Of any and all injectable vitamins you can find online, the surest bet seems to be B12. This is true for more reasons than I’ll list in this aritlce, but today I will be discussing one of the big ones. The vitamin known as B12 plays an important role in the functioning of your brain and nervous system, and also in the formation of red blood cells.
B12 also helps to regulate and synthesize DNA. It’s needed in the metabolism of every cell in your body, and it also plays a part in the synthesis of fatty acids and energy production. And by helping your body absorb folic acid, it’s key in the release of energy.
But the main feature that we’ll be discussing today is B12 supporting myelin, which allows the nerve impulses in your body to conduct. And when you’re deficient in myelin, it’s been theorized that this drives symptoms for dieases such as dementia, im pared gait, sensation, and multiple sclerosis.
The one carbon cycle refers to your body’s use of B vitamins as “methylators” in DNA synthesis. There are three concepts that relate to B12’s role in chronic, long-latency neuropsychiatric syndromes:
Genetic Override
Sufficient supply of a bioavailable form of a vitamin is even more necessary in the setting of gene variants. MTHFR and MTRR function less optimally in certain individuals, and this results in pathology under stress.
For example, a B12 deficient patient with genetic variants underwent anesthesia with nitrous, which stresses the system, and passed away. Notably, the B12 in their blood level was normal, so this fatal case was attributed to functional deficiency, suggesting that access to B vitamins may not always guarantee proper utilization.
This is why supplementing with activated forms of B vitamins enhances their likelihood of effectively supporting cellular processes.
“Depression, dementia and mental impairment are often associated with” a deficiency of B12 and its companion B vitamin folate, “especially in the elderly,” Dr. Rajaprabhakaran Rajarethinam, a psychiatrist at Wayne State University School of Medicine, has written.
He described a 66-year-old woman hospitalized with severe depression, psychosis and a loss of energy and interest in life who had extremely low blood levels of B12 and whose symptoms were almost entirely reversed by injections of the vitamin.
B12 and Methylation
The process of marking genes for expression is critical for detox and elimination of chemicals and hormones, building and metablozing neurotransmitters, and producing energy and cell membranes.
B12 is a primary player in the one-carbon cycle and a co-factor for the methylation, by activated folate, of homocysteine, to recycle it back to methionine. From there, SAMe is produced, the body’s busiest methyl donor.
