I just counted them out of curiosity – 48. That’s the number of papers I’ve read in their entirety in the last week, plus 3 chapters, as well as skim-read the findings of 1 or 2 theses!! All in order to answer this question. I know, get a life, right?! But of course it’s not the number of things we read but the nature of them, that’s most meaningful. And in my initial trawl of the literature I read abstracts for many more & initially saved over 100 papers. What I decided not to include in the end, however, is as important as what I did.

Removing research lacking any authentic relatability to us & our patients e.g. diet data & deficiency dx from food insecure populations.
Even when the initial data is derived from somewhere more ‘similar’, like the UK or Europe, checking specifically for Australian/NZ sources – because surprisingly often they’re there, just not preferenced in the search algorithm.

Hand-searching references to seek the source. No, the original source.
Echo chambers don’t just exist on social media – there’s a lot of ‘groupthink’ & circular referencing in research 🙄
Often everyone cites the same ‘seminal’ studies, & often, it seems without actually having read them!
Read them and discover one of two things!
That perhaps an original investigation from 70 years ago still offers the most insight into this issue even now & is the best thing you’ve read in ages 🏆
Or the original work everyone else is pointing to has been repetitively misrepresented over & over again 😳

On occasion, contacting researchers themselves, to ask a question, because you have questions🙋‍♀️ 🙋‍♀️
Their response is often, ‘I’m so glad you asked!’ & then what follows from them is full of gold!

Zoom out! Because actual nutrition is not the siloed stuff of studies – a single question or intervention.
Trust that your understanding of ‘big picture nutrition’ is likely better than anyone in research! And in turn your questions are probably bang on! I undertook all kinds of side quests along the way, about whey (literally – the first place we identified B2), about B2 levels in breast milk, about its absorption kinetics, about individuals with lactase deficiency and malaria…long story😂…but all this additional information & context helped me anchor everything new & see the bigger B2 story.

Likewise, consume a diverse diet!
A researcher or an institution understandably may take the lead & become the ‘experts’ in any emerging area – but if this is exclusive – as in, no other researcher/research group has attempted to answer the same question, or has, but has failed to produce similar findings – then Houston we have a problem.

Don’t just read the most cited & celebrated study ‘confirming‘ (in this instance) B2 as the latest, greatest ‘gut guy‘.
Be sure to read every paper that cited it (See my points above about echo chambers & isolated experts!)
Including the other well-conducted studies that followed, trying to replicate these exact findings, that failed.

These are the ‘weeds’ we need to walk through in our search for actual ‘answers’ in health & medicine. When we do it properly, it rarely delivers us to that most desirable of destinations – ‘an answer’ – ‘certainty’. Instead it offers us a depth of understanding that can’t be attained via any other process. This is, of course, not my first riboflavin rodeo! I first met the man back in 1992 and since then have sporadically undertaken my own little mini-reviews prompted by a patient, a presentation etc. But my understanding now, on the other side of those 47 papers, 3 chapters, 1-2 theses & email exchanges with primary authors, is forever changed. Riboflavin’s rebrand as a ‘gut guy’ – has merit – but the real value of this to us as health professionals, lies in fine print & detail, far from the headline.

Photo by Egor Vikhrev on Unsplash

Riboflavin’s ‘Gut’ Rebrand?

So, is riboflavin getting a gut rebrand?

This episode follows the evidence into some unexpected territory​ in order to answer this question, then asks what these newer insights might mean ​​in relation to how we understand, and ultimately use, this remarkable vitamin.​ Turns out the iridescent wee is just the start of B2’s B-eautiful weirdness!