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Originally Posted by Altair
Debrah, the numbers do indicate we are a more vulnerable group. This is what you bypassed.
I suspect vegans are responsible for the high percentage, considering they also avoid dairy products.
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I have never 'bypassed' anything Altair. I'm always quick to tell anyone who will listen, if they are vegan, to supplement B12. I don't tell them that mushrooms or spirulina will give them enough and I don't even suggest that if they just make a point of fortified nut milks, that they're good to go. I always recommend an actual supplement of 1000mcg of B12 taken 3x per week because it is that important. I even tell my old mom who eats meat and uses dairy and eggs, to take a B12 supplement!
And the numbers that I linked to, shows that every demographic is at risk even if they eat meat. Our veg'n numbers are shown apart from those other groups but that doesn't mean their numbers are the responsibility of vegans. That's like blaming vegans for the problem of orang-utans losing their habitat because all of our societies make use of products that have palm oil.
I had an uncle who was a lifelong, heavy meat eater. But he had stomach troubles for much of his last years and he popped Tums like a favourite candy. Did you know that Tums impair your ability to absorb B12? And the more Tums, the greater the impairment. Each year as my uncle got older, his mind suffered more as a type of dementia seemed to become an issue. Tums reduces the stomach acids available to properly digest (separate the B12 from the food particles) the meat in his diet. And B12 deficits appears to have connections to subsequent Alzheimers diagnoses.
I've actually taken the time to research about B12. So I know a bit about what the physicians and scientific researchers have found regarding what can create a problem with the absorption of B12 that is found in the diets of your average meat eater. It can be poor diet, digestive problems, medications, other disease processes.....but because many people are truly ignorant about their health/bodies/food requirements, they think that because they're eating meat, they have all the bases covered. Well that's not true apparently and their inclusion in those numbers is the proof of that.