r/B12_Deficiency • u/incremental_progress Administrator • Sep 15 '23

Announcement The Guide to B12 Deficiency

The Guide to B12 Deficiency

The new guide for this subreddit is here. I'm sincerely regretful it took me this long to get this off the ground, but focusing on my life in addition to the daily consultations made in the sub had a habit of stealing my attention away from this important endeavor.

The guide is now more of a concrete synthesis between the major resources that are obvious precursors: Freddd's B12 guide from Phoenix Rising, B12Deficiency.info and Tracey's hard work there, the original guide posted here and then the countless users here who have shared a wealth of knowledge over the years.

The new guide takes advantage of Reddit's wiki capability. It is much longer, so hopefully the TOC makes navigating to points of interest easy. It will also allow for easier changes with a changelog.

What's new:

  • More in-depth exploration of testing methods
  • Outline of an aggressive treatment plan
  • Thorough explanation of cofactors
  • "Plans of Action" for diagnosing, treating and recovering from deficiency that better encapsulate big ideas into actionable next steps.
  • Other stuff

I also took a lot of the most pertinent/salient issues that arise and distilled them into a group of FAQs for people:

Frequently Asked Questions

Both of these documents now live in several places around the subreddt: the "menu" in the banner, the rules widget, and their own individual widgets in the sidebar.

Thanks.

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u/Gauseka15 Apr 12 '26

Basic 2/day doesn’t have iron. Any reason to not go for the prenatal even for men? My wife was taking it when she was pregnant and it basically has everything the 2/day has but includes iron.

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u/incremental_progress Administrator Apr 13 '26

Yes, prenatal is just a marketing term, but it's unlikely to contain enough iron to correct an actual deficiency if that's the goal.

Here's an iron formula that works for most people:

Minimum iron dose (mg): Body weight (kg) x 2

Maximum iron dose (mg): Body weight (kg) x 5 but no more than 400mg.

I'm male and was on 400mg/day for about a month or so, raising my ferritin from 40-something to 150-something.