This article aims to clear any doubts and questions you may have about this subject and we will do our best to do so.
Dosages For Older People
Ant to take care of your body more than you might have in your youth. The way to know if you have a B12 deficiency is by taking a blood test. Treatment usually means ingesting B12 through supplements or changing your diet to eat more foods rich in this vitamin.
As you age, however, your stomach acid starts to decline. If you have a vitamin B12 deficiency, don’t worry. It is the most common vitamin deficiency in the developing world.
It is a perfectly natural deficiency for an older person to have, and there are many ways to treat i.
How Vitamin B12 Deficiency Harms Health
This means the red blood cell count is low. Red blood cells carry oxygen in the blood, so anemia can cause fatigue or shortness of breath.
The breakdown of faulty red blood cells can also cause jaundice. (Learn more about anemia here: Anemia in the Older Adult: 10 Common Causes & What to Ask .). This means that nerves in the body are not working well.
This can cause a variety of symptoms, including tingling, numbness, burning, poor balance, and walking difficulties. This means that nerve cells in the brain are not working well. This can cause memory problems, irritability, and even dementia.
You may have heard that vitamin B12 deficiency can cause pernicious anemia. But in fact, the term “pernicious anemia” means a specific vitamin B12 deficiency caused by the loss of a body’s ability to make “intrinsic factor.” The body needs intrinsic factor to absorb vitamin B12; without it, vitamin B12 levels eventually drop. This often causes anemia, but sometimes symptoms of nerve and brain problems occur first.
Save Citation To File
Elderly people are particularly at risk of vitamin B12 deficiency because of the high prevalence of atrophic gastritis-associated food-cobalamin (vitamin B12) malabsorption, and the increasing prevalence of pernicious anaemia with advancing age. The suggested oral vitamin B12 dose is 1 mg daily for a month, and then maintenance dose of 125 to 250 µg for patients with dietary insufficiency and 1 mg daily for those with pernicious anaemia. Vitamin B12 replacement is safe and without side-effects, but prompt treatment is required to reverse the damage before it becomes extensive or irreversible.
At present, there is no recommendation for mass screening for vitamin B12 in the elderly.
Abstract
Recent findings It is becoming increasingly recognized that the susceptibility to vitamin B12 deficiency may change throughout the life cycle, with the developing embryo and older adults exhibiting elevated risk. Recent data implicate low vitamin B12 status as a risk factor for birth defects resulting from improper neural tube development.