🍌 ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking, B1?’
🍌‘I think I am, B2! It’s time to separate the B12 from the B*S#!’
Ok, if you’re reading this and you’re not from around here you have reasonable grounds to conclude I’m the one who’s gone 🍌 but if you grew up with a show all about 2 adults dressed up as bananas and creatively known as B1 and B2, then we’re all good! Ok now for the next bit, you might need to sit down. Nothing not everything in the wildly popular, and dare I say it populist, doco The Game Changers was scientifically rigorous. I know, I’m loving the strike through a little too much today.
Goodness, when otherwise intelligent friends of mine forced me to watch this, they found the need for both restraints and duct tape over my mouth, to hear or see anything other than me jumping up and down, arms flapping, mouth yapping. People only tend to make this mistake with me once.
Among the many many dubious XXX was a terrible mis-truth about our ‘new modern reliance on animal food or supplements for B12’. Woah…back up there Game Changers Gang, say what?! Does anyone on their research team read any research? So that got me all motivated to go back to the books on our beloved B12, which is simply like no other micronutrient in human physiology or in nature, for many reasons…starting with 1) it contains a metal in the middle 2) it has dietary dopplegangers (plant forms that look just like it but actually are decoys that need to be actively removed from the body so as not to block its actions) and 3) has the most complex and sophisticated pathway for digestion and absorption, which surprising equates to brilliant average bioavailability (much better than most micronutrients)…until it doesn’t! And that’s when the trouble starts. Once you don’t have an intact IF absorption pathway, you’re down to picking up < 1% via simple diffusion, and suddenly we see why patients can be vulnerable to not meeting even the piddly required amount. Not to mention the vegans, of course. I’m on my best behaviour.
But the B*S#! about B12 is far from limited to the documentary. It’s in the words of the Methylation Mystics, making methylation sound like rocket science and in the supplements we’re being sold.
But don’t get me wrong…effective B12 treatment in the right patient is a total wow moment. I’ve literally seen all the lights go on⚡ in some . So what do we need to do to find our way out of the dark? Go back to the solid science. Come on. There’s nothing else you need to do and nowhere else you need to be… we all know it…so start by reading this and this. There’s plenty more of course but these are excellent appetisers. And if you want to cut to the chase and get the lowdown on what’s B*S#! versus what’s the real magic of B12, you can always settle in and listen to my latest Update in Under 30 – complete with a very cool clinical tool to help you choose the best B12 for each individual, but spoiler alert, it ain’t rocket science.🤫
You can purchase April’s episode, Separating the B12 from the B*S#! is here.