Hi all I have just been reading a post about vitamin c and b12 when i first felt unwell and had the pins and neddles and tiredness ect ect I went to my docs blood test done came back very low b12 had injections every other day for 2 weeks then more blood test came back all ok, felt good for a week then bang lost use of leg ballance went spasm ect ect but never been told it was anything to do with low b12 and if this is a quiet a big factor in ms why has it not been mentioned to me just putting it out there and not quiet sure what im trying to say ???
B12 deficiency is quite common in MS and can actually be mistaken for MS in some cases because the symptoms and MRI results can be almost identical.
BUT, there is no evidence that B12 deficiency causes MS. There is one study that I know of that reports it might have something to do with the age of onset of MS, and there are studies showing that people with MS are low in some parts of B12, but that is it. B12 is important for cell repair however, and someone with MS certainly has a lot of that going on - so B12 resources might be more easily diminished in someone with MS. Some drugs that MSers take might also put more strain on B12 levels.
Of course, I am far from an expert in these things, but as far as I can work out B12 supplements treat B12 deficiency, they do not treat MS.
Vitamin D3, however, is now accepted as a key factor in the development of MS. There are several studies of D3 supplementation in MS - in general, it has been reported that D3 supplements reduce the risk of relapse. So it appears that D3 continues to be important after diagnosis too. That’s why so many of us take hefty D3 supplements.
As far as B12 goes, the evidence does not really point to taking a supplement unless you need it, but I take it anyway - just in case.
I haven’t looked into vitamin C and MS so can’t comment on it, but will do a wee bit of research when I get the time.
Hth.
Karen x
Well, looking into vitamin C and MS didn’t take very long after all! Putting “vitamin C AND multiple sclerosis” into the search engine on Web of Knowledge returned a (not so!) massive 32 articles and the only one that was purely about vitamin C and MS was dated 1947!
There’s nothing remotely convincing in those 32 articles about vitamin C being good or bad for MS. To be fair, there hasn’t been a trial to test it, but there’s usually a good reason for that, i.e. nothing to suppose that it would produce an interesting result.
Kx