Active Vitamin B12: You may not have enough!

Active B12 may be the cause of your poor memory or your tiredness or that burning in you feet. How can that be? What is active B12 anyway? Victor Herbert, M.D. (he should rest in peace) dedicated his life's research work to confirm the importance of active B12 in human health. I bet you that if you asked your private MD what active B12 is he would tell you he has no clue.

Active B12 is that part of vitamin B12 in your blood that is usable; active as it were. That represents a small fraction of the total B12 and when a physician sends your blood to test for vitamin B12 deficiency the lab is not measuring the active fraction of B12 so there is no way your physician knows for sure whether you are vitamin b12 replete or deficient. Active vitamin B12 is actually that portion of B12 that is bound to a polypeptide called transcobalamin and when so bound the complex is termed holotranscobalamin II or just plain old holotranscobalamin.

It is now apparent that patients with normal total blood B12 levels may actually be deficient in holotranscobalamin or active B12. This is probably the reason that millions of patients insist that monthly B12 injections pep them up even though their physicians don't really believe that they need it (most of them have normal total B12 levels but many have low active B12 levels). Unfortunately there are only a few labs in the USA that are capable of measuring active B12 in your blood though the lab company Axis-Shield is soon to market such an assay in the USA. My laboratory has developed and published a research technique to measure active B12 and a new publication in the International Journal of Nutrition and Cancer by Dr. Ashley Plant and yours truely will appear early March this year describing the alarming frequency of active B12 deficiency in cancer patients.

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