Masking Effect of Folic Acid
The National Institutes of Health has found that "Large amounts of folic acid can mask the damaging effects of vitamin B12 deficiency by correcting the megaloblastic anemia caused by vitamin B12 deficiency without correcting the neurological damage that also occurs", there are also indications that "high serum folate levels might not only mask vitamin B12 deficiency, but could also exacerbate the anemia and worsen the cognitive symptoms associated with vitamin B12 deficiency". Due to the fact that in the United States legislation has required enriched flour to contain folic acid to reduce cases of fetal neural-tube defects, consumers may be ingesting more than they realize. To counter the masking effect of B12 deficiency the NIH recommends "folic acid intake from fortified food and supplements should not exceed 1,000 mcg daily in healthy adults." Most importantly, B12 deficiency needs to be treated with B12 repletion. Limiting folic acid will not counter the irrevocable neurological damage that is caused by untreated B12 deficiency.
Read more about this topic: Vitamin B12 Deficiency
Famous quotes containing the words masking and/or effect:
“We were that generation called silent, but we were silent neither, as some thought, because we shared the periods official optimism nor, as others thought, because we feared its official repression. We were silent because the exhilaration of social action seemed to many of us just one more way of escaping the personal, of masking for a while that dread of the meaningless which was mans fate.”
—Joan Didion (b. 1935)
“I have witnessed, and greatly enjoyed, the first act of everything which Wagner created, but the effect on me has always been so powerful that one act was quite sufficient; whenever I have witnessed two acts I have gone away physically exhausted; and whenever I have ventured an entire opera the result has been the next thing to suicide.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (18351910)