Vitamin B12 a Magic Pill, or maybe not

Beyond the fact that the article's headline "Vitamin B12 Prevents Alzheimer's, Depression" is immediately contradicted by the disclaimer that mental problems _may_ be caused by vitamin deficiency, the fact is that there is a lack of solid evidence that megadosing with vitamin B12 prevents these disorders.

A recent review published in the Journal of Nutrition, for example, found that

"Studies did not reveal an association of vitamin B-6 and vitamin B-12 blood concentrations with cognitive-test performance or Alzheimer's disease, nor was B-vitamin dietary intake associated with cognitive function."


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToS...


And a recent small-scale study in Taiwan did not show improvement in Alzheimer's patients given large amounts of B12.


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToS...


Mr. Hattersley, who wrote the Nexus article, doesn't seem to have done any related research himself, since his name doesn't turn up articles about _anything_ when a search of the PubMed database of scientific journals is done. Seeing that he believes in the unfounded notion that B12 deficiency causes AIDS, one wonders what his background is.

There are lines of research ongoing into what role vitamin B12 plays in brain function. To announce at this point that we should take gobs of B12 as a preventative is irresponsible, regardless of how much it benefits the vitamin manufacturers. I wonder if anyone noticed that Hattersley's article claims that Western diets are deficient in B12, but that the other linked article (from NutraIngredients.com) concedes that vitamin B12 deficiency is rare, and that a balanced Western diet contains as much B12 as the amount the Danish researchers want to establish as the new RDA.

By the way, "clinical psychologist" Bruce Levine is quoted above as saying "Instead of labeling Depression as weakness or illness, we might better decrease Depression by understanding it as a normal, albeit painful, human reaction. When we label a part of ourselves as either "weak" or "sick," we alienate ourselves from a part of who we are, and this can create even more pain."

This would be a step backward in the view of many people with depression, who in the past had their condition minimized as being a "sad mood" and were told to "get over it". Depression _is_ an illness, is often debilitating, and sometimes fatal. That doesn't mean it has to be treated with powerful drugs, but it certainly doesn't help to view it as a "normal human reaction".