Rebecca FelicianoNutrition 425Project TwoVitamin B12 Deficiency and Its Effects on the ElderlyVitamin B12 deficiency, or cobalamin deficiency, occurs frequently among older people. Vitamin B12 is a nutrient that helps keep the body's nerves and blood cells healthy and helps make DNA, the genetic material, in all cells. Vitamin B12 also helps prevent a type of anemia called megaloblastic anemia that makes people tired and weak. Often the symptoms of this deficiency are undetectable because the signs are subtle. This creates several challenges, including identifying individuals at risk of deficiency and providing those individuals with the correct treatment. Throughout the article I will address issues such as causes and assessments, treatments and procedures, and dietary impacts of vitamin B12 deficiencies using several studies related to vitamin B12 deficiency in older adults. The purpose of this article is to determine what effect vitamin B12 deficiency has on older adults and what, if any, can be a preventative for such a deficiency. people: The Banbury B12 Study,” participants aged 75 and older were examined to find any associations between cognitive impairment, depression and neuropathy within blood measurements of vitamin B12. Individuals who are deficient do not always have the common symptoms which might include anemia or neuropathy. Instead, more subtle symptoms may arise. Individuals may feel tired and have cognitive impairment but since these are also symptoms of old age, these symptoms may go unnoticed a total of 1,000 individuals, each from the older community, and did not measure vitamin B12 or cobalamin levels. Each study presented in this particular article demonstrated that there were different stages in the cause of acquiring the deficiency and in the stage of intake exclusively through food, the cause of the deficiency was strict vegetarianism without vitamin supplements. The findings similarly show that in every study in this article, the causes were evident such as malabsorption, nutritional deficiency and anemia. However, in contrast, studies did not show that heredity was involved in elderly patients and vitamin B12 deficiency. Cobalamin deficiency appears to be more common among patients suffering from several chronic neurological conditions such as dementia, Alzheimer's disease, stroke, depression and Parkinson's disease. illness. However, it is unclear whether these are causal relationships with the development of vitamin B deficiency12.