The Only Vitamin You'll Ever Need

I’m a bit skeptical of vitamins. Like, all vitamins. I read this article from BBC about a year ago, and I was stunned by the amount of research showing that for non-malnourished adults, the use of vitamins actually increased their risk for disease (including cancer)!

Why would I take a supplement if it might make me sick? For example, one of the studies showed that in postmenopausal women who took folic acid for 10 years, they had an increase of 20% every day in their risk of getting breast cancer relative to women who didn’t take the folic acid. The results were outrageous, especially when we consider how vitamins are lauded as quick fixes in our media and health-food stores.

After reading that article, I decided to stop taking multivitamins and instead pay closer attention to receiving all of my nutrients from my food. “Eat the rainbow, and not the Lucky Charm kind,” I would tell my middle school students as we studied nutrition and diet. I gave myself daily goals of making sure that I was eating green things every day, and I checked out the nutritional values of some common vegetables to see which ones I should focus on adding to my diet each week. Turns out that broccoli is high in Vitamin C, spinach is high in Vitamin C, and turmeric is high in iron (more turmeric ginger tea, please!). I even used the online tracking tool Cronometer.Com to see if I was eating all of the nutrients I need and realized that I was not eating any sources of selenium - and that I only had to eat 1 brazil nut a day to fix that!

But then, my plan changed. I decided to go vegan in order to have a lower carbon footprint. And boom - everyone I was talking to was like "Aren't you going to have to take vitamins? I had this friend who was vegetarian and had to stop because her health was suffering so badly...how are you going to get enough iron? Protein? Calcium???"

Turns out, they were all wrong. My methods of eating a broad plant-based diet kept working after I whittled out meat and cheese, cow's milk and eggs. But, turns out, there was just one vitamin I needed.

B12.

B12 comes from bacteria that lives inside of the intestinal tracts of some animals, like cows. Gross, huh? For some reason, this vitamin is needed in our body for protein metabolism and red blood cell production, and it is crucial to our central nervous system.

B12 deficiency can be a big deal, especially in some people who may have a harder time absorbing this vitamin. Low B12 levels can lead to all sorts of nervous system problems, including depression and tingly fingers. In some cases, with critically low levels of B12, it can be fatal. Most times, though, B12 deficiency can be easily fixed by taking a B12 vitamin every day, or eating foods that are fortified with B12 (think cereals, some nut milks, and breads).

B12 is the only vitamin that I do need to take as a supplement if I eat a strict vegetarian or vegan diet, and that’s fine by me. Just one vitamin I’m missing that I can buy for $6 (for 2 month supply) from the grocery store? A vegan diet gives me better health and energy, besides trimming my unnecessary body fat and helping me gain muscle (and lowering my risks for cancer and heart disease), so I’m happy to take just one simple vitamin to keep me functioning at my best. Over the past 3 years of being vegan, I have taken 1 B12 vitamin on average once every two weeks. I get my B12 levels checked by a simple blood test when I get my annual physical exam, and my levels have always come out just right. Easy peasy.

Funny story, though: Taking B12 can cause you to have highlighter-yellow pee if you take it each day…so don’t freak out, you aren’t dying.

Do you take B12? What are your reasons? Comment below!