What you need to know about B-12 deficiency
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Tired and run down? No appetite? Trouble walking? Depressed or irritable? Do your hands or feet tingle?
Symptoms like these describe dozens of disorders. Yet many people are not tested for one possible cause: a deficiency of B-12, a vitamin essential to health.
Those at risk of serious complications: the elderly; strict vegetarians or vegans; stomach-surgery patients; and those taking certain diabetes, heartburn and ulcer medicines.
Others particularly at risk are people who lack a protein that helps absorb the vitamin. This occurs in those with some autoimmune disorders and pernicious anemia.
Here are some questions and answers about the problem.
Fatigue, appetite loss, mouth soreness, a red or sore tongue, muscle weakness, problems with walking, tingling in feet and hands, depression, dementia or memory loss, hallucinations, psychosis and personality changes.
With blood or urine tests. The blood test is more widely used, but it can be inaccurate as much as half the time. The urinary test is known as the UMMA, for urinary methylmalonic acid.
You have a choice of pills or shots. Some experts say that shots are the best way to treat those who are deficient, at least initially.
You need only 2.4 micrograms a day if you are 14 or older. But you need much more, 1,000 micrograms a day, if you are deficient.
Mollusks, such as clams; liver and wild salmon; venison and baked snapper. For vegetarians, there are numerous products fortified with B-12, including soy and rice milk, cereals and Red Star T-6635+ yeast.
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