This solo episode reframes age-related brain shrinkage not as an inevitable consequence of aging, but as a symptom of long-term nutritional deficiency, specifically B12 deficiency. Listeners learn that lab reference ranges for B12 are dangerously misleading because they are built from averages of an already-deficient, largely plant-based population. A 2008 Oxford study and a striking 1997 case report of a 6-month-old with a brain resembling that of an 80-year-old Alzheimer's patient are used to illustrate how profoundly B12 levels affect brain structure and how reversible the damage can be with proper supplementation.
Beyond B12, Dr. Anthony Chaffee argues that MS lesion recovery and neurological healing broadly depend on a full constellation of animal-derived nutrients including vitamin D3, DHA, EPA, choline, creatine, carnitine, and dietary cholesterol, since the brain itself is largely composed of cholesterol. The case of the infant whose brain recovered to a 40-year-old appearance rather than an age-appropriate 1-year-old appearance after B12 replacement alone suggests that B12 is only one piece of a larger nutritional puzzle that a carnivore-style diet addresses comprehensively.
Key Takeaways
- B12 levels below 500 picomoles per liter (roughly 650 picograms per milliliter) can cause active demyelination of nerve axons, meaning the standard lab 'normal' range starting at 150 picograms per milliliter is far too low to prevent neurological damage
- Losing 0.5% to 1% of brain volume per year due to B12 deficiency accumulates to severe, visible brain atrophy over 30 to 40 years, meaning what clinicians call 'normal age-related atrophy' may actually be decades of chronic malnutrition
- Remyelination in conditions like MS requires B12 levels high enough to support new cell growth. Staying within a 'normal' deficient reference range makes nerve repair biologically impossible, so optimizing B12 well above standard lab minimums is a prerequisite for recovery
- B12 supplementation alone is insufficient for full neurological restoration. Animal-sourced nutrients including vitamin D3, DHA, EPA, choline, creatine, carnitine, and dietary cholesterol are all required to rebuild a brain, since cholesterol is a primary structural component of brain tissue
- B12 Deficiency Causes Brain Demyelination and Shrinkage
- Why Brains Shrink With Age: B12 Deficiency vs Normal Aging
- MS Recovery and Remyelination Through Proper Nutrition
- Brain Scan Evidence: 6-Month-Old Baby With B12 Deficiency Looks Like 80-Year-Old Brain
- Beyond B12: Cholesterol, Vitamin D, and Nutrients Needed for Brain Development
This is an auto-generated transcript from YouTube and may contain errors or inaccuracies.
So, and we we know from various studies that if your B12 is below 500 picomoles per liter, which is roughly 650 picograms per milliliter in the US, that you can actually get demyelination of your axons because your body's constantly breaking down and being repaired, and B12 is required for DNA synthesis and new cells to form. And so, if you don't have enough B12, you get the breakdown, but you don't get the repair. And so, your myelination, your the myelin on your axons are are breaking down constantly. And if you if you don't have enough B12, you can't regrow them. So, you get demyelination. And so, we know that under 500 picomoles per liter, 650-ish, 700 picograms per milliliter, you can actually get demyelination. Now, the reference range goes from 150 picograms per milliliter to 900, 1,000. And it depends on each each and every lab because all these labs, that's the whole thing that would revolutionize medicine if we actually used objective reference ranges instead of just averages for that lab because the average person is sick and malnourished. 80% of the calories consumed in America, in Europe, and rest of the world really are from plants, and plants don't contain B12. And so, you have a vegetarian population basically, and you're checking their average B12 and saying, "Well, everybody's in this average." Well, it's an average. Of course, they're in the average. But all those people are deficient. So, because everyone is deficient, now no one is deficient because it's hidden in that average. But if you're below 650, 700, you can actually get demyelination. Oxford University published a paper in 2008 that showed that under 500 picomoles per liter, 650 picograms per milliliter, down to like 300 picomoles per milliliter, you know, 450, whatever picograms, and lower, that people were actually getting so much demyelination of their white matter that their brains were shrinking by 2 and 1/2 to 5 and 1/2% every 5 years. And that's my theory as well. Why why our brains shrink when we accept that. We say our brains just shrink as we age. You know, no other animal on Earth sees this. None. And so, we accept that our brains just rot out of our brains. Okay, but if we're losing 1/2% to 1% of our brain per year because we're in the normal reference range for B12, after 30, 40 years, your brain is going to be shriveled up. And if you look at case reports, there's a case report in 1997 of a of a baby with 6-month-old baby, a child of vegetarian parents, who had severe atrophy. Well, it wasn't even atrophy. It was just the failure of development of their white matter tracts in their brain. And so, it's very very shriveled atrophy. It looked exactly like an 80-year-old patient with Alzheimer's, well, with dementia. And then with daily B12 replacement, after 5 months, it >> [snorts] >> swelled up significantly. Looked like basically a a healthy 40-year-old brain. But it didn't look like a 1-year-old brain like it should have. And so, you know, but that that's so, looks like an 80-year-old brain. A 6-month-old baby with severe B12 deficiency looks like an 80-year-old brain normal. Yeah, you know, and then you give them B12, all of a sudden it looks like a 40-year-old brain 5 months down the track. So, I don't think that's age-related atrophy. I think that's malnutrition over time. Now, I'll bring up the images here in a second, but that is why I think that people with MS are actually seeing reduction in their lesions because they're just getting the basic nutrition that we need. And so, working in neurosurgery, I've seen dramatic recoveries from a neurological perspective, more than than I would have expected because normally we don't expect the the brain and the nerves to heal all that well. Well, it doesn't it doesn't surprise me now because we've been malnourished. We don't have these nutrients like B12 that are allowing your brain to heal. Like if you if your B12 is at a level that is so low that you are getting demyelination, how the hell do you expect to remyelinate your your nerves from MS? It's not going to happen. It's just not going to happen. But then people do this, and they're eating the fat, they're eating the meat, they're having some liver, they're getting their B12 and vitamin D up, and their DHEA and and LDL and all that sort of or DHA and EPA and and LDL. They're getting all of those things up in proportion. Now, the body can actually start healing, which we don't think is possible as doctors and clinicians because we just don't see it. And we think that that the brain shrinking over time is normal because we just see it. It is the norm. But that doesn't mean that it is normal. Doesn't mean that that's supposed to happen. And so, that that's sort of my thought on this. I'm going to I'm going to share this with me so while it's on my mind here. Um because it's I think it's really dramatic. So, this is this you know this, but I'll I'll say this for everybody else's benefit. This is very typical of of a baby's brain. So, all the gray stuff is just brain. These little dark parts here, those are the ventricles. And they're they're they're very small. You know, see sort of small here as well. There's no space around the outside. There's no gaps. Like, "Oh, we have a little bit of fluid space." In adults, in kids, it's it's maxed out. It's pushing against the wall. And that's actually how the skull grows. You know, the growth of the brain pushes out on the inside of the skull and actually actually grows the the bones of the skull. So, that's normal for it's like a 20-month-old baby, I think in that one. This is this is that case report. Okay. And when you zoom in like this, and you didn't know that this was a baby, that look you tell me if I'm wrong here, but that looks very typical for like an 80-year-old brain. That looks pretty typical for a healthy >> big big ventricles. I mean, I I see like act like you look at the edge, you could see that would be called, you know, just atrophy of the brain. I mean, that you you can see this in you know, I don't read cat scans of the head, but you can see it right away. Mhm. Uh but it's not a healthy brain. No, it's not. But we would But if you put that in front of a radiologist and said, "That's an 80-year-old man. Is that is that supposed to look like that?" You say, "Yeah, that's just a normal age-related atrophy. This would be very normal for a 40-year-old brain, 35, 40-year-old brain. And you know, this one, there's no gap around the outside. Ventricles are very small. You can't even see the temporal horns. This one, now you can start seeing that. It's already getting atrophy. There's space around the outside. The the ventricles are a bit more pronounced. You're seeing more space here around the you know, the the brainstem, pons, things like that. Now, here, much much more pronounced, much more atrophy, huge ventricles, big open wide temporal horns. That's very typical for an elderly brain. Um but again, this is a 6-month-old girl of vegetarian parents with severe brain shrinkage atrophy due to B12 deficiency. This is a published case report in 1997. And so, this is at 6 months old where it looks like an 80-year-old brain. And this is 5 months later, so about a year old after daily B12 replacement. So, massive improvement on that. If you flip those around, say, "Okay, that's a 40-year-old brain. This is a 40-year-old brain. This is an 80-year-old brain." Yeah, that's normal. That's normal age-related atrophy. But we know that this is B12 deficiency, and we know that B12 deficiency, even as an adult, you can lose 1/2% to 1% of your brain. Now, that's your brain at 40 years old, and you're losing 1/2% to 1% every year, yeah, you're damn right that's what your brain's going to look like at 80. Of course, it will. But with proper nutrition, it doesn't have to. And what I think is is also striking here is that this went from an 80-year-old brain with B12 deficiency to non-B12 deficiency. Now, it looks like a 40-year-old brain. Huge improvement. But it doesn't look like a 1-year-old brain. Why the hell not? Did they just lose out on their ability to develop normally? Maybe. But also, they're replacing B12 in their vegetarian parents. What about the vitamin D? What about the choline, the creatine, the carnitine, the EPA, the cholesterol, the saturated fat? I bet I bet their LDL is probably pretty damn low. It's not what you want when you're trying to grow a brain that is predominantly made out of cholesterol. So, it's or largely made out of it anyway. So, I think that that's why it looks like a 40-year-old brain instead of a instead of a 1-year-old brain like it should because it's not just B12 that she's missing. She's missing all these other things. So, when we have MS patients, I I have an MS protocol that um oh goodness, what's going on? I have an MS protocol that I put people on, and and we we optimize B12. We optimize vitamin D3. We get into reference ranges that are the studies have shown are optimal. Surely get them the hell out of that normal range that can actually still cause demyelination cuz you're you're never going to regrow your myelin without if you're if your vitamin B12 and things like that are so low that you'll get demyelination. It's never going to happen. So, that's what I think anyway. And I think that's why we're seeing these the improvements that we are.