Vitamin B Deficiency: Why Vitamin Pills Are Not Enough

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5/25/2022Updated: 3/24/2023

Many years ago, when I was writing my thesis, I realized that there is a major flaw in the entire concept of taking vitamins to improve one’s health. I called it the missing link in vitamin therapy, and the essential idea is that real foods contain a host of nutrients that vitamin pills do not. And we need these other nutrients — often more than the vitamin itself — for healing, prevention and cellular function. In real food, vitamins exist within a complex of interwove, interactive and interdependent nutrients. Vitamins and multivitamins, on the other hand, do not contain this complex and therefore do not act as natural nutrition inside the body.

Vitamins do not work like foods, and foods are what our bodies were designed to use by virtue of evolution and biology. There is no substitute for food nutrition, and no matter how you look at it, vitamin pills are an invention of scientists, so they are prone to cause side effects, be incomplete and lack what we need to overcome our health problems.

Vitamins have been sold and marketed as the “magic bullet” for all health problems, yet food science researchers are bringing out the truth about vitamins, minerals, multivitamins and antioxidants— and it’s not an easy pill to swallow. Vitamin C is not the same as an orange or an acerola cherry; vitamin A is not the same as liver or carrots, vitamin B is not the same as brewer’s yeast or rice bran.

Here Are a Few Basic Facts About Foods and Vitamins

Foods contain not just vitamins, but the co-workers (synergists) and helper nutrients that allow vitamins to work
Foods are never found in high potency, so you won’t suffer any toxic side effects that have been proven to exist with ALL vitamin pills. As one expert stated, “Foods never deliver toxic doses [of vitamins]. (Hamilton, p.205)
Vitamins are just a small part of what our bodies require for health and healing. It is very often that it is the other food properties that help us while the vitamins are secondary.
Vitamin pills need other nutrients in order to work.

The best optimal thing to do, of course, is to merely eat a variety of whole, real, unadulterated foods. But we all know that this is not doable for most people. So, at least, it is better to consume organic, whole food supplements than it is to pop vitamin and mineral pills, whether “natural” or synthetic. But make sure that your whole food supplement isn’t “food based” or a combination of real foods and isolated vitamins. You have to carefully read the labels to see.

Eat more vitamin B-containing foods — oats, barley, wheat bran, avocado. (ShutterStock) — Eat more vitamin B-containing foods — oats, barley, wheat bran, avocado. ShutterStock

Look for These Words to Identify Vitamin Chemicals on a Label

Pyridoxine
Thiamine or thiamin
Niacin or niacinamide
Palmitate
ascorbic acid
Riboflavin
Mixed tocopherols
B12
cyanocobalamin
more

Vitamins are not foods, so instead of vitamins and minerals on a label, you should be looking for the names of foods and herbs on the label. Don’t be fooled by high milligrams, high potency, standardization or any other such terms that just do not apply to real foods from nature.

Vitamin B Complex Deficiency

Major Causes

Vitamin B complex comprises a number of vitamins that exist as a family.

Millions of people suffer from a deficiency of vitamin B complex for several reasons

Stress: emotional, physical and spiritual
Processed foods in the diet: these are not real foods and so they tax the body
Refined sugar. The average person consumes at least 140 pounds of sugar a year which robs the body of its vitamin B stores
Drugs: both recreational and prescription drugs deplete vitamin B
Toxins: poisons in the environment and personal care products deplete vitamin B complex
Malnutrition. Most people are malnourished because they are not eating the right kinds of foods
Cooking. Most people do not eat enough real, raw foods, so vitamin B is killed or so depleted that people are not getting enough of it in the diet

Do You Have Any of These Symptoms?

Once your body has been deprived of the vitamin B, it begins to show symptoms (signs) of altered, diminished or poor health. This is because the vitamin B complex in whole is needed for a wide array of functions, including cellular differentiation, transmission of nerve electricity, health of nerve cells, heart pulse rate, muscular contraction, digestion, brain function, thought processes and energy production.

Without adequate vitamin B complex from foods, you can experience one or more of any one of these symptoms

mental problems
heart palpitations
heart arrhythmias
fibrillation
indigestion
chronic fatigue
chronic exhaustion
paranoia, vague fears, fear that something dreadful is about to happen
nervousness and/or anxiety
ADD (attention deficiency), inability to concentrate, irritability
feeling of uneasiness
thoughts of dying
easy agitation, frustration
inability to sleep (insomnia)
restlessness
tingling in hands, fingers and/or toes
rashes
crying spells, inability to cope
soreness all over
and so much more.

Eat more vitamin B-containing foods — like brazil nuts and others. By New Africa/Shutterstock

Chronic Vitamin B Deficiency

Medical researchers have discovered that very often there may be no detectable signs according to scientific instrumentation, yet you are still experiencing a deficiency. For example, “memory impairment due to vitamin B12 deficiency can precede blood symptoms of deficiency by years. Evidence that vitamin B12 deficiency accounts for some cognition deficits in older people comes from a study that revealed abnormal short-term memory in more than two-thirds of clients with pernicious anemia...The researchers recommend that a diagnosis of senile dementia should not be made, even in the absence of anemia, until vitamin B12 status is determined biochemically.” (Hamilton, p. 476) Certain mental disorders can be directly attributable to vitamin B complex deficiency, and it is easier to first start replenishing stores of vitamin B complex than to begin treating difficult mental illnesses with drugs, therapy or psychological counseling.

What You Can Do to Help Yourself

There are a number of things you can do to prevent and overcome vitamin B complex deficiency:
Stop taking vitamin pills and switch over to a non-GMO, organic whole food product. I recommend BFood by NutriPlex Formulas.
Stop eating refined sugar. It depletes vitamin B, and creates a host of other health problems.
Stop eating artificial ingredients. Read all labels on your foods and if there are names of chemicals, don’t eat them. Switch to organic foods.
Reduce stress through a regular exercise program, meditation, counseling and/or hobbies
Stop drinking coffee; switch to organic decaffeinated coffee or organic green tea
Eat more vitamin B-containing foods — oats, barley, wheat bran, avocado, salmon, Brazil nuts and others.
Be patient. It takes a while to create a vitamin B deficiency, so it takes a while to reverse the problem; with severe cases it can take a year or so, with milder cases it can take just a few days.

Republished from GreenMedInfo.com

Sources

Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA); “Vitamins for Chronic Disease Prevention in Adults,” Clinical Applications, Robert H. Fletcher, MD,MSc; Kathleen M. Fairfield, MD,DrPH
JAMA. 2002;287:3127-3129.
Shayne, PhD, Vic, Man Cannot Live on Vitamins Alone, 2004
Shayne, PhD, Vic, Illness Isn’t Caused by a Drug Deficiency!, 2001
Hamilton, et.al, Nutrition Concepts & Controversies, 5^th Ed., West Publishing, St. Paul, 1991
Stryer, PhD. Lubert, Biochemistry, 2^nd Ed., Stanford University, WH Freeman & Co., San Francisco, 1981