It’s construction season in Saskatoon!
The road crews are out managing the infrastructure while the weather is nice, and they’re out in full force. It’s also the season for us to be outside enjoying the summertime, and in many ways our bodies are in construction mode too!
B12 Vitamin Potholes
There’s an analogy we use in clinic between road repair and repleting certain B-vitamins in your body: “sometimes you have to fill the potholes before you can resurface the road”.
What we mean is that sometimes taking supplements isn’t noticeable at first, not until some underlying work completed. I’ll explain this concept with B12 in the body.
Symptoms of Low Levels of Vitamin B12
B12 is a water soluble vitamin that, when it’s too low in our bodies, can lead to numbness, tingling, weakness, anxiety, trouble falling asleep, and fatigue. These are all symptoms of your nervous system.
Low B12 can also cause improper hemoglobin synthesis. When hemoglobin isn’t synthesized properly it isn’t as tight as it should be and so your red blood cells get large and round. Now what do you think is more important, your blood or your nervous system? Without blood-flow nerves can’t work, so the latter!
How Many B12 Shots Will I Need?
Your body will triage B12 for hemoglobin synthesis before it spends it on your nervous system. For this reason, a confirmed low B12 patient may not have the stress-relief or energy from their first or even second B12 shot, until their blood cells have returned to normal. This is “filling in the potholes before resurfacing the road”.
So, now it’s construction season, and our bodies are thrilled to be outside. We’re more energetic and it’s a good time to build up health and capability for the winter months (where our energy drops and we go into more of a hibernation mode).
Now is a great time to be taking care of underlying nutrient deficiencies, and focusing on exercising your body so that you go into the fall and winter months with more vitality!
