I would like to announce a change in our recommended multivitamin for patients who have had gastric bypass or sleeve gastrectomy.
We have been starting to notice a number of patients developing low levels of vitamin B12 at between 18 months to 2 years after gastric bypass surgery. In response to this, Renee Ladbrook has reviewed the detailed descriptions of all the multivitamins currently available in New Zealand and compared them against the vitamin supplementation recommendations by the American Society of Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery. She found that most of the available multivitamins do not contain enough B12, and consequently body stores may become slowly depleted over many months.
The new recommended multivitamins are Celebrate Multi-complete capsule or Celebrate Multivitamin Chewable. Both are available on-line from AMS nutrition here. These should be taken at the doses recommended on the bottles, and should be taken in addition to calcium and any other individual vitamin recommendations. Unless you have been noted to have a low vitamin B12 level then it is ok to finish you current multivitamin stocks before switching over.
If you have any questions please contact me or Renee.