritability all that sort of stuff and then nerve and brain damage and the first thing that happens here is you get numbness and tingling in your extremities if you’ve ever experienced that it can be caused from a number of things but b12 deficiency is probably one of common causes of numbness and tingling in your extremities the tips of your fingers the tips of your toes even the tip of your nose and and so that’s the first sign of the nerve damage happening the next sign could be difficulty walking and then eventually you get brain damage and psychosis and death so that’s kind of the the order of things in terms of b12 deficiency you can get gastrointestinal disturbances like a sore stomach diarrhea basically lack of appetite and then the other thing that happens is your homocysteine goes up and when homocysteine goes up it increases your risk of birth defects it increases your risk of Alzheimer’s disease and it increases your risk of heart disease so it’s like shooting yourself in the foot as a vegan to ignore b12 because you you are counteracting the benefits of a plant-based diet so we just don’t want to do that so what is the recommended dietary allowance for b12 it’s about two point four micrograms a day for adults a little more during pregnancy and lack how much do we actually consume well look this is the Adventist Health Study – non-vegetarians lacto-ovo vegetarians and vegans all consume the same amount which is quite interesting Adventist Health Study thing about b12 the Adventists tend to know about b12 and take care of it they eat fortified foods or they take supplements or whatever they’re doing in epic Oxford we saw something very different so non vegetarians about 8.2 lacto over around the three vegans not even one microgram a day so what’s expected there well you can imagine you know we see suboptimal b12 status in the Adventist Health Study – fairly low rates for omnivores and vegans but in epic Oxford we saw either suboptimal levels or you know deficient or depleted in 73 percent of the vegans so that needs to end we need to figure out how to solve that that problem so why the differences will in North America there is greater use of b12 supplements and b12 fortified foods than there is in the UK generally so we don’t one of the things we just don’t want to mess with b12 vegans vegetarians and everyone over the age of 50 needs to ensure reliable sources of course everyone needs to rely to to get reliable sources of b12 but they also need to regularly monitor their b12 status just know where you’re at so why everyone over 50 well everyone over 50 the Institute of Medicine recommends that everyone over 50 get their b12 from supplements or fortified foods just like vegans and that is because vitamin b12 is bound to protein in animal products in order to leave the b12 off of the protein it’s bound to you need enough stomach acid and you need enough production of enzymes to cleave it off and as you get older that production can wane and you may not be able to get the b12 from the animal foods so it’s estimated about 10 to 30 percent of people over 50 do a good job at getting the b12 so the Institute of Medicine just says everyone over that age should rely on fortified food supplements further b12 so how much is enough well remember it was 2.4 micrograms a day but what we see is that at that level some people they’re homeless cysteine still goes up and we want to keep homocysteine down so we recommend from supplements a thousand micrograms two or three times a week or 25 to 250 micrograms a day and if you’re getting your b12 from fortified foods about two servings a day with about 4 to 10 microgram per serving so what are reliable sources well for vegans and lacto-ovo vegetarians supplements fortified foods and and and then luck and of course for for additional sources for lacto-ovo vegetarian for under 50 animal products like dairy and eggs could provide some b12 so let’s look at the amounts and plant-based foods what you see is meat analogues contain about 1 to 8.5 micrograms per serving ready to eat cereals around 1 to 6 non-dairy milks around 0.6 to 3 nutritional yeast like vegetarians support formula about 4 micrograms per keeping tablespoon and compare that to the animal products what sorry about that we’re seeing a very similar amounts in a serving of animal product so just so you know you can get plenty in fortified foods if you it’s hard though if you’re you eating a whole food plant-based diet you might not be using so many fortified foods a lot of people do use the non-dairy milks and the nutritional yeast though and those are excellent sources