B nutritional vitamins are, with out query, important for all times and well being. Deficiencies of assorted B nutritional vitamins can result in life-threatening well being problems resembling:
- B1 (thiamine)—Varied types of extreme neurological impairment together with Wernicke’s encephalopathy, ataxia, and beriberi, conditions mostly occurring in alcoholics
- B2 (riboflavin)—Pores and skin and mouth lesions
- B3 (niacin)—Scaly pores and skin rash, crimson tongue, despair, gastrointestinal misery and diarrhea
- B5 (pantothenic acid)—Neurological impairment, gastrointestinal misery, fatigue, despair
- B6 (pyroxidine)—Anemia, pores and skin rash, despair, confusion
- B7 (biotin)—Start defects, hair loss, scaly pores and skin rash
- B9 (folate)—Start defects (e.g., spina bifida), anemia, neurological impairment
- B12 (cobalamin)—Anemia, neurological impairment, gastrointestinal misery, painful tongue and mouth
Insufficient consumption of B9 or folate is particularly widespread with profound penalties, for example, for a pregnant mom who can ship a toddler with life-threatening deformities. (For that reason, laws mandating supplementation of folic acid in grain merchandise resembling breads and breakfast cereals was handed a few years in the past.) Insufficient consumption of B12 or cobalamin develops in individuals who keep away from animal merchandise (vegans and vegetarians) or in people who find themselves unable to soak up B12 (e.g., autoimmune gastritis from wheat/grain consumption, hypochlorhydria and atrophic gastritis from H. pylori, Crohn’s illness, celiac illness, or small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, SIBO resulting from failed absorption within the ileum).
Ample consumption and absorption of B nutritional vitamins is clearly not non-compulsory however a primary requirement for well being. This recognition has spawned a considerable franchise in promoting B nutritional vitamins as single brokers, B-complex, meals fortification, B12 injections, and many others.
Nevertheless, let’s take into account this query: What B nutritional vitamins are produced by gastrointestinal (GI) microbes? B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B7, B9, and B12—all eight B nutritional vitamins are recognized merchandise of bacterial metabolism, largely within the colon. Quite a few species of Lactobacillus, Bifidobacteria, Clostridia, Ruminococcus, and Prevotella, for example, produce B1, B9, and B12.
Are the obvious advantages of folate supplementation in pregnant females, B7 in folks with thinning hair, or B3 in despair actually concealing the disruption of GI microbiome composition with extreme proliferation of unhealthy non-B vitamin-producing species and a relative lack of B-vitamin-producing species? The main points haven’t been totally sorted out. However it means that the true answer to lack of assorted B nutritional vitamins shouldn’t contain, say, fortification or supplementation, however addressing bowel flora composition to tilt the scales in favor of useful B-vitamin-producing microbes and away from pathogenic fecal species which have change into dominant in lots of fashionable folks. It doesn’t imply supplementation with probiotics for every B-vitamin-producing species. It means:
- Eradication of SIBO—which we now accomplish with my recipe for SIBO Yogurt. (See my Tremendous Intestine guide for full rationale.)
- Restoration of a number of useful species—With frequent consumption of fermented meals like kimchi, kefirs, yogurts, sauerkraut, kombucha, and many others. If we imagine the findings of Drs. Justin and Erica Sonnenburg that species variety is biggest with consumption of fermented meals, regardless that the fermenting species resembling Leuconostoc mesenteroides and Pediococcus pentosaceus offered by such meals will not be themselves the colonizing species.
- Prebiotic fibers and associated compounds—Or higher, what the Sonnenburgs have labeled “microbiota-accessible carbohydrates,” or MACs. Extra inulin and fructooligosaccharides, for instance, trigger a blood in useful species resembling Akkermansia muciniphila and Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, main producers of butyrate that yields many intestinal and extra-intestinal advantages.
My prediction: As we get higher and higher at rebuilding a broken GI microbiome, B vitamin supplementation will change into a relic of the previous (until, after all, you’ve got accomplished irreparable harm resembling lack of abdomen acid-producing parietal cells within the abdomen resulting from wheat/grain consumption).
