A British surgeon is claiming that his daughter's tragic suicide was triggered by a vitamin deficiency linked to her vegan diet, which he believes contributed to her severe mental health struggles.
Consultant orthopaedic surgeon Julian Owen experienced unimaginable loss in 2019 when his 21-year-old daughter, Georgina, took her own life after battling worsening psychological issues. He now argues that a lack of essential nutrients in her diet played a critical role in her decline.
The Hidden Epidemic Of Vitamin B12 Deficiency
Since Georgina's passing, Owen has been actively advocating for increased awareness of what he calls a "hidden epidemic" of severe mental and physical illnesses linked to a critical deficiency of vitamin B12. He's been sharing this information with fellow doctors and the general public.
Owen maintains that vitamin B12 deficiency can significantly increase the risk of severe cognitive disorders like depression, psychosis, and dementia. Additionally, he asserts that it can lead to diseases such as multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's disease. Scientific research supports his claims.
However, the growing popularity of plant-based diets could contribute to a rise in B12 deficiency. A 2023 report indicated that 4.2 million children in the UK are living below the poverty line. Right To Food has organised a series of marches nationwide to raise awareness about the escalating rate of food insecurity in the UK.
Current statistics from NICE (the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) reveal that at least 3 percent of 20-39-year-olds in the UK – approximately 4.5 million people – are deficient in vitamin B12. This figure climbs to 6 percent among individuals over 60 and exceeds 20 percent in those over 85.
While vitamin B12 deficiency often arises in older individuals due to a decline in the digestive system's ability to absorb the vitamin from food, it's primarily associated with dietary factors in younger people.
Owen, a consultant orthopaedic surgeon at Cambridge University Hospitals Trust, believes that in Georgina's case, her strict vegan diet of over three years before she died in 2019 contributed to her vitamin B12 deficiency. "Georgina only sporadically took B12 supplements," says Owen.
The Impact On Mental And Physical Health
"Sadly, she became psychotic and took her own life, suffering an acute delusional episode." This aligns with a 2023 case involving a Russian social media influencer, Zhanna Samsonova, who previously promoted a vegan diet and lifestyle and was reported to have died of starvation.
A coroner's court has previously heard expert testimony stating that vitamin B12 deficiency has been linked to psychiatric symptoms such as depression, apathy, irritability, dementia, delirium, and hallucinations.
Owen states that experts at the Quadram Institute in Norwich are analysing tissue and blood samples collected from Georgina's organs. This Centre for Food and Health Research is affiliated with the University of East Anglia and the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Trust.
The goal is to determine whether Georgina was deficient in vitamin B12. It is worth mentioning that Georgina had no previous experience with psychotic episodes.
A 2022 report published in Vitamins & Hormones, authored by clinicians at the Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust and Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust, warns that vitamin B12 deficiency "can have distressing neuropsychiatric symptoms. It can have an etiological role in clinical presentations like depression, anxiety, psychosis, dementia, and delirium, requiring screening of at-risk populations."
The Vegan Society strongly recommends that vegans consume B12 vitamin supplements or include foods fortified with the vitamin, like breakfast cereals, in their daily diet. It warns: "If for any reason you choose not to use fortified foods or supplements, you should recognise that you are carrying out a dangerous experiment – one that many have tried before with consistently low levels of success."
The NHS indicates that symptoms of B12-deficiency anaemia can encompass extreme fatigue and psychological issues ranging from mild depression or anxiety to confusion and dementia. Owen's research into the risks associated with B12 deficiency has deeply concerned him, leading him to co-found cluB-12, a group of experts comprising hospital clinicians and medical academics.
They aim to increase awareness of the problem, especially among doctors, as nutrition is often inadequately addressed in medical training. He has also co-written articles on B12 in medical journals.
A paper published in the BMJ last November elucidates vitamin B12's role in regulating the nervous system and producing red blood cells, explaining why anaemia is a frequent symptom of its deficiency. The article also highlights B12's ability to assist our cells in energy production (another common deficiency symptom), protect brain cells, and reduce inflammation in the body.
In a paper published last year in the journal Anaesthesia, Owen and his co-authors cautioned that nitrous oxide, commonly used in anaesthetics in emergency departments and dental surgeries but also known as the recreational drug "hippy crack," can deplete the body's B12 levels and impair the enzymes involved in processing nutrients into B12.
The Need For Better Testing
Based on this, they advocated for the NHS to gradually eliminate the use of nitrous oxide whenever feasible, resorting to its use in anaesthetics only on a case-by-case basis when no other options are available. Owen informed Good Health that a significant issue with B12 deficiency is its potential to evade detection by current testing methods.
"In some patients who have deficiency issues, the level of B12 in their blood appears normal in tests. In most cases, the B12 they have in their bloodstream no longer functions properly [called functional deficiency]. But the tests can't pick that up. The current NHS blood test for B12 only picks up about one in three cases of functional deficiency," he says.
Owen suggests that commercially available home blood tests that rely on homocysteine levels to indicate B12 levels can be dangerously inaccurate. Homocysteine is an amino acid, a fundamental component of proteins.
Vitamin B12 plays a role in breaking down homocysteine within the body. Therefore, Owen argues that if a home homocysteine test reveals elevated levels in the body, it may signal a B12 deficiency. "However, there are worries about interpreting homocysteine tests," he says.
"When they show a problem, as in high homocysteine, it may be due to a low level of some B-vitamin other than B12. Alternatively, a bad homocysteine score could indicate another problem altogether – so it does not mean that by improving your homocysteine level through B12 supplementation that you are solving the problem," Owen explains.
In the BMJ paper, he and his co-author, Bruce Wolffenbuttel, a professor of endocrinology and metabolism at Groningen University in the Netherlands, stated that there is no universally accepted "gold standard" test for diagnosing B12 deficiency.
Instead of relying solely on tests, they advised doctors to consider the overall clinical picture and assess for symptoms such as anaemia, cognitive problems, insomnia, headaches (especially migraine), mood swings, depression, anxiety, and psychosis.
Additional potential indicators of B12 deficiency include tingling sensations, tinnitus, muscle weakness, and incontinence. Owen and Professor Wolffenbuttel noted that B12 injections might be more effective in severe cases than oral supplements.
The NHS recommends that adults consume approximately 1.5 micrograms of vitamin B12 daily. While acknowledging that vegans may not obtain sufficient B12 through diet alone, Helen Bond, a dietitian and spokesperson for the British Dietetic Association, emphasises that most people should be able to meet their B12 needs through a balanced and healthy diet.
"This is definitely a case of an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure with B12," she told the Mail. "If your diet is pretty balanced, with a wide intake of natural foods including meat, dairy and fish, you should be able to get your recommended intake of B12."
However, she warns: "B12 has come to the forefront because it is derived from animal produce, so the rise of plant-based diets has put more people at risk of deficiency if they aren't incorporating bits of meat, dairy and eggs in their regular food intake."
"The risk is particularly high for strict vegans – up to 2 per cent of the population – and vegetarians who avoid eggs and dairy. These people should definitely top up with a B12 supplement. On top of this, eating Marmite is a good idea, if you enjoy it, as is eating any breakfast cereals fortified with this vitamin."
Bond emphasises a crucial point regarding multivitamin pills: "If you take B12 as a supplement, it should be a supplement alone, rather than incorporated in a multivitamin." The high concentrations of chemical vitamin C found in multivitamin pills can interfere with the absorption of vitamin B12. This issue does not arise when consuming vitamin C from natural sources like fruits.
