Health and Medical

Vitamin B12 very important for our health. The other name for vitamin B12 is cobalamin.  Vitamin B12 main task is converting fats, proteins, and carbohydrate into energy. Vitamin B12 also needed for healthy blood, especially the red cell, so it help in preventing heart deseases, and keeping immune system to fuction at its max. Vitamin B12 additional task is protecting our nerve cells by creating a kind of cover or shield.

From all vitamin B12 benefits, it most important function is forming healthy red blood cells. But, not only red blood cells that needing of vitamin B12, white blood cells also need vitamin B12 to function properly.  As mentioned before, all nerve cells also in need of vitamin B12 for making a protective layer that made from fat. When there’s not enough vitamin B12 to make the protective layer, all nerve will be affected. The dangerous part is all nerve in our brains will suffer, in other words, our brain might not function as it use to be.

The interesting part is, our body only need small amount of vitamin B12 regularly.  One of the problem is our body can’t absorb vitamin B12 easily. It need help from inside our stomach to make vitamin B12 well absorbed.  Vitamin B12 only found in food that originated from animal. The examples are eggs, fish, meat, and liver. Most of us comsuming vitamin B12 more than what needed by our body, usually only half of our daily intake.  What about the other half that do not needed by our body?  Don’t worry, our body have the ability to recycle the vitamin B12, so most likely we will not get vitamin B12 deficiency. With above information, it is clear that vegetarians shall take vitamin B12 supplements.

When our body lacking of vitamin B12, the most obvious sign is anemia. It is clear that when we do not have enough vitamin B12, our red blood cell will suffer. When the amount of healthy red blood cell is not enough, the we get the anemia. But anemia can also caused by absorbing problem in our stomach. When our stomach do not create intrinsic factors or not quite enough to help in absorbing vitamin B12, anemia will occur. When this symptom happen, most likely our doctor with prescribed some vitamin B12 supplement for daily intake.

It is important to note that after ages of 50s, the production of intrinsic factor in our stomach drastically slowing down. So, those senior citizens categorized as high risk in vitamin B12 deficiency, and most likely need vitamin B12 supplement. Children and pregnant women also categorized as high risk in vitamin B12 deficiency. Children need vitamin B12 to grow up and for pregnant women to share it with the baby.

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