Why B-Complex Vitamin is Important?

Take a B-Complex Vitamin

We have to work backward a bit to uncover the connection between taking B-vitamin supplements and improved energy, but you don’t have to be Columbo to do it – it’s pretty easy to uncover the relationship.

Consider, for openers, vitamin B12. Clinical symptoms of B12 deficiency take many years to appear. And one of the biggest symptoms is fatigue.

Despite what our vegan and vegetarian friends may believe, B12 is only found in animal source foods. This isn’t just my opinion; it’s also the opinion of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and it is stated as clearly as possible in the exhaustive Encyclopedia of Dietary Supplements, edited by Paul Coates, the director of the Office of Dietary Supplements for the National Institutes of Health. So let’s stop with the “we can get all the B12¬ we need from plants” arguments. We can’t.

Now why does that matter? Because B12 deficiency is far more prevalent than previously assumed, and vegetarians, even those who consume diary products are at risk. Because a lot of health-minded people shun meat these days (not because meat per set is bad, but because the meat we tend to buy is so horrible), this is a big concern.

Another problem is that B vitamins are eaten up alive during stress, and if you’re reading this, chances are that you and stress are not exactly strangers. That’s an important reason why many people feel so much better supplementing with a B-complex vitamin (more on that below). Even the popular media seem to have caught on to this. An article in a 2003 issue of Psychology Today was appropriately titled “Vitamin B: A Key to Energy” and subtitled “To Fight Fatigue, Irritability, and Poor Concentration, Power Up with B Vitamins”.

Not for nothing were the ‘Dr.Feelgoods” of the 1950s and 60s known for dispensing shots of vitamin B12. It does make a lot of people feel better, especially if you’re low in this vitamin to begin with. And as we get older, we lose a lot of our ability to absorb it from food.

THE B FAMILY : AN ENERGY ORCHESTRA
But it is not just B12 that’s critical for energy. Vitamin B6 is needed for the manufacturing of all kinds of brain chemicals and enzymes, and it is critical for making serotonin, the feel-good neurotransmitter in the brain. (That’s one reason why, in The Most Effective Natural Cures on Earth, I recommended B6 as a vital ingredient in my “PMS Cocktail”. Serotonin levels frequently drop before and during menstruation, a fact that didn’t escape the pharmaceutical manufacturer Eli Lilly, who recently repackaged it famous serotonin drug Prozac as Serafem, which is now prescribed for PMS. Vitamin B6 seems to help the body replenish this important neurochemical naturally).

B6, together with B12 and folic acid (another member of the B family), works to bring down a nasty inflammatory compound in the blood called homocysteine, which can increase your risk for heart disease, stroke, and Alzheimer’s. Plus B6, together with B12, contributes to the myelin sheath that covers nerve cells and is necessary for signals to travel through the brain at warp speed. Without enough B12 or folic acid, your poor blood cells can’t carry enough oxygen to the brain. And that would sap anyone’s energy.

All the B vitamins have important functions in the body, and some, such as thiamin (B1) and riboflavin (B2), are critical for normal energy production in human cells. In one 1997 study done in Wales, healthy women who took B1 supplements had faster reaction times and reported feeling more clear-headed and energetic.

Although there are occasions where specific B vitamins can be useful (such as B2 for headaches, the occasional shot of B12 for any number of things, and the aforementioned B6 for moods and carpal tunnel syndrome), the B vitamins actually perform quite like an orchestra; if you really want that rich sound that the orchestra is capable of, you need all its members to play together. That’s why most health professionals recommend taking a B-complex vitamin, even if you think you’re low on one specific B.

If you do want to take one of the B family for a specific health reason, no problem. Just remember to also take a B complex, preferably at a different time during the day for maximum absorption. According to my friend, nutritionist extraordinaire Linda Lizotte, R.D., a high level of one of the B vitamins can cause an imbalance or deficiency in some of the others, which is not a problem if you’re also supplementing with B complex.