Although vitamin injections have benefits, individuals can achieve successful weight loss without the use of vitamin injections. Vitamin injections are a common, but not a mandatory, part of the Lindora program.
There are two important questions to ask about vitamin B injections. Do they help in weight loss or in any other way? And if the answer to the first question is yes, then: Are injections somehow better than oral vitamins? The quick answers are “definitely” and “not in the same way you might expect,” respectively.
B vitamins do have value when taken as supplements. While dieting, they help by increasing the absorption and use of protein by muscle cells. This may be more apparent in high protein diets or those resulting in rapid weight loss. When people lose weight, no matter whether they lose by running marathons, starving, or surgery, they lose mostly fat, but some muscle. The B vitamins, especially B6, may help minimize the muscle loss. Eating a high protein diet increases your need for B6.
Rats fed a 70 percent protein diet needed twice the amount of B6 as rats getting only 20 percent of their food from protein. Without the extra B6, they didn’t grow optimally and their lean tissues were deficient in B6. (1)
Vitamin B12 has recently been recognized as a common deficiency in the U.S. A deficiency of B12 can cause anemia, dementia, and nerve damage. Thirty-nine percent of 3,000 people in one study had low normal levels and 17 percent were low enough to cause symptoms of deficiency and 9 percent were significantly deficient. Individuals aged 26-49 years were similar to those 65-83-years of age.
As to whether injections help, although physicians have been taught for years that some causes of vitamin B deficiency can only be treated by injectable vitamin B, many studies have proven that oral vitamin B works just as well. However, as a “test” of their effectiveness in weight loss, we opened a clinic and did not offer injections. The results were very disappointing so, after just a couple of months, we began using them as we do in the other clinics. Results improved and we’ve continued them since. At first blush, it may appear that the injections made the difference. But in looking over the habit pattern between those who initially did “worse,” we realized that they made much fewer visits to the clinic. The difference between those coming in often vs. those coming in infrequently became even more apparent when conducting a study on the association of frequency (how often) and duration (how long) of visits with weight loss. Since people must come in to the clinic to receive injections, they visit more often, and thus lose more weight. It’s not the injection, then, but the visit that probably predicts better results.
This observation does not always hold true. We have many people doing the program long-distance who have lost weight and maintained weight loss better than those physically coming in to a clinic. We’ve also followed people who come in daily but do terribly, though that is fortunately the rare exception. Two papers addressing these issues are now in the works–one on the importance of frequent and continued clinic visits on weight loss and another on the placebo effects of injectable vitamins. These are important considerations which need to be addressed by physicians and professionals in nutrition, health, and medicine.
(1) J Nutr Sci & Vitaminology 1998;44:37-45