B12 supplements and lung cancer concerns

grantreardon94

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Hello all :)

I'm interested in transitioning from vegetarianism to veganism but I'n having some setbacks because of a study that found links between B12 supplementation and lung cancer, as a former smoker this does make me hesitant and I was just wondering if anyone was familiar with the study and could provide some clarification on its accuracy?

Thank you :)

Grant
 
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Hey Grant, welcome to the forum!

Do you have a link to this study, or the article referencing it? I'd like to look into before I comment, and for educational purposes.

I do know there are some elements of supplementation that can be unhealthy in excess, but I have never heard of it for B12 supplementation. Usually when there's an issue, its due to supplementation giving you too much of something, and that causing issues. A common one is Zinc. I'd also like to see if it's a volume of supplementation, or supplementation in general.

Or if its just a bunkum study.
 
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Hey Grant, welcome to the forum!

Do you have a link to this study, or the article referencing it? I'd like to look into before I comment, and for educational purposes.

I do know there are some elements of supplementation that can be unhealthy in excess, but I have never heard of it for B12 supplementation. Usually when there's an issue, its due to supplementation giving you too much of something, and that causing issues. A common one is Zinc. I'd also like to see if it's a volume of supplementation, or supplementation in general.

Or if its just a bunkum study.
Hi Checkpeas - Google it (I had to - "lung cancer" + "b12") - there was a study that was done a couple years ago. It involved all smokers who were either supplementing with b12 or not. I didn't read the actual study, just a couple of brief mentions of it, so I don't really know enough about it to comment on it.
 
I think this is likely excessive B 12. If most or all of the men were meat eaters AND were taking mega-doses of B12 for long periods of time, that's quite different than having normal B12 levels as a vegan from weekly supplementation or getting a shot every few months.

Correlation doesn't equal causation, but I noticed the words "energy" attached to this study, which made me wonder if the source of B12 were things like Red Bulls and Rock Star energy drinks, or something of that sort, and the real problem is the concentrated caffeine.

I'm just speculating, but I've never seen any study linking vegans to greater risk of any kind of cancer. Actually we have a reduced risk of certain kinds of cancer.

Also, I think it's worse to know you could definitely get nerve damage, partial paralysis or dementia from never supplementing with B12 versus thinking about that one study of meat eating smokers who took B12 a lot and got lung cancer.

I'm thinking it was the cigarettes. That's just me, though.
 
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Oh, also, this was in the discussion "The study found no association between supplementation and increased risk in either former smokers or recent smokers."

So you're safe.
 
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The thing I did see was something saying that they defined the "smokers" has having smoked in the last 10 years. That I found to be an interesting and possibly concerning point. I also searched for it on NutritionFacts - nothing about it - which I sort of find surprising, tbh...
 
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The thing I did see was something saying that they defined the "smokers" has having smoked in the last 10 years. That I found to be an interesting and possibly concerning point. I also searched for it on NutritionFacts - nothing about it - which I sort of find surprising, tbh...

The version I read said it only concerned current smokers, not former smokers or even recent smokers, their hypothesis being that something about the carbon formation in B supplements affecting pre-cancerous cells directly in contact with a presently incoming carcinogen i.e. the cigarette smoke. Like something about the B vitamins was speeding up the process of allowing the pre-cancer cells to react to the cancer-causing agent.

B vitamins have an inherent role in cell metabolism, so apparently they were metabolizing the pre-cancer cells and not just healthy cells.

That's what I got out of it. Meaning nothing to worry about if not smoking anymore.