January 7, 2016
B12 helped my memory?
I’m 65 so I forget where I put my car keys and then remember that they’re in the ignition. And that I’m driving.
Well, no, it’s not that bad. But you know that thing where you click on your browser to look something up, you see what’s already loaded, and then it takes a minute to remember what you went there for? That was getting worse, and it was annoying.
I asked my doctor about it. It turns out that my B12 levels were scraping right along the minimum acceptable level — 181pg/ml is the minimum recommended (at least on the test results document I get) and I was at 190, and occasionally a bit lower. So at my doctor’s suggestion I started taking a supplement every day. That was about a year ago. My B12 levels are now 624 (914 is the highest recommended).
I have no external measurement of my short-term memory to go by, but it seems to me to be much better. Not perfect. I still won’t remember your name. But much better.
I ain’t no stinkin’ medical professional, but you can get B12 without a prescription. Best of all, if you take too much, you will pee a cheerful yellow.
By the way, my B12 levels might have been low because I’ve been a vegetarian for 35 years. There’s B12 in eggs and diary, but I probably wasn’t paying enough attention. (See my post about Soylent.)