By Colin Michie, FRCPCH FRSPH FLS RNutr
To slow global warming, we should all review our lifestyles. An excellent start would be to regularly eat more plants and less meat. Further, we should examine a growing addiction in our communities to laughing gas, a contributor to global warming.
Taking a radical position, vegans avoid all meat, fish and shellfish. This dramatic approach to reducing greenhouse gases disconnects them from global food chains that deliver a crucial nutrient – Vitamin B12.
This vitamin is made only by single-celled micro-organisms that live in the oceans, or in the bowels of ruminant animals. These include bacteria and archaea. All multicellular plants, fungi and animals require the Vitamin B12 they manufacture.
Cattle, sheep or giraffes, as examples, have large numbers of these critters in their gut. Such ruminants store the vitamin in their livers. Free-living archaea are filtered out of seawater and consumed by shellfish such as oysters or scallops, so these too contain large amounts of the vitamin. Fish are rich in Vitamin B12 too as they eat those filter feeders. The Rastafarian diet contains sufficient Vitamin B12 as it allows these rich marine reserves of nutrients.
Vitamin B12 is one of a small family of cobalamins. These all have an atom of the metal cobalt at their centre. Cobalt is not found in many proteins, unlike iron, zinc or copper. Cobalamins in human cells are used to manufacture DNA, amino acids and the lipids or fats found in nerves.
Large amounts are used in the bone marrow to make the blood cells and in the nervous system to keep nerves functioning and insulated. A shortage of B12 causes a fall in red cells, pernicious anaemia, as well as weakness and problems with mental processing and mood control. Nerve death in the spine can evolve and become permanent if B12 is not replenished.
Humans have evolved a complex system to absorb this vitamin. We produce a trapping molecule in the stomach to hold onto and carry B12 into our circulations. As we become older, this trapping system often becomes inefficient or disrupted.
In the Caribbean, our elderly are the most likely folk to be short of Vitamin B12. Deficiency from deficient diets can be difficult to detect, coming on slowly and often being mistaken as “normal” ageing. If members of your family become weak, fragile and anaemic, remember this vitamin!
The bottom line is we all need about four micrograms of Vitamin B12 daily. Vegans can use fortified plant milks or cereals, or perhaps a specific supplement. For the elderly, we should ensure their diets contain sufficient levels of this vitamin.
During the recent pandemic, increasing numbers of young people developed spinal nerve damage and weakness – signs of Vitamin B12 deficiency. The cause: the abuse of laughing gas. “Nos” or “Nox” has become second only to cannabis as a substance abused by younger Britons. The piles of silvery metal tubes or “whippits” on streets and at festivals attest to its popularity.
Laughing gas has been used safely for over two centuries. In low, controlled doses, mixed with oxygen, it provides pain control, calm and euphoria. It is of great value in dental surgery, childbirth and casualty departments. Low concentrations are used by psychiatrists and to assist new-borns and adults with blood flow problems in the lungs. It can be used to propel foods (as in cream whippits), in semiconductor manufacture and vehicular fuel injection systems.
However, since its discovery in the eighteenth century, laughing gas has been experimented with and abused. Today’s abusers collect nitrous oxide in a balloon, then inhale, or huff, as much gas as possible. This can deprive the brain of sufficient oxygen, while delivering high doses of the gas. Hallucinations, delusions, paranoia, dizziness, and tingling of the limbs are a consequence.
Recurrent abuse of nox blocks the function of Vitamin B12, causing nerve damage. Young nox abusers have been admitted to hospitals with damage to muscle, nerves and the spinal cord – a toxic neuropathy. Treatments are not always successful; and permanent nerve damage is the outcome for some. Transferring the nox from canisters into balloons has caused frostbite injuries too – this is not an innocent addiction.
As a greenhouse gas, laughing gas is about 300 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. It remains unchanged in the atmosphere for over a century. Although it is generated in nature at low levels, it is obviously important to reduce atmospheric nitrous oxide wherever possible and to make every effort to curb its abuse.
Anaesthetists have designed elaborate strategies to collect nitrous oxide breathed out in hospitals; factories recycle it. Farmers are legislated to reduce nitrous oxide produced by animal wastes in their soils. So whether it is caring for your family, community or our climate, it is worth checking that we have a sufficiency of Vitamin B12, undisturbed by any nox addictions.
Further reading: “The Vegan Diet”, by the National Healthcare Service (UK); “What every vegan should know about B12”, by the Vegan Society.
