The Vitamin B6 Cofactor

About Vitamin B6

Discovered in the 1930s it is also called pyridoxine. Today it is available in three forms. It is the essential cofactor for a number of essential enzymes in the human body.It is possibly only second to glutathione in the number of body functions it is involved in.

Vitamin B6 is involved with promotion of red blood cell formation, is required by the nervous system and the brain for normal function, cancer prevention, and is necessary for hydrochloric acid production.

What's Nutritionally in it for You?

In addition to being a glutathione cofactor, vitamin B6 is depleted when some medications are taken and thus requires supplementation. Estrogen replacement therapy and some contraceptives produce a need for supplementation.

It may help you not feel irritable and grumpy. It may even help with morning sickness with effects similar to ginger (note that B6 and ginger both play a role in glutathione production).

It is involved in cancer prevention, arteriosclerosis prevention and helps inhibit homocysteine formation potentially produced from Methionine.

It may increase the vividness of your dreams. What if you could remember your dreams? It might help with the ability to recall dreams.

This is related to the role it plays with tryptophan conversion to serotonin.

B6 is associated with decreasing Parkinson’s disease according to one study. It is important to note that increasing GSH levels has likewise been associated with decreasing Parkinson's symptoms. B6 as you are reading is a cofactor of glutathione.

The intake of vitamin B6, from either diet or supplements, could cut the risk of Parkinson’s disease by half according to a prospective study from the Netherlands.

You can overdose and should only take within packaging guidelines.

Dietary Sources

B6 can be obtained from a number of animal and vegetable food sources. The daily recommended intake is between 1.3 and 2.0 and is age gender related.

Nuts

Liver

Chicken

Fish

Green Beans

Wheat germ

Nutritional Yeast

Bananas

Carrots

Sunflower seeds

Walnuts

Brewers Yeast

Black Strap Molasses

Dietary Deficiency

Deficiencies may result in you being grouchy, depressed, anxious, loss of libido, insomnia, water retention, inability to process glucose, weight loss or gain.

More serious deficiencies can result in anemia, convulsions, headaches, nausea. Hearing problems, memory impairment, and memory loss could also be associated with inadequate intake.

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