Let me tell you about vitamin B-12.

I recently read an article about the symptoms of vitamin B-12 deficiency. So I went down the checklist.

1. Weakness, tiredness, or lightheadedness – Yup, yup, and yup.
2. Heart palpitations and shortness of breath – Got those too
3. Pale skin – Neutral on that. Probably not.
4. A smooth tongue – Only on and around the tip.
5. Constipation, diarrhea, a loss of appetite, or gas – All of those. Thought that was IBS.
6. Nerve problems like numbness or tingling, muscle weakness, and problems walking – I get random pains and cramps or spasms a fair bit. So, sorta, a little. The problems walking are rare and are due to the above mentioned lightheadedness.
7. Vision loss – Lately, um…. yeah.
8. Mental problems like depression, memory loss, or behavioral changes – Definitely the first two. No behavioural changes, but then again, I have been eating a low B-12 diet (unintentionally) for a really long time now. So I dunno.

See, the body needs B-12 for little minor functions like synthesizing DNA, making healthy blood cells, and maintaining your nervous system.

Ya know. Little things like that.

So I read that article (can’t link, don’t remember where it was from) and started to get pretty concerned. But I am a recovering hypochondriac and so I know to restrain my panic before I had all the facts. I suspected that my diet was extremely poor in B-12, but before I went off the handle, I decided I had better look up what kinda of foods are good sources of B-12.

That chart lists a lot of things, but here’s the gist of what foods have B-12 : everything a vegan doesn’t eat^[1]. I am serious. Everything on there is an animal product or something made to resemble an animal product then artificially fortified with B-12.

Technically, that means vegans (not vegetarians) are wrong about humans being able to survive without the exploitation of animals. We can’t. But that’s hardly important, although it does make me worry that there’s a lot of woozy, blurry eyed vegans out there who are depressed and absentminded for no good reason.

If you know someone like that, show them the list.

Anyhow, after reading the article then reading that list, I figured I had a lock-on diagnosis for myself : vitamin B-12 deficiency. My average meal is a peanut butter sandwich (possibly with jam), a bowl of junk food (boo!), and a piece of fruit.

Note the absence of animal products. I don’t even drink milk, and cheese appears in my diet randomly and never all that often.

So where the hell would the B-12 come from? I knew my diet sucked, but…. this is science here.

But there’s a reason people should not diagnose themselves. Hypochondriacs know that better than anyone. You’re too close to the problem. That’s why we need doctors.

At least, that’s what I told myself, until I read about possible causes for B-12 deficiency and smack dab in the middle of them was : metformin.

Also known as “metformin, that drug I have been taking regularly for over a decade”.

So yeah. So ends my resistance to the idea. I might still be a hypochondriac but there is not a thing I can do to resist it now. So I might as well assume I might be right.

Luckily, I had an opportunity to take positive action about the problem right away. Yesterday, after therapy, I went to London Drugs to spend a gift card Felicity gave me for Xmas (thank you dear!), and I found some B-12 supplements that were not only fairly cheap, they were on sale, 2 for 1, that day.

So now I will be taking 250 micrograms of B-12 twice a day. The chart says that I need at most 2.4 micrograms a day, but nobody really knows whether your body can even use the vitamins and minerals from supplements, so the idea is to give the body way more than it needs and hope the right amount gets through.

Don’t get me started on the “science” of nutrition.

Obviously, the only way to be sure I am getting enough B-12 in my diet is to up my animal product consumption in one way or another. The simplest thing would be to start drinking milk, but I am not sure I can digest it any more. Last time I tried it, my sensitive stomach did not like it at all.

So I could accomplish the same thing with cheese. On the surface of it, there is no problem with it. I like cheese. It would be no huge trial to put more of it into my diet.

But I couldn’t do it every day. That would be too much. So the only thing left (besides ice cream, which is definitely a possibility… sugar free, of course) is meat. I need to live a meatier life.

And that means upping the richness of my diet considerably. That’s the problem. I realized now that I have been, in part, keeping my stomach happy by not feeding it much in the way of rich foods, and as a result, it accept that as normal now.

I am worried that if I try to up my meat intake too fast, my tummy will throw a tantrum, and when it’s your stomach doing that, you can’t just ignore it until it realizes tantrums don’t work on you.

On the other hand, I can’t go on living a life where I only eat meat once a week, when I eat out. I need to have at least one meal a day where I get my recommended 2.4 micrograms from whatever.

Right now, I have 7 cans (I ate one tonight) of Chunky beef soup. And there’s canned chicken breast in the cupboard. So I have access to meat.

So it’s really just a matter of getting my body used to more of it.

And who knows? If I really am B-12 deficient, maybe correcting it could make life a lot easier for me.

I sure could use that.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.