Hundreds of thousands of students got their A-Level results, for some pure joy and ecstasy.
For others, oh, the feeling of despair in the pit of your stomach is one that lingers.
For some, this marks a change of direction, a sliding doors moment (easy to see in hindsight), for others the cumulation of hard work over two years to move to the next stepping stone in life.
In 1995, I opened my results and received a D for Geography (it was boring, who cares about ice wedges and tundras? Not me) and for chemistry………an N.
Now, some of you might not even know what an N is, let me explain.
It goes like this:
A – You are awesome, a proper nerd, geek-tastic, well done !
B – Very good, you are smarter than most
C – Decent, not great, but not bad
D – Hmmmm, just about OK, but not going to win you many UCAS points
E – Well, it’s a pass, pretty crap, but it’s a pass.
N – Nearly passed, you were so s**t you nearly got a crap grade of E, just not quite.
U – Ungradable, you are that appalling they cannot be even bothered to grade you properly. Did you even write your name correctly at the top?
Even more tragically I have to tell you, I dropped biology in my second year, to give me a better chance of passing chemistry.
Oh the shame.
I can tell you now, I knew very little about chemistry, it simply made no sense.
In fairness to me, I knew sod all about learning, and how could I?
I thought highlighting stuff was a way to revise.
Also, my attention span was atrocious, a mix of gluten-induced neuro- inflammation and gross deficiencies from gut issues, dysbiosis from years of antibiotics for my acne and then my liver took a hammering from the vitamin A derivative drug accutane.
It left me with little chance of real learning.
Still could have been worse, I could have gone fully bonkers.
“wibble”
Did you know that B12 is critical for cognition?
And it is the canary in the coal mine in terms of deficiency of vitamins.
The reason?
Well, its just a bugger to absorb, without good stomach acid and a healthy gut lining.
BUT more than that, while your gut bacteria make all B vitamins for you, B12 is the only one that we lack a transporter in the colon to get it into your blood.
So all the lovely B12 your gut microbiome makes comes straight out in your poop.
That is thought to be why animals eat their own and others’ poo.
Thus, even with a bad diet, at least you get some B vitamins which slows the decline down, while with B12 you are 100% dependent on your diet.
And for me, it was a double whammy, as my gut microbiome was crap to start with for all the B vitamins, but my digestion was also terrible, which may also partly explain my terrible cognition.
B12 loss in the longer term is a segway into early cognitive decline and then dementia.
The reason?
Homocysteine is one.
The good news is our new B12 liposomal Hydroxo supplement is now out and ready to change lives.
The liposomal delivery means zero digestive effort required from the patient, so even the poorest digestive tract still gets the full dose.
Plus, the B12 within the liposome passes easily from blood to cell, as the cell membrane is a phospholipid bilayer, and the liposome is the same, the water soluble B12 is packed away within it.
Some patients with complex health issues and many co-morbidities seem not to respond as anticipated even when we know they are low.
One issue might be with the transporter used to get B12 into the cell from the blood.
Liposomal B12 in a hydroxo form, may well get us around this issue.
You can check out the two B12 product video here, we go over when we use one vs the other and supporting products
But as with all the good things in life, nothing comes easy, and so it was.
I spent my third year at A-level college, and in that last year, worked hard as I knew what I wanted to do with my life.
In August 1996, I opened my envelope and achieved a grade C in chemistry and D in biology.
Not exactly setting the world on fire, but enough to get into the AECC and start training to be a Chiropractor.
These days I can’t get enough of bio-chemistry, it is literally what makes me and everyone tick.
As James Clear says,