Hello, I’m really hoping someone can provide some insight. 32F hoping to become pregnant soon. I recently got blood work done and everything looked good except by B12 came out high 848 pmol/L. I read the Oxford study that said high levels of b12 (and/or folate) can cause greater risk for autism.
I’m seeing a doctor tomorrow to get more insight and potentially test my folate levels but hoping anyone on this channel can tell me what I should do.
Some questions I have:
[ ] Vitamins I take - baby2me prenatal, Magnesium, vitamin d
[ ] supplements I take - spirulina and barley grass, maca, Ashtagwa
[ ] should I dis-continue taking prenatal? And focus on getting my vitamins through a nutrition dense diet?
[ ] more importantly, Should we still try to have a baby with such high b12 levels?
@j87 Physician here. That’s not that high. Many labs have their upper limit of normal at 950. I wouldn’t spend another second worrying about it. I’m not even sure there was a good indication to test your B12 level unless you have symptoms of B12 deficiency.
Please don’t stop your prenatal — the folate is really important.
@breinicke Thank you for responding it’s nice to hear from a physician. My concern is why even have a range, If 950pmol/l is normal, I’m not sure why my blood work said a range of 132-632 was considered normal.
Also What if I just get folate from a nutrient dense diet? I eat greens pretty much every day. Would I even need to take folate?
@j87 Different labs have different reference ranges.
It’s a bit hard to get 400 mcg of folate by diet alone, which is why we recommend supplements. Neural tube defects are devastating. Would recommend erring towards more folate through a pill rather than potentially being short with your diet.
@breinicke Spinach is a great source of folate. On average, there is about 58 mcg of folate in a cup of cooked spinach. To get approximately 400 mcg of folate, you would need to consume about 7 cups of cooked spinach. I wouldn’t soley rely on spinach but if I eat the correct amounts of folic foods wouldn’t I meet my requirments?
@j87 Theoretically yes. But like you said above, it’s a lot of greens to eat to meet that requirement. I would not recommend trying to meet your folate requirement from your diet alone. You could take a folate-only pill if you don’t need/want all the other vitamins in a prenatal.
@daviddass1 Was the measurement in pmol/l? I consulted a doctor yesterday who suggested that my elevated levels might be linked to my prenatal supplement intake. I was also consuming barley green grass, spirulina, and maca powder, all of which can contain B12. For the next three weeks, I plan to discontinue all supplements except for Nature Made's folic acid, focus on a balanced diet, and then retest my B12 levels. If they decrease, it will likely indicate that the supplements were the cause, and I'll resume a regular prenatal regimen.
@j87 Ahh good catch. Mine says pg/ml. That sounds like a fair plan!!! From my understanding b12 is also water soluble so it doesn’t stick around too long in the body and is usually safe! Good luck!!
Just to reframe a bit here -- these kinds of studies can generally say that (very) high levels of maternal blood folate are associated with an increased risk of autism spectrum disorders in children, but not that high levels are causative. There could very easily be genetic influences that result both in higher-than-normal folate levels and increased ASD risk. And when these studies talk about risk, they are generally talking about relative risk (the risk of something compared with the background level of risk). Even if the risk of developing ASD is doubled given [some condition], the overwhelming majority of children in that category will not develop ASD.
This is an area of emerging science, and I would be very hesitant to change behavior based on a single study or even a few studies.
@j87 As a fellow mum - who has autism myself - I wouldn't worry so much firstly, autism is very broad spectrum and we are all still beautiful people - be happy you'd be blessed with a wonderful bundle of joy either way.
Secondly, that's in the normal range (as I suffer levels going up and down with my iron I've had to unfortunately learn the ranges off by heart unwillingly by now lol) though I know that's the normal for America, anywho. Here in Australia our normal is up to 650. Not sure why the difference, but I always then in my head just chucked the medium to 775
