Vitamin B12 facts for kids

The cobalamin molecule. It stays in your liver for a long time!

Methylcobalamin is one type of vitamin B₁₂. It forms cool red crystals!

Vitamin B₁₂, also known as cobalamin, is a super important vitamin. It helps your brain and nervous system work well. It also helps your body make healthy blood. Vitamin B₁₂ is one of eight different B vitamins.

Every cell in your body needs B₁₂ to work properly. It helps make DNA, which is like the instruction manual for your cells. It also helps your body use fats and proteins.

What is Vitamin B12?

Vitamin B₁₂ is a special group of compounds. They all act like vitamins in your body. This vitamin is the largest and most complex vitamin we know! It's unique because it contains a rare element called cobalt. This cobalt sits right in the middle of a ring-shaped structure called a corrin ring.

Your body can change the B₁₂ you get from food into the exact forms it needs to use.

Where Does Vitamin B12 Come From?

Here's a cool fact: Fungi, plants, and animals (including humans) cannot make vitamin B₁₂ themselves! Only tiny living things like bacteria and archaea have the special tools (called enzymes) to create it.

So, how do we get it? Many foods naturally have B₁₂ because of a special partnership with bacteria. For example, some bacteria live in the guts of plant-eating animals (herbivores). These bacteria make B₁₂. When meat-eating animals (carnivores) eat herbivores, they get the B₁₂. Plants and algae can also get it from bacteria they live with. So, no matter what, animals get vitamin B₁₂ from bacteria!

Because only bacteria can make it, vitamin B₁₂ is produced for medicines and supplements using a special process called bacterial fermentation.

Why is Vitamin B12 Important?

Scientists first found vitamin B₁₂ because it was linked to a condition called pernicious anemia. This is a type of autoimmune disease where your body has trouble absorbing B₁₂. To absorb B₁₂, your stomach needs to make something called an "intrinsic factor." If you don't have enough of this factor, your body can't take in the B₁₂, leading to a vitamin B12 deficiency. Since then, doctors have found many other reasons why people might not have enough vitamin B₁₂.

Images for kids

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  Metabolism of folic acid. Vitamin B12 helps with this process!

See also

In Spanish: Vitamina B12 para niños