Q. How do I know if I need a B-vitamin supplement? Also what does it mean to “balance” the B-vitamins?
A. The science of nutrition is not yet “scientific” enough to definitively say if you are deficient in one of the B-vitamins, although there are some clues that should prevent you from becoming seriously ill from vitamin deficiency. Probably because of the inherent safety of supplementing the B-vitamins to excess, there doesn’t seem to be much urgency in developing inexpensive tests for vitamin status. Tests are available commercially that provide some information on most of the B-vitamins (biotin is usually “forgotten”) but the tests tend to be expensive (over $200) and test usually only for the amount of the vitamin present rather than its activity.
Since the B-vitamins are intimately involved in cellular energy production, an unexplainable drop in energy or stamina would be one of the symptoms of B-vitamin deficiency. However, low energy probably has a hundred other explanations, so we need either a group of several deficiency symptoms specific for the vitamin, or we need information from some of the rather expensive tests, or we can try taking a good B-complex and see how we feel after a month or two. Most people choose simply to try a supplement because you can buy several years’ supply of vitamins for the price of the tests.
All the nutrients, including the B-vitamins, work together as a team. Except for rare genetic conditions such as an “inborn error of metabolism,” if an extraordinary amount of only one of the B-vitamins is used, deficiency of other B-vitamins can be induced. A fairly recent example of this situation occurred a few years ago when some athletes began to use large supplements (as much as 2,000 mg per day) of only vitamin B-6 (our food typically provides about 2 mg per day). The body does not use most B-vitamins in the form supplied in the bottle. Vitamin B-6, or pyridoxal, must be converted into an active form, pyridoxal-5-phosphate, by vitamin B-2. Failure to balance the supplement with at least some vitamin B-2 along with the enormous amounts of vitamin B-6 caused an extremely high buildup of pyridoxal, so high that it blocked the body’s ability to use pyridoxal-5-phosphate. The result was the production of vitamin B-6 deficiency symptoms caused by excess vitamin B-6!
The B-complex products commonly labeled “Balanced B,” with 50 mg of each of the B-vitamins, are not necessarily balanced. Such products would not provoke the problem encountered above, but to imply that an equal amount of each B-vitamin represents a balance is naive. Most likely we each have our own personal “balance” of B-vitamins, but as a general guideline, with many exceptions, evaluate a B-complex as follows:
• Look first for about equal amounts of thiamin and riboflavin.
• Pyridoxine should be no more than 10 times this amount.
• Niacin and pantothenic acid should be between 10 and 50 times this amount.
• Biotin and folic acid should be between one-tenth and one-half this amount.
• Vitamin B-12 should be between one-hundredth and one-half of this amount.
Fortunately the “balance” required by B-vitamins is usually very flexible and almost any complete B-complex formula is safe to try.
This article appears in March 7 • 2003.