B12 Deficiency Looks Like Ageing. That Is Exactly the…

B12 Deficiency Looks Like Ageing. That Is Exactly the Problem. The symptoms arrive slowly. Fatigue. Mild cognitive slowing. Peripheral tingling. Poor balance. A general sense that the patient is not quite right, but nothing that points clearly to a diagnosis. In older patients, this constellation is frequently attributed to age. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it is a B12 deficiency that has been quietly progressing for years. One hundred years after Minot and Murphy demonstrated that liver-rich diets could rescue patients from pernicious anaemia, vitamin B12 remains one of the most commonly missed deficiencies in clinical practice and new research suggests its effects extend further than the textbook description. The mitochondrial connectionMost clinicians learned that B12 deficiency causes macrocytic anaemia and subacute combined degeneration of the cord. Both are mediated by B12's role in two enzyme pathways: one involved in DNA synthesis, the other in mitochondrial fat and amino acid metabolism. That second pathway has received relatively little clinical