B12 issues can arise at any age and result in crippling neurological disorders

 You may find yourself among those who must ask whether their difficulties are Alzheimer's or vitamin B12 deficiency. Whether you inherited a disposition toward difficulties with B12 metabolism or it comes to you down some other path, you and your physician may be slow to recognize it.

The blood tests that are part of a typical yearly physical in this country do not include routine examination of vitamin B12/folate, regardless of your age, because it is comparatively rare.  According to the National Institutes of Health,  National Institutes of Health,  analysis of NHANES data from 2007–2018, approximately 3.6% of all adults age 19 and older have vitamin B12 deficiency," though by their definitions, I was one of them in 2019. Very unhappily. And thanks to a discerning and well-informed physician, I escaped the horrors and apparent permanent damage others suffer.

A 2021 review published in the International Journal Of Molecular Sciences gives good summary attention to the neurological symptoms, which typically include a sharp decline in cognitive ability, and cites multi-year studies which show that recovery is in some regards slow in coming. 

Anyone can suffer the reversible dementia, psychotic symptoms and seizures involved. The sixty-one-year-old patient referred to in this article  was said to have "had a remarkable recovery" after vitamin replacement therapy. Limited recovery, however. Delayed diagnosis apparently resulted in "irreversible axonal damage." 

Though the price of delayed diagnosis can be very high, this 2024 study found no clinical consensus regarding diagnosis, treatment and long-term management of B12 deficiency in adults. My endangered genetic kin are very much on their own.

The more religious the sexual predator, the worse he is

An Australian study found exactly that.

Another study found that predators see religious organizations as something like candy stores where the clerks aren't very smart.

Read the entire blog entrty here.

Our pale, blue dot

By Carl Sagan:

Uncle Alf Jackson learned to love to carve

Great Uncle Alf Jackson loved to carve and taught me how.

He learned to love wood carving because the pressure of the carving knife in one hand and of the wood in the other stilled the trembling which had taken from the once skilled hunter his expert marksmanship, had made it impossible for him to ride a horse and had taken away his ability to drive a team of mules in his own fields.

By the time I was old enough to carry on a conversation with him, his sentences often had to be translated by his even more gentle and caring sister Kate. Because he was as patient as I was curious and answered my every question, something few adults could bear, we had long and happy afternoons.

Uncle Alf wanted to spare me the Parkinson's Disease that is a Jackson family inheritance. It has, since before the Civil War, selectively afflicted the men. Taking away the ability of one from every generation to do without reducing the capacity to care. Though barely able to walk and talk, Uncle Alf taught me the family preventative he regretted having ignored.

"Drink coffee," he said. "Eat plenty of fresh fruit and fresh vegetables. Every meal. Every day. And drink coffee. None of the Jackson men who drank coffee got the palsy." Among them, his brother John, whom I knew well.

Yes, I parroted back to him the commonplace injunction to children in 1950s rural Columbus County, North Carolina: "It'll stunt your growth."

"They say it will and they mean well,", he answered, "but it won't."

"How much?" I asked.

Four or five cups, every day. Right on what is now scientifically verified target.

My parents wouldn't allow it and Uncle Alf was no long with us when, dearl in my freshman year at North Carolina State University, I began to follow his advice. Apparently not too late, for at 68 I still have no symptoms of Parkinson's.

Here I am

Here I am