Home Care NH Discusses Vitamin B12 and Alzheimer’s Disease

Years ago, people often ignored Alzheimer’s disease and thought it to be an inevitable consequence of aging. However, science has improved by leaps and bounds. And while it is still difficult to pin down the exact causes of dementias in the modern day, we are discovering prevention methods and ways of handling symptoms every day. Today home care NH is here to talk about one vitamin – Vitamin B12 – and what research has told us about its effects on Alzheimer’s disease. Some of the more clickbait-y news outlets have called Vitamin B12 a miracle vitamin for anyone with dementia. Is it really that great?

Vitamin B12

Before we talk about the role of Vitamin B12 in dementia, our home care NH team wants to give a brief primer on the vitamin’s role normally. Vitamin B12 plays a major role in the following areas:

• Creation of red blood cells
• Creation of DNA
• Maintenance of neurological processes (ensuring they run smoothly)

Vitamin B12 ends up playing a wide variety of roles in the body, and our bodies may use it in even more ways that haven’t been discovered yet. This vitamin’s association with dementia may be a side-effect of one of the processes listed above, or it may be caused by something entirely different.

The Research

Research on Vitamin B12 goes as far back as the 1980s, when researchers at McGill University found that Vitamin B12 levels were lower in adults that had Alzheimer’s disease. Researches couldn’t determine whether a lack of vitamin was the cause of Alzheimer’s disease.

Researchers continued to look for possible connections, but the next large jump was in 2010, when a 7-year-long study on Alzheimer’s disease was published that showed a correlation between Vitamin B12 levels and Alzheimer’s disease. The study followed 270 individuals in Finland between the ages of 65 and 79, none of whom had symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. The study found that slightly higher concentrations of Vitamin B12 were associated with a reduced risk for developing Alzheimer’s disease over the course of 7 years. Higher concentrations of a chemical called homocysteine, which Vitamin B12 helps break down, were strongly associated with an increase in Alzheimer’s risk.

The last few years have been important for the study of Vitamin B12. A 2017 study from Ulm University showed a strong correlation between homocysteine and dementia. Another study from the Mental Health Center of Jingzhou City showed that regular doses of Vitamin B12 and folic acid together were more effective at preventing the development of Alzheimer’s disease than the drug donepezil in patients who already had the disease. Both Vitamin B12 and folic acid are used in the breakdown of homocysteine.

In Conclusion

To make a long story short, Vitamin B12 is not a miracle vitamin. It’s not a cure for Alzheimer’s disease (there is no known cure yet), and its role in Alzheimer’s prevention may be handled better by chemicals like folic acid.

However, home care NH sees the strong ties between Vitamin B12 and Alzheimer’s disease as a good sign for future research. And even if Vitamin B12 isn’t the magic solution to dementia, it’s still crucial for overall health. Remember to consult with a physician about taking preventative measures to avoid Alzheimer’s disease.