Skip to main content

Vitamin B Run Amok; Vitamin D on Target

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.
Labels:

Comments

Unknown said…
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?

I like to use this site as another good source of nutrient information:
http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=nutrient&dbid=108
November 21, 2011
Lori Miller said…
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.

I 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.
November 22, 2011
Discount Vitamins said…
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.
November 22, 2011
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cigna is Making Progress

Yesterday as I put my lunch in the refrigerator at work, I noticed a bunch of unfamiliar people in the break room. One of them, Pepe, started in: they were there for the health fair, they would check your cholesterol, the sugar in your blood, your height, your weight, and it would just take six minutes. A coworker asked him if he'd ever considered a career in sales. Just for blog fodder, I participated. They really were fast, and one even found me at my desk (in an office nearly half the size of a city block) after the tests were finished. My HDL cholesterol was 65--up from 42 from a year and a half ago, and up from 57, where it was last year when I'd been three months a low-carb diet . A level over 60 is considered good. I haven't taken any medication to make this happen. I went on a low-carb diet and eliminated wheat. I also take vitamin and mineral supplements in addition to a high-nutrient diet. What impressed me more, though, was that the nurse (and Cigna) said that bl...
Post a Comment
Read more

HHS Doctor on Hidden Camera: "The Vaccine is Full of Sh!t"

Jodi O'Malley, a registered nurse at the Phoenix Indian Medical Center (part of the Department of Health and Human Services), teamed up with Project Veritas to expose severe COVID vaccine reactions occurring but not being reported to VAERS, the vaccine adverse event reporting system, even though medical professionals are legally required to report such injuries. During the filming, a man in his thirties with congestive heart failure was being treated; the doctor believed the cause was his COVID vaccination. O'Malley says she's seen dozens of adverse reactions. "The vaccine is full of shit" and the government wants to "sweep it under the mat," the doctor says on hidden camera. We finally know what's in the vaccine. Screen grab from Project Veritas video . The video also shows a pharmacist stating that off-label medications such as ivermectin were forbidden to be prescribed on pain of termination.  Project Veritas is a nonprofit organization that does ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Thanksgiving recipes for Pumpkin Pie & Cranberries--printable!

If you'd rather read a printed recipe than watch a video, here are my recent recipes for Better than Grandma's Pumpkin Pie and Probiotic Cranberry-Apple Relish.  Hat tip to Dana Carpender, whose pumpkin pie recipe inspired this one. The cranberry-apple ferment is entirely my own creation.  Pumpkin Pie--no grains, sugar or emulsifiers Crust 2 cups shelled raw pecans 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon monk fruit powder* (or 3 tablespoons sugar substitute) 4 tablespoons butter, melted 2 tablespoons water Pumpkin Pie Filling 1 pie pumpkin 1-1/2 cups half and half (with no thickeners) 3 eggs 3-4 teaspoons monk fruit powder* (or 3/4 cup sugar substitute) 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice Preheat the oven to 350F. Stab the top of the pumpkin all the way through the flesh in a few places at the top. Place the pumpkin on a cookie sheet and bake for 1 hour. Let cool. While the pumpkin is baking, put the pecans in a food processor with the S blade and run until they are finely...
Post a Comment
Read more

Fly with Reuteri

If you're planning to travel by plane and you want to keep enjoying the benefits of l. reuteri yogurt, you might have gotten sticker shock from the price of l. reuteri probiotics. MyReuteri * costs $46 to $83 for 30 capsules, depending on the CFUs (colony-forming units, or the number of viable microorganisms). If you're thinking about economizing by putting some yogurt in a sturdy container and taking it with you, you can do that. I'll break down the pros and cons and look at some alternatives.  Photo from Unsplash . Cost Yogurt might be less expensive than probiotics, but it isn't free. A half-cup serving costs about 70¢ to make if you start with a previous batch. It contains about 90 billion CFUs if fermented for 36 hours.  This is a lot less than $5.56 for two capsules of 50 billion CFU MyReuteri, but for a one-week vacation, you'd only save $34 by eating yogurt instead. (You can freeze any unused capsules for later.)  Furthermore, the yogurt would have to go in ...
Post a Comment
Read more

COVID Test Result is In

I don't have COVID.  On the one hand, it would have been a relief to have finally caught COVID and gotten natural antibodies, especially from having a mild case of it. On the other hand, I was concerned about my dog catching it from me (he's healthy, but nine years old) and it might have interfered with Thanksgiving plans.  Until I'm well, I'll stay home.
2 comments
Read more