Posted by Myristyl
(here)
This is an important thread. Literally everybody I have ever spoken to on the subject of B12 has no idea how serious it can be. Many years ago I heard an interview with a specialist on the subject who claimed B12 deficiency and related illness is one of the biggest scandals in the NHS. Unfortunately I can't recall his name.
My own story regarding B12 started following a burst appendix; a few years of total misery, tests and implications that I was making it up. Removing gluten from my diet made, and continues to do so, a huge difference. Initially I thought that by avoiding gluten I had found the answer so dramatic was the difference but after the elation passed I realized things were still not right. Incidentally, the number of doctors who told me diet was unlikely to be responsible was surprising.
Eventually one doctor decided to test for, amongst other things, B12. The results came back critically low which is pretty bad considering the NHS lower limits are already low by international standards. I went on supplements for a couple of months and retook the test only to find the results had dropped further. After this I had the loading doses and began to immediately feel better.
My symptoms included (there are some omissions but I can't remember everything):
Fatigue, worsening of vision, pins and needles in the feet and lower legs, itching, headaches, poor balance, excruciating stabbing pains in the muscle about five inches below the knees, fizzy feet (a kind of numbness), difficulty maintaining concentration, irritability (hard on one's family) and lethargy.
One of the things that concerns me most is B12 and dementia. I can't help but wonder how many people have suffered terribly and so unnecessarily. A good friend of mines elderly mother had slipped into the early stages of dementia and she was told that it was just old age. In relating the story to me, fresh from my own experience with B12 deficiency I suggested she get her mother tested, especially in light of the fact that she had been taking proton pump inhibitors for reflux. It turned out she had critically low B12. She did show some improvement once the injections started but, unfortunately the long term damage had been done.
Re: Vitamin B12 deficiency, what is going on?
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The Global Healing Vitamin B12 
I’m listening to this and thought of you. The take away is when the vitamin B12 is a methylated B12, the vitamin is received better. And as 
), and the sheer number of new and most interesting posts in this thread has blown me away! Going by many of the messages posted here, it is evident how the, often unsuspecting, B12 deficient are being let down on a huge scale by health services in many countries. I see, too, that there are more who suspect that there is more to this, possibly even beyond profits for the pharmaceutical industry.
I really hope that you will manage to obtain sufficient B12 orally, but if not, don't be put off by the idea of injections if they should turn out to be the way to go. I'll always be a bit of a wuss when it comes to needles, but I've self-injected into my thigh muscles hundreds of times now, using this 
I am so pleased your health has turned around and you are on the mend now 
, and I did not feel that was working anywhere near as well for me as it had done before. I asked the kinesiologist if she could test a vial from that batch and one that I had ordered later, during cooler weather, and the difference in the body's response was clear: the heat affected one had gone off!
I have been on B12 injections, 2 ml of B12 per week for the past 2 months and I have noticed improvements in my energy and the way I feel.
Oh yay, Harmony! 
(What is going on?!)
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