Many doctors mistakenly rely on serum B12 levels in the blood to test for vitamin B12 deficiency.
There were two cases of young, strictly vegetarian individuals with no known vascular risk factors. One suffered a stroke, and the other had multiple strokes. Why? Most probably because they weren’t taking vitamin B12 supplements, which leads to high homocysteine levels, which can attack our arteries.
So, those eating plant-based who fail to supplement with B12 may increase their risk of both heart disease and stroke. However, as you can see in the graph below and at 0:47 in my video How to Test for Functional Vitamin B12 Deficiency , vegetarians have so many heart disease risk factor benefits that they are still at lower risk overall, but this may help explain why vegetarians were found to have more stroke. This disparity would presumably disappear with adequate B12 supplementation, and the benefit of lower heart disease risk would grow even larger. Compared with non-vegetarians, vegetarians enjoy myriad other advantages, such as better cholesterol, blood pressure, blood sugars, and obesity rates. But, what about that stroke study? Even among studies that have shown benefits, “the effect was not as pronounced as expected, which may be a result of poor vitamin B12 status due to a vegetarian diet. Vitamin B12 deficiency may negate the cardiovascular disease prevention benefits of vegetarian diets. To further reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, vegetarians should be advised to use vitamin B12 supplements.”
How can you determine your B12 status? By the time you’re symptomatic with B12 deficiency, it’s too late. And, initially, the symptoms can be so subtle that you might even miss them. What’s more, you develop metabolic vitamin B12 deficiency well before you develop a clinical deficiency, so there’s “a missed opportunity to prevent dementia and stroke” when you have enough B12 to avoid deficiency symptoms, but not enough to keep your homocysteine in check. “Underdiagnosis of this condition results largely from a failure to understand that a normal serum [blood level] B12 may not reflect an adequate functional B12 status.” The levels of B12 in our blood do […]
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