Are you getting enough B vitamins? This might surprise you.

Category: Healthy Nutrition

Are you getting enough B vitamins? This might surprise you.

Burt Berkson writes in his book, User's Guide to the B-Complex Vitamins, that most adults could probably benefit from taking up to three times or more the Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDAs) of many of the B vitamins.

The RDA values were first developed by a panel of nutrition experts during World War II. Too many military recruits were being rejected due to diseases caused by nutritional deficiencies, so the government wanted to know how to set nutritional standards to prevent that problem.

While the RDAs (as well as the more recent Reference Daily Intakes (RDIs) and the Daily Values (DVs) which appear on food labels) have been updated over the years based on new research, the values reported are still based on their original purpose, which was not to maximize health and nutrition but to provide the minimum amounts necessary to avoid flagrant diseases of vitamin deficiency such as pellagra (niacin deficiency) and beriberi (thiamine deficiency) in most healthy people.

It might surprise you that B-Complex has been known to help with:

  • Energy

  • Canker sores

  • Acne

  • Mood

  • ADD

  • Hives

  • Sleep regulation

Of all eight B vitamins, vitamin B12 (cobalamin) may be the best researched for its role in sleep interactions.

Vitamin B12 helps increase the body’s production of melatonin, making it important for regulating sleep-wake cycles.

We focused on strategies for better sleep in the webcast, The Deep Sleep Project.

Complex or standalone B?

B vitamins

"Vitamin B" was once thought to be a single nutrient that existed in extracts of rice, liver, or yeast.

Researchers later discovered that these extracts contained several vitamins, which were given distinguishing numbers.

There are actually eight different B vitamins, and together they play an important role in keeping our bodies healthy while also greatly affecting our moods.

Each B-complex vitamin has a fundamentally different purpose and a very distinct chemical structure from the others. So if you are going to take a B vitamin supplement, it makes sense to choose a product with all eight vitamins, rather than an incomplete product.

That's why my preferred B vitamin supplement was never sold as a single B vitamin. It has always been sold as a complex.

Want to know more? Check out my article 11 Health Benefits of B Complex in my wellness center.

Thanks for reading,

Ariëlle

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