Does getting B12 shots help you lose weight? We say no

No. We push B12 into arms all over Tulsa, $25 an injection, free on a first visit, and we still tell callers the syringe will not move their scale. Does getting B12 shots help you lose weight? The vitamin has a short list of jobs, and burning fat is nowhere on that list.

We list our sources at the bottom so you can check us.

Myth one: B12 revs up your metabolism

Half of that pitch is true. The other half is made up, and they sell you both in the same breath. MedlinePlus, the patient encyclopedia the National Library of Medicine keeps, opens its B12 entry about as plainly as it gets: Vitamin B12 is a water-soluble vitamin. A nutrient. Your cells really do use B vitamins while they work through what you eat, and that's the true half of it.

The false half is that adding more of a vitamin you have plenty of makes your body burn hotter. It doesn't. No study has shown an injection do that in somebody whose levels are already fine. Filling a tank that's full won't give you a bigger engine.

What the vitamin is really on the list for

Shortage. That is the entire reason B12 ever ends up in a syringe, and shortage has a definition rather than a feeling: Vitamin B12 deficiency occurs when the body does not get or is not able to absorb the amount of the vitamin that the body needs. Either you aren't taking enough in, or your gut can't pull it across. Same encyclopedia, on what running low actually looks like: Low levels of B12 can cause: Anemia Loss of balance Numbness or tingling in the arms and legs Weakness Read that list again. Weight isn't on it.

Clients who were truly low and got that corrected often say they feel like themselves again. We believe them. Feeling better and weighing less are two different things, though, and only one of them was ever on offer here.

Myth two: tired means low B12 means heavier

People build that chain backwards. Somebody is exhausted, reads that B12 is the energy vitamin, decides the exhaustion explains the weight, and books a shot hoping to solve both ends at once. Exhaustion has a hundred causes and most of yours live on your calendar. A vitamin can only do something about the one cause that's genuinely a vitamin shortage, and finding out whether that's you takes a blood draw at your own doctor's office. Nobody can read it off your arm in your kitchen.

So does getting B12 shots help you lose weight, or what does?

It doesn't. The people who study weight for a living are blunt about what actually does. NIDDK, the NIH institute covering diabetes and kidney disease, states the standard of care in a single line: Health care professionals often treat overweight and obesity by recommending lifestyle changes, such as adopting a healthy eating plan and increasing your physical activity, to help you lose weight safely. The same page explains the mechanism behind it: These lifestyle changes can help you reduce the calories you take in from food and beverages and increase the calories you use up by being active.

Calories going in, calories burned off. A vitamin injection sits completely outside that arithmetic. Where that isn't enough, the same page points at prescription medicine, written by somebody holding your chart. Nothing in our cooler qualifies.

The supplement aisle already ran this experiment

NCCIH is the NIH center that studies complementary products, and it has watched a long parade of these come and go. The verdict it publishes: Most dietary supplements marketed for rapid weight loss, such as acai and hoodia, don't work for keeping weight off in the long term, and some are dangerous. B12 is not acai. It is a real vitamin carrying a real medical use. It just sits on the same shelf as the junk, and people reach for it for the same wrong reason.

Where the shot sits on our Tulsa menu

Ours is an add-on. $25, pushed by your nurse while she is already sitting with you and a bag is running, and the very first one costs you nothing. Energy and Hydrate runs $199 and carries methylcobalamin, the active B12, next to a B-complex, vitamin C and taurine. The $199 Migraine Cocktail puts that same B12 with magnesium. Simply Hydrate is $99 of fluid and nothing else, and the injection can ride along with that one too. Not one of the three is sold here for weight, and not one of them will be.

If the injection interests you for other reasons, we took apart the side effect we get asked about most in its own piece.

And if the scale is the only reason you're calling, we're the wrong appointment. A nurse says so out loud before she loads the car, the same way she says no to a bag that doesn't suit somebody. We drive to Tulsa, Jenks, Bixby, Claremore, Collinsville, Owasso and Broken Arrow for no extra charge, with a flat $25 tacked on for Sapulpa and Sand Springs. Health answers go to a physician before a bag gets drawn up, and a registered nurse is who knocks. Every price on the menu reads the same in all seven cities, all in.

Quick answers

Will the free first-visit shot do anything for my weight?

No. It is a vitamin. Book it knowing that rather than learning it from your bathroom scale a week from now.

What if my B12 actually is low?

Then that is a blood test and a talk with your own physician, not a guess a nurse makes in your living room. People who are low and get corrected sometimes feel much better. Better is not lighter.

Can the injection go with any bag?

It can. The charge is $25, your nurse gives it while the fluid runs, and nothing is charged for it the first time we visit.

Letting this one slide would make us more money. We don't, because somebody who books a vitamin while picturing a smaller waist ends up disappointed in us instead of in the advertising that sold them the idea. This is not a substitute for medical care, and nobody here has seen your chart or your labs.

Does getting B12 shots help you lose weight? A Tulsa nurse's no