My Supplement Stack: Why I Take What I Take

So the first one that I take in the morning is B12.

My B12 levels were very low, and I was shocked.

I remember when I met with the doctor, the first thing she asked was, "Well, you must be a vegetarian, or are you a vegan?" I said, "Nope, I'm not.

[laughs] I eat my meat." [laughs] And she's like, "Okay.

Well, do you, have you ever taken B12 in a multivitamin?" And I said, "Well, actually, yeah," because the only thing I was taking at that point was a multivitamin.

[laughs] I really started taking that I guess before COVID because I was like, you know what? I just wanna get a good baseline.

Even though I hadn't gone to grad school yet, I was like, I wanna make sure that I'm filling in the gaps, and the least I can do, I'll just get a multi.

So I knew B12 was in there, and I knew it wasn't a low amount, so I said, "Well, no, I'm actually getting, getting B12 in my multi and a pretty high dose." And so it definitely was an enigma.

It was very confusing, and so [laughs] the first thing I started supplementing with is B12.

Now, the crazy thing with B12 is it doesn't act like a lot of other vitamins.

So when you get foods that have B12 in it, which is a lot of animal proteins, the B12 is actually attached to something called intrinsic factor when it goes in the stomach.

And [laughs] the problem is when you're not really having sufficient amounts of intrinsic factor, your body isn't actually able to cleave off the B12 and actually absorb it.

So that's how someone can eat a lot of animal protein and, you know, have their meat [laughs] and their chicken and their steak, but have really low B12 levels.

And I think that's the problem is that even if you're having things on the plate or even on your supplement label, it's not the same thing as like what's getting into your bloodstream.

Also, if someone has low stomach acid, which I discovered at the time, if someone has like celiac or Crohn's disease, um, someone maybe has certain medications.

I was not taking medications, but that can also interfere, and so it really was confusing to me.

And I really think of intrinsic factor like B12's transportation pass.

You can have B12 sitting there, but efficient absorption, which is really what we're talking about, actually depends on intrinsic factor.

And I really will say, too, that when you're looking at your supplement label and maybe you're seeing B12, you might see like a lot, right? Like, you might be seeing things that say, "Oh, you're getting, like, 200% of your daily value." Here's the thing.

[laughs] At a relatively large dose, you actually are only getting about 2% absorbed, and a really large dose, we're talking about, like, 1,000 micrograms, about 1.3% absorbed.

Now, if you're having a lower dose, so, like, one microgram, you're actually getting about 50% absorption.

So the higher you go, the less absorption you're getting, which I know sounds super counterintuitive, but that's honestly just how this specific vitamin works.

The adult requirement is about 2.4 micrograms a day.

And so what I had to do [laughs] because little old me had such a low level, I did have to start supplementing with a B12.

And I take in the morning a sublingual B12, so under my tongue, because that actually is a very efficient way of absorbing.