Although it's been some time since I got over my sinus infection (after three rounds of antibiotics, the last of which ended a month ago), I haven't felt quite right: lethargic, unmotivated, and painfully bored. As I took my new multi-vitamin pill Friday morning, I thought, "It's just like that time I had those drinks with the B vitamins." (See Feb. 13 comment in linked post.) Indeed, the vitamin pill label showed B vitamins in amounts 25 to 33 times the recommended daily allowances. This was for three tablets, and was taking only one, but that's still way over the top. Even a 100-gram serving of liver has B vitamins in the low single milligrams, or less, not the 50-gram doses of B-1, B-2 and B-6 and the 200 microgram dose of B-12 per three tablets of the vitamin. The bottle recommends taking three to six pills daily. Of course, I stopped taking the vitamins, and today I felt peppy enough to try a new hairdo, buy some clothes and take my dog to the dog park.
This may be another reason I feel better not eating wheat: wheat flour is enriched with B vitamins. Not in the amounts contained in the vitamins, but still several times the amount in a piece of meat, I see from looking around on nutritiondata.com. Apparently, I get all I need from eating meat. Last week, I had a wonderful balsamic vinegar glazed lamb dish at a restaurant, and I've gotten a few new cookbooks. One is called The Odd Bits by Jennifer McLagan; the other is French Cooking in Ten Minutes by Edouard de Pomaine. Both gave me great new ways of cooking cuts of meat I was tepid about. More on that in a future post.
I've had good results with some other vitamins: my vitamin D level is now 52, just within the ideal range of 50-80. Using some information from the Heart Scan blog, I took 3,000 IUs per day. I also used less sunscreen this summer (I have to use some to keep from burning).
Just to be clear, your results may vary with different vitamin dosages. I seem to have an odd sensitivity to B vitamins in anything but very moderate amounts. Some people require B supplements.
This may be another reason I feel better not eating wheat: wheat flour is enriched with B vitamins. Not in the amounts contained in the vitamins, but still several times the amount in a piece of meat, I see from looking around on nutritiondata.com. Apparently, I get all I need from eating meat. Last week, I had a wonderful balsamic vinegar glazed lamb dish at a restaurant, and I've gotten a few new cookbooks. One is called The Odd Bits by Jennifer McLagan; the other is French Cooking in Ten Minutes by Edouard de Pomaine. Both gave me great new ways of cooking cuts of meat I was tepid about. More on that in a future post.
I've had good results with some other vitamins: my vitamin D level is now 52, just within the ideal range of 50-80. Using some information from the Heart Scan blog, I took 3,000 IUs per day. I also used less sunscreen this summer (I have to use some to keep from burning).
Just to be clear, your results may vary with different vitamin dosages. I seem to have an odd sensitivity to B vitamins in anything but very moderate amounts. Some people require B supplements.
I need to check my vitamin D levels and compare them to earlier this year. This is the first I have heard of vitamn B causing symptoms such as yours. Which B complex are you suspecting as the cause?
ReplyDeleteI like to use this site as another good source of nutrient information:
http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=nutrient&dbid=108
Donald, I don't know which B vitamin might be the cause. And since these weren't n=1 experiments where I kept everything else the same, I can't be sure it wasn't something else. Be that as it may, comparing the new vitamins to the old ones, the new ones have several times more thiamin, riboflavin, B6 and B12.
ReplyDeleteI don't know what the mechanism would be for affecting my mood. I wonder if it might be an imbalance of nutrients, as I had with zinc and copper. Here's an article from Michael Eades's site in folic acid v. B-12 (although I doubt this is what went wrong in my case--3 pills contain 3,333% of B12 and 100% of folate):
http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/uncategorized/folic-acid-and-cognitive-impairment/
Thanks for the link to the whfoods site.
I also didn't check my vitamin B level but i personally feel that it will have some quantity as i am getting wheat on daily basis and its enriched with vitamin B. So i don't think there would be a sign of worry for me regarding Vitamin B.
ReplyDelete