There are a few supplements that I’ve used for just purely losing weight (that I would recommend). What’s important about vitamin B12, though, is that weight loss is only 1 of it’s many benefits…and unlike other supplements, I continue to take B12 even after hitting my target weight.
Your body needs Vitamin B12 for maintaining your metabolism, burning calories and to convert food into energy….it is probably the single most important vitamin that we can supplement our diets with…
but there’s a catch: It is very difficult for the human body to digest vitamin B12.
Several studies have shown that people who supplemented their diets with vitamin b12 shots reported higher sustained energy levels and increased rates of weight loss vs. a control group that took no supplements…but what shocked me was when I read of one study completed last year by Katherine Tucker PhD., a nutritional epidemiologist at the Jean Mayer U.S. Department of Agriculture Human Nutrition Research Center at Tufts University in Boston.
The Tufts researchers evaluated 3,000 healthy adults and found that not only were B-12 levels fairly low across the entire population but that 39% had levels that were below the healthy “cutoff”. 17% had “very” low levels of b12 and 9% were “clinically deficient”.
According to Dr. Tucker: “I think there’s a lot of undetected vitamin B12 deficiency out there.”
Interestingly, the B12 deficiencies did not correlate with diet (participants with diets high in foods rich in B12 had just as low levels of B12 as those without). ”It’s not because people aren’t eating enough meat,” Tucker says. ”The vitamin isn’t getting absorbed”.
This is the most important vitamin for naturally creating energy…
…and there is a 40% chance you are not getting enough.
Doctors started prescribing intramuscular vitamin b12 shots for weight loss years ago as a safe, natural alternative to traditional “diet pills” which typically contain some type of amphetamine that gives the patient energy by speeding up their heart. While effective, the problem with vitamin b12 shots (originally) was that they were expensive. Back in 2000, a vitamin b12 injection at a clinic would run $200 a pop…so a 4 week treatment would cost nearly a thousand dollars. Since then, however, home-based injection kits have become hugely popular as a very affordable alternative.
“I had gotten a shot that has vitamin b12 and b-complex, b6 and lipotropic. I lost 50 pounds in 4 months on this, and says it helped get my appetite under control, and I have kept it off even after I stopped getting the shots” – Laura D. San Diego
One of the biggest problems with vitamin b12 is that it is not easily absorbed by the body. Only about 1-4% of vitamin b12 in pills actually ends up ever being absorbed into the body (via the intestines). Sub-lingual drops have slightly higher absorption rates but the most effective way absorb this vitamin is through vitamin b12 injections. A lot of times when I tell people that I take b12 injections, I get strange looks until I explain this fact to them. This also explains the results of the Tufts study…everyone (including myself) thinks they’re getting enough vitamin b12 but odds are they aren’t…even if they’re healthy.
Don’t wait for signs of vitamin b12 deficiency before supplementing your diet with b12 injections..because chances are only about 1 in 10 that your b12 levels will ever get that low…
The right dosage of vitamin B12 shots is dependent on how much of the vitamin you’re currently getting in your diet…my personal experience is to inject 1 ml (cc) intramuscular weekly. Many people, however, inject 1cc two times a week. One wonderful property of vitamin b12 is that it is non-toxic (even at high levels – unlike vitamin D, for example) and highly water soluble…which means that if you take too much, it simply leaves the body in your urine….so don’t worry about taking too much.
For these reasons I finally took the plunge and started supplementing my diet with B12 injections (or patches) I’m glad I did.
