Sorry for the quick additional post, but I should have added that I am dosing 2500 mcg of methyl b daily along with my b complex. Lord knows what my red blood cell count was before I started!! Am I wrong on this? I thought b12 was instrumental in red blood cell production. My folic acid tests slightly above normal.--Tom

do not act on small divergences from the normal range.

The range itself is arbitrary as well, taken statistically from #s of patients only.

Labs can be off, and you can rerun the tests and get different #'s very easily.

Since you are a male however, any low iron is suspect. Do you take acid blocking drugs? that may be the answer. One has to have long term serious low B12 to show any anemia...some never show it.

Males do not lose iron normally. This leads to suspecting loss thru the kidneys, or GI tract.

There are genetic anemias, one called thalessemia..that affects people of mediteranean extraction (Greek, Italian, etc).

Yes, no telling where you were. Although many people show signs of anemia, others (me included, unfortunately) show absolutely no sign of anemia even after longterm serious damage has occurred. I would have been dead within months, and my labs were smack in the middle of normal, so no one prior to the neurologist who diagnosed me bothered to check B12 and it took a ferritin to show I was low in iron.

And, of course, even without acid-reducing drugs many people simply lose the ability to produce sufficient stomach acid to absorb iron well or absorb B12 at all from food.

Do be alert to the other possibilities, but I hope you never stop B12, and you might check into betaine for stomach acid replacement, since stomach acid is protective in other ways.

rose