Essential Bodyworks

🩸 What is Pernicious Anaemia?

Pernicious Anaemia (PA) is an autoimmune disease that prevents the body from absorbing vitamin B12—a vital nutrient needed for healthy red blood cells, nerve function, and brain health.

For over a century, doctors and scientists struggled to understand why patients were dying from what was once a fatal condition. It wasn’t until the 1920s that replacement B12 therapy was discovered, eventually leading to the availability of effective treatment.

🔬 How does PA affect the body?

✅ The stomach normally produces Intrinsic Factor, a protein essential for absorbing vitamin B12.
❌ In PA, the immune system attacks Intrinsic Factor and the stomach lining, making B12 absorption impossible.
⚠️ Without enough B12, red blood cells become misshapen and enlarged, leading to severe fatigue, brain fog, nerve damage, and long-term complications.
🚨 Why is early diagnosis crucial?
🔹 Many cases of PA go undiagnosed or misdiagnosed because symptoms mimic other conditions.
🔹 Some doctors only check B12 levels if anaemia is present, but PA can cause neurological symptoms long before anaemia develops.
🔹 Testing limitations mean that even those with PA might not test positive for the standard Intrinsic Factor Antibody test.

💉 The Lifesaving Treatment
PA can’t be cured, but it can be managed with lifelong B12 replacement therapy (usually injections). However, many patients still struggle to get the right diagnosis and proper treatment. Book an appointment Essential Bodyworks

💡 Want to learn more?
Our webinars cover everything from symptoms to diagnosis and ongoing care—perfect for patients, carers, and professionals.

Explore our webinar recordings and resources in the PAS shop: https://shop.pernicious-anaemia-society.org/

Support our charity by becoming a member or donating, and follow our page for more insights and useful information about PA!

Barbara O’Neill is under fire again 😡

I’m so tired of watching people like Barbara O’Neill get attacked for teaching natural health!

The Guardian has published yet another article criticizing Barbara, and frankly, I’m pi**ed!

When did encouraging people to eat whole foods, question ingredients, and take responsibility for their health become controversial?

Look at our grocery store shelves! They’re packed with ultra-processed foods, refined sugars, artificial additives, and products designed for shelf life instead of nourishment. Some are purposefully included to make you addicted to them and crave them.

Meanwhile, metabolic dysfunction, insulin resistance, obesity, chronic disease and cancers are everywhere!

We should be encouraging people to ask MORE questions, not fewer! (Like the C-VID shot)

People deserve access to information, the freedom to think critically, and the ability to make informed decisions about their own health.

I stand with Barbara O’Neill! 🌹

🔗 Link to the ridiculous article in comments and I’ve also created a petition. Feel free to fill it out and I’ll share it with her team.

💙 Just a quick heads up…

Our lovely clinic team are being kept very busy thanks to the continued support of our amazing clients!

As we look ahead towards the end of the year, our diaries are already starting to fill up, with some appointment times now 4–6 weeks in advance.

If you know you’re going to need an appointment, please do have a look online and book ahead where you can — especially if you have a preferred day, time or therapist.

We’ll always do our best to accommodate you, but last-minute availability is becoming increasingly limited.

Thank you, as always, for keeping us so busy and for your continued support. 🙏🏽

The Essential Bodyworks Team 💙💙💙

Could It Be B12? An Epidemic of Misdiagnoses.
By Sally M. Pacholok, RN, BSN and
Jeffrey J. Stuart, DO
Linden Publishing, 2005 (1st ed.)
Sometimes it is the person who has suffered from a disease who is the most capable of providing accurate information, creating widespread awareness, and advocating for proper testing and treatment of others afflicted with the same condition. Sally Pacholok, RN, is one such individual. As a young nursing graduate who essentially diagnosed herself with vitamin B12 deficiency and pernicious anemia, Pacholok was astonished to discover a significant percentage of the patients she cared for in her practice exhibited unrecognized or misdiagnosed symptoms of B12 deficiency. Most of these patients were suffering from debilitating conditions that were not responding to the medications their doctors had prescribed for their incorrect diagnoses. Making matters worse, when Pacholok suggested that these patients’ B12 status be checked, most doctors were scornful or dismissive, in effect condemning many patients to steadily worsening health or even death.
Over the course of more than twenty-five years in health care, Pacholok has used her expertise to accurately spot the multitude of vitamin B12 deficiency symptoms and to advocate for proper diagnoses and care protocols for thousands of patients. Fueled also by moral outrage at years of medical negligence surrounding this disorder, she and Dr. Jeffrey Stuart, her husband and co-author, have written Could It Be B12? in order to increase awareness among both health care consumers and medical professionals of the common, often disguised, and potentially deadly markers of B12 deficiency. By arming consumers with accurate information they aim to replace current medical apathy with routine testing for B12. The information, advice, and guidance Pacholok and Stuart have collected in their book could very well prevent unnecessary suffering and even save the lives of many readers and their family members.
Vitamin B12 deficiency affects all age groups, but is often more common in those aged sixty and older; from 10-15 percent in this group are estimated to be deficient in the vitamin. Nearly forty percent of hospitalized elderly patients have low B12 levels, and fifty percent of long-term vegetarians and vegans are deficient. The prevalence of the condition is important to understand, since B12 deficiency manifests in a multitude of symptoms—some subtle, some drastic—and these symptoms are most often presumed by medical practitioners to belong to other disease states. The time lost on such misdiagnoses poses a real threat to the sufferer, since a B12 deficiency, if caught in time, is one of the simplest to remedy. Yet when valuable months or years are lost due to misdiagnosis, much of the damage caused by the deficiency may become permanent.
The many body systems affected by vitamin B12 deficiency underscore this vitamin’s importance in their proper functioning. This is also the reason that when not understood, the deficiency of the vitamin appears to mimic symptoms of seriously debilitating degenerative diseases. The neurological system is perhaps most dramatically affected, presenting signs such as pain, numbness, weakness, “pins and needles” sensations, imbalance, confusion, depression, dementia, and incontinence. These symptoms are often misdiagnosed as multiple sclerosis, fibromyalgia, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, for example.
Vascular symptoms of vitamin B12 deficiency mimic heart disease. Genitourinary system aberrations are mistaken for precancerous conditions, which can lead to unnecessary hysterectomies, and blood anomalies are mistaken for iron-deficient anemia. The immune and gastrointestinal systems also are affected by debilitating symptoms that will only worsen as long as the
underlying vitamin B12 deficiency continues to be unaddressed. If any of these conditions is caught early, correctly diagnosed and treated with vitamin B12 supplementation, it is reversible, but many symptoms, especially neurological problems such as paralysis, dementia and brain damage in children, will become permanent without timely B12 supplementation.
Vitamin B12 is a fascinating nutrient, and its metabolism in the body is dependent upon a finely tuned series of events, any one of which, unfortunately, might all too easily fail. While we need only very small amounts every day, our bodies may not absorb or metabolize the vitamin even if we consume adequate quantities. The body’s metabolic process for this nutrient is far more complex than for other vitamins. In short, the B12 in our food is bound to protein, and requires the properly acidic environment of the stomach to free the vitamin. This means our stomachs must produce adequate amounts of both the enzyme pepsin and hydrochloric acid, as well as a protein called the intrinsic factor. The intrinsic factor and the freed B12 meet up in the small intestine where, with the help of pancreatic enzymes, they are linked together for transport to the last portion of the small intestine, the ileum. The healthy ileum contains receptors that pick up the linked B12-intrinsic factor and carry them into the bloodstream. A protein in the blood then carries the B12 to cells for use and any excess to the liver for storage.
While elegant, this carefully orchestrated process can go wrong at any juncture. The most common complication occurs right at the beginning with not enough stomach acid to free the B12 from its protein matrix. Many people past fifty suffer from atrophic gastritis—an inflammation of the walls of the stomach with subsequent low hydrochloric acid production. Add the widespread use of antacids in that age group to this condition and B12 absorption is prevented at the very first stage of digestion, regardless of how much is consumed in food. Older individuals have fewer of the stomach cells that produce intrinsic factor as well.
Gastrointestinal disorders such as Crohn’s disease, celiac disease, enteritis and any inflammatory process will interfere with B12 absorption, even if it is correctly broken down by the body. Toxins such as mercury will interfere with the ability of B12 to cross the blood-brain barrier. Alcohol and the anesthetic nitrous oxide (often used in dental surgery) will inactivate B12; birth control pills deplete the vitamin in the body. A variety of inborn metabolic errors can also prevent normal absorption. The most well known aberration is pernicious anemia, although it is not the most common problem. Numerous medications inhibit the absorption of B12, including the many commonly prescribed drugs for heartburn, GERD and ulcers, as well as medications for diabetes, gout, some antibiotics and diuretics, the cholesterol drug Questran, and others. These drugs are commonly prescribed to the aging population, along with fistfuls of other medications that can mask the signs of B12 deficiency while worsening its effects, such as anti-depressants, drugs for insomnia, fatigue, numbness and tingling in extremities, incontinence, and tremors. Especially because of these drug interactions the aging population is at great risk for B12 deficiency. Most medical practitioners, however, will ascribe their deteriorating conditions to the ravages of age, or the complications and “natural progression” of their wrongly diagnosed diseases.
Those with eating disorders such as bulimia and anorexia are at great risk for B12 deficiency, as are vegetarians and vegans. Most chilling is the deadly risk vegetarian and vegan mothers take by not supplementing with B12 while pregnant and breastfeeding their infants. The body will not mobilize stored B12 in the mother for the benefit of the fetus or newborn; B12 must be coming in regularly through the diet for it to reach the child. Pacholok points to very recent research that indicates the B12 that is available in spirulina and tempeh is in fact an analogue of the true B12, that blocks the absorption of true B12 and further deepens its deficiency in those vainly seeking the nutrient from these sources.
Vitamin B12 is absolutely vital for young, developing brains, and early deficits can have devastating, lifelong effects for children. Pacholok cites a 1985 study in which a group of infants of vegans was compared to infants who consumed meat and dairy foods. Researchers detected “subtle but significant impairments in the psychomotor functioning of the vegan children.” When the parents of these children were told of the findings, many of them switched their children to diets containing milk, eggs and sometimes meat. On average, the children began eating these foods at age six. These children were tested again in adolescence, and many were still found to be B12 deficient even after years of eating animal foods. The researchers’ report is sobering: “We found a significant association between [B12] status and performance on tests measuring fluid intelligence, spatial ability, and short term memory.” The impairment in fluid intelligence is particularly disturbing, “because it involves reasoning, the capacity to solve complex problems, abstract thinking ability and the ability to learn. Any defect in this area may have far-reaching consequences for individual functioning.” Of course one can only imagine how many of these children have also been diagnosed and drugged for ADD, ADHD, and autism spectrum disorders.
“Most pediatric cases involving neurological damage due to acquired B12 deficiency,” Pacholok notes, “involve children eating vegan, vegetarian, or macrobiotic diets.” Strangely, however, Pacholok generally lauds the decision of parents and even children themselves who choose these diets. “None of this is a criticism of meat-free diets, which—because they are low in fat, high in phytochemicals and antioxidants, and generally low in artificial colorings and additives—tend to be very healthful.” Apart from the fact that children on such diets will have a hard time getting much use from phytochemicals due to their immature digestive systems, it is apparently nearly impossible for those trained in conventional medicine to even consider challenging the establishment credo that animal fat is the enemy. Instead of advice regarding diet, Pacholok advocates for B12 supplementation—primarily via injection to sidestep the problems associated with the GI tract entirely—as she clearly does not believe diet to be a trustworthy avenue for many, if not most, people. In a population widely afflicted by multiple gut disorders, chronic over-medication, and the preponderance of bad, fad, or simply mad diets, she could be right.
Aside from this modest gripe, I am grateful to Pacholok and Stuart for preparing such a thorough and useful guide to the understanding of vitamin B12 deficiency. Their detailed advice for the most accurate means to test for the deficiency will permit anyone to know how to request, or more likely, insist that the doctor takes their condition seriously and follows through responsibly. This is one of those books that can empower those without medical training but who must advocate for themselves or family members when navigating an often apathetic medical system. For those who suffer from a hidden B12 deficiency, it could be a lifesaver.

🌙 NEW IN CLINIC | Sleep Patches 🌙

Looking for a little extra support with your nighttime routine?

Our new TOLEVITA Sleep Patches are designed to be worn as part of your evening wind-down routine, combining lavender, melatonin and chamomile in a simple, discreet patch.

💜 Lavender • Melatonin • Chamomile
🌙 Designed for your nighttime routine
✨ Easy and discreet to use
🛏️ 36 patches per box

Perfect for those evenings when you want to switch off, slow things down and create a calmer bedtime routine.

Now available to purchase at Essential Bodyworks. 💙

Please follow the manufacturer's directions and check suitability before use.

Sharing this event organised by lovely Helena Cornes and featuring me! Hope you can join us. Bookings taken by Helena
https://bookwhen.com/gatheryoga