EAT BEEF - Health Warning

EAT BEEF.
Expats come to the Philippines and enjoy the weather and people but forget to continue with their eating habits, not giving much importance to them BUT without the B12 vitamin that we get from red meats and dairy produce we are susceptible to Pernicious Anemia and this can KILL YOU!!
It is very easy to live here on Chicken, Pork and fish like the Filipinos but after a few years our bodies can react with low values of  HGB and is the number of red blood cells in our system.
After 10 years I had strange indigestion pains, loss of almost 2 stones in weight and no appetite. My doctor gave me scans and suggested removing my gall bladder because the scan revealed stones.
Not very keen on that but I had to do something; I didn't care for anything, no enthusiasm, pale and lethargic, our bank manager came to me and almost didn't recognize me!
Decided on the operation and had the pre op lab tests because of my age. This revealed a very low HGB result and my doc put me in bed immediately with 4 packets of new blood to drip into me. I began to feel better the next day and after 4 weeks of  regular injections of the B12 directly into my veins began to put on weight and feel like my old self. Appetite was back and physical exercise restored me to original.
We forget that at home we eat beef and lamb very regularly and a favorite of mine was liver and onions. Beef liver is the strongest supply of B12.
Our stomachs sort out the vitamins from food and protects the B12 by something called the intrinsic factor that carries it down to our lower intestine for making new blood. There are 2 forms of B12, cyanocobalamin and methylcobalamin. The latter is the best form and very absorbable to our bodies.
So there we are guys, a simple diet change to effect to us and because of slow effect we don't take much notice until what we think is depression and loss of weight. This is a warning, please be aware and help out with friends who take to alcohol maybe to overcome what they think is simply “down in the dumps”. A simple blood test is not expensive HGB HGB HGB     look after your blood!