“B” Good to Yourself

B vitamins are nature’s “feel-good” vitamins, affecting your energy and vitality as well as your mood and memory. In fact, they are critical to your health and the functioning of your body.

B vitamins help with:

• Sustained mental energy
• Improved mood
• Mental focus and clarity
• Improved memory
• Nerve sheath repair

The nervous system is your body’s super highway, transporting energy and information between your brain and cells. B-12 is like the cellular repair team, filling in potholes and smoothing out the ruts so everything zips along. Not enough B-12 and the potholes and problems begin to build. And the energy highway slows to a crawl.

You might experience this as brain fog: a lack of focus and memory loss that can leave you feeling sluggish, irritable, anxious or downright blue. B-12 repairs this super highway.

Age, stress, digestive problems and other things can prevent B-12 from being absorbed in your body. This can lead to a B-12 deficiency.

The symptoms of B-12 deficiency

These are just some of the characteristic signs of vitamin B-12 deficiency, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Untreated, some symptoms can become permanent and lead to severe systemic disorders.

The causes of B-12 deficiency

The dietary absorption of vitamin B-12 is complex. It’s not just a matter of swallowing a bunch of it (dietary or supplemental) and letting the guts do the work. There is something called “intrinsic factor” which is made in certain cells in the stomach that must be present in order for B-12 to be absorbed at a point in the very end of the small intestine (the ileum).

The main sources of B-12 include meat, eggs and dairy products. Acids in the stomach separate the B-12 from the protein source, at which point it must combine with intrinsic factor. The vitamin B-12/intrinsic factor complex travels through the intestine and is absorbed in the terminal ileum by cells with specific receptors for the complex. The absorbed complex is then transported via plasma and stored in the liver. The interruption of one or any combination of these steps places a person at risk of developing deficiency.

In most cases, vitamin B-12 deficiency is due to an inability of the intestine to absorb the vitamin, which can happen in several ways:

1. As you age (over 40) or become overly reliant on acid-suppressing agents like antacids, your ability to produce gastric acids in the stomach decreases, meaning that the B-12 is less likely to be released from its food source.
2. An autoimmune or other disease reduces the production or blocks the action of intrinsic factor, resulting in intestinal malabsorption.
3. People with pernicious anemia have decreased production of intrinsic factor.
4. Abdominal surgery reduces B-12 absorption:
1. Gastrectomy eliminates the site of intrinsic factor production
2. Blind loop syndrome results in competition for vitamin B-12 by bacterial overgrowth in the lumen of the small intestine
3. Surgical resection of the ileum eliminates the site of vitamin B-12 absorption
5. Pancreatic insufficiency such as fish tapeworm infection and severe Crohn’s disease affect absorption.

Super B to the rescue!

Take the guesswork out of B-12 absorption with Super Sublingual B-12 – formulated for maximum absorption with its original, patented sublingual delivery system. Plus, it’s the first and only B-12 product to combine both major forms of B-12 with B-6, folic acid and ginseng.

Now, you don’t have to worry about the pain and expense of B-12 injections. You simply put a great-tasting, quick-dissolving tablet under your tongue; the B-12 is detectable in the bloodstream in as little as 30 minutes!