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questions, answers, discussion
Inflammatory bowel disease and B vitamins
olfolkie
12 posts
Oct 30, 2008
10:48 AM
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This question comes from a friend with the above problem who has a "gut feeling" that his exhaustion and mental fog may be related to B vitamin deficiency, and wants to know what they are and how to get them past the gut and into cells.
Vitamins are nutrients needed in small amounts for critical (vital) body functions of all kinds. Your body makes some of them but not enough to meet all needs so you must get them at least partly from the diet. With vitamin (and mineral) supplementation I have three general rules:
1. Some is good, more is not necessarily better
2. You can calculate specific amounts to take; if you do,
calculate how to get half from supplementation and half
from dietary sources (I'm not sure megadoses of anything
are safe or useful)
3. The jury is (for me) still out on whether expensive "natural" vitamins are any better than the cheap stuff. If cheap works and is not harmful, do it.
B vitamins generally work to help drive the conversion of carbohydrates and fats into useful energy, which is used to build and maintain your cells. B vitamins seem especially to help build and maintain brain and nerve cells and levels of some neurotransmitters involved in thinking and memory.
1. Vitamin B1/thiamine - helps with carbohydrate metabolism and nervous system function
found in whole grains
2. Vitamin B2/riboflavin - helps with cell repair after injury, energy metabolism
found in milk, eggs
3. Vitamin B3/niacin + niacinamide - involved in a wide variety of metabolic processes including fat metabolism
found in peanuts, poultry
4. Vitamin B5/pantothenic acid - essential for energy metabolism, and formation of acetylcholine, and neurotransmitter involved in memory
found in poultry, fish, whole grains
5. Vitamin B6/pyridoxine - actually 3 co-enzymes which together help enzymes digesting fats, proteins and sugars, involved in brain functioning
found in wheat germ, walnuts and fish
6. Vitamin B12/cobalamins - assist protein and fatty acid metabolism, production of red blood cells
found in liver, clams, oysters
7. Vitamin B9/folic acid - a family of compounds needed to make red blood cells
found in raw green veggies, raw fruit
Co-Factors of B-vitamins that you should include:
1. Biotin - essential to carbohydrate and fat metabolism
found especially in soy, brown rice
2. Choline - crucial to normal brain function and memory, fat and cholesterol metabolism
found in lecithin, eggs
3. Inositol - works with choline, essential for conduction of nerve impulses
found in lecithin, wheat germ
Please also find out if you are iron-deficient as this also causes fatigue and "foghead" and you are at increased risk for this. A good old physical exam and maybe a blood count and ferritin level will help your medical person identify this. If you are, ask me about iron supplementation as there are good and not so good ways to do this.
So..for you I would try a liquid supplement, room temperature. Easier to absorb and nice because you can adjust the dose easily based on your tolerance and response.
Floradix has two products that supply most but not all of the B vitamins and one has a very well tolerated iron component. World Organic Liquid B has all the B vitamins plus the co-factors. Their dose is 2 tablespoons but I would start with 1 teaspoon, since their recommendation would give you over 1000% of your estimated minimum requirement of some of the vitamins. Now it may be that you need that much but I don't know if you would absorb that much at one dose anyway..so that is why I usually say start small.
Rather than go into the food sources of B's, I will stick to the supplements..with inflammatory bowel it is so important to consider not just the foods but their preparation and timing which is very individualized. So I leave this for another question and answer! Please let me know if this is helpful...-laurie
References: Colgan, M. (1982) Your Personal Vitamin Profile, William Morrow and Company, New York New York
I have added information from multiple more recent studies so please ask me for a list of further research if you are interested. -L
Last Edited on 30-Oct-2008 11:27 AM
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