4 ms·
Kombucha has a huge amount of B12, along with other B vitamins. So, I don't take the supplements I used to need, anymore. B12 deficiency is very interesting, b
by ncmncm 4y ago
Kombucha has a huge amount of B12, along with other B vitamins. So, I don't take the supplements I used to need, anymore.
B12 deficiency is very interesting, biologically. Bodies are normally really, really good at extracting trace amounts of B12.
But people sometimes develop an immune reaction to their own specialized cells that are responsible for extracting it. Middle-aged men are particularly at risk for this. The symptom mentioned in the article is "pernicious anemia", a stellar name. If you get this autoimmune disorder, you need thousands of micrograms every day. Other people get along on a microgram or two.
Vegans are at risk not because eating vegan is "unhealthy", but just because vegan food, with rare exceptions, lacks any B12 at all. All B12 is produced by certain bacteria, and taken up by all animals, but not at all by plants. (Miso bacteria, in particular, do NOT make any.) Bacterial B12 is added to soy milk to try to prevent deficiencies.
If you eat cheese, you are covered unless you have the disorder.
The process of absorbing B12 is improbably complicated. Stuff in your saliva is involved, and stomach, and bile, and specialized cells in your intestine. We all have a huge amount of B12 in our own colons, but no cells in the colon that can absorb it.
My interpretation is that the thousands of variations of B12 produced by various bacteria, most of which don't work right, need to be filtered out, letting through only what is checked to really do the job.
B12 deficiency is diagnosed during routine physical exams by excess buildup of a chemical that we use B12 to process.
- soulofmischief 4y agowhat is a "variation" of B12? A molecule is a molecule, am I missing something?
- ncmncm 4y agoYes. Living creatures are subject to these events we call mutations and adaptations, and so almost every biological molecule comes in thousands of variations, each produced reliably by whichever species uses that one. What the molecule actually does is usually determined by a tag hanging off one end. B12 is one of a broad family of cobalamins, which you may read about on Wikipedia. Interestingly, the "cage" containing the cobalt ion is shared with numerous other important molecules, including hemoglobin that carries oxygen in your blood (iron) and chlorophyll plants use to absorb light usefully (magnesium). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_B12 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_B12 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porphyrin https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porphyrin https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorophyll https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorophyll Often we are equipped to modify molecules we eat into the form our bodies like. This routinely happens with drugs, which may have one form that survives the trip through your stomach acids, and another active form it is altered to, often in your liver. This often amounts to stripping off one tag and sticking on another. Amazingly, the porphyrin cage can form spontaneously without any cells involved.
- soulofmischief 4y agoOk, gotcha. My assumption was that B12, like many chemical names, referred to a specific molecular configuration. I wasn't aware it referred to a family of molecules. Thanks for schooling me!