Ep 77 B Vitamin Pharmacology Mnemonics

B Vitamin Pharmacology Mnemonics

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B vitamins can be hard to remember with skipped numbers and names for each B vitamin. In this video, I go over some ways to help you remember.  

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Welcome to the Memorizing Pharmacology podcast. I’m Tony Guerra, pharmacist and author of the Memorizing Pharmacology book series, bringing you mnemonics, cases, and advice for succeeding in Pharmacology. Sign up for the email list at memorizingfarm.com to get your free suffixes cheat sheet or find our mobile-friendly self-paced online pharmacology review course at residency.teachable.com/P/mobile. Let’s get started with the show.

Alright, today we’re going to go over B vitamin mnemonics. So here we go. First thing of course is that we have water-soluble vitamins versus fat-soluble vitamins. B vitamins are water-soluble as are C vitamins. So here are the names and the trick is how do you remember the number with the name? So B1 is thiamin, B2 is riboflavin, B3 is niacin, B5 is pantothenic acid. Notice there’s a skip between three and five, there is no four. B6 is pyridoxine, B7 is biotin, B9 is folic acid, and B12 it’s cobalamin.

So let’s kind of move on to the next and what we’ll do is we’ll divide this into thirds. First we’ll take a look at thiamin, riboflavin, and niacin. So the way we’re going to do this is we’re going to go from the bottom up. So we’re going to say that B1 is thiamin looking at this skeleton’s thigh, riboflavin is rib so ‘thi’ from thigh, ‘rib’ from riboflavin and then if you pronounce it I thought it was an Australian accent but it actually comes out more of a South African accent if you say ‘Nick’ rather than ‘neck’ you can get the ‘Nic’ that’s in niacin.

So again it’s the thigh, the rib and the ‘Nic’. So by the rib and the neck reminds you the B1, B2 and B3 going from the bottom up are thiamine, riboflavin and niacin.

The next three and we’ll get a little crazy with the picture here but we’re going to have pantothenic acid so pants uh and I have no idea why there was this skeleton with the jeans but it was available for purchase so I was able to get the picture. Pyridoxine think of a pyramid so upside down pyramid the way the rib cage kind of comes down right you guys are old enough to remember Mork and Mindy yeah that was the kind of symbol on the front of Mork uh and then biotin uh the tin hat uh on top of the skeleton.

So we have B5 is pantothenic acid with pants, B6 is pyridoxine but the pyramid upside down and then biotin is the tin hat okay.

The last two we’ll use just a forest and a beautiful blue sky so forest for folic acid that’s B9 and then B12 is cobalamin with the cobalt sky. I know this isn’t exactly Cobalt it’s not exactly that blue it’s actually kind of a green but just roll with me here forest and cobalt sky folate and cobalamin are B9 and b12.

So let’s dive into what they’re good for three at a time so first B1 or thiamin this converts carbs to glucose prevents Wernicke’s encephalopathy in alcoholism or liver disease so a little picture of a beer there and some cirrhotic liver.

B2 is riboflavin deficiency due to alcoholism vegan vegetarian lifestyle malabsorption just can’t absorb it or lactose intolerance.

And then B3 niacin is great for high triglycerides where we’re really trying to stabilize that plaque as an add-on for statins where the statins maybe they get the LDL down but just not the triglycerides where you want to be so you can avoid pancreatitis and you would need maybe to give an aspirin 30 minutes before to avoid that flushing effect okay all right let’s move on to the next.

So B5 pantothenic acid it synthesizes coenzyme A for fatty acid metabolism and you can think of the A in acid and the word acid for coenzyme A and fatty acid metabolism.

B6 pyridoxine this is for alcoholism and peripheral neuropathy from isoniazid. Isoniazid is one of those drugs for TB okay so again the ripe mnemonic when you have a TB in duration that’s ripe okay so Rifampin isoniazid uh and so forth okay so.

The XYZ mnemonic is to take the X and Y from pyridoxine and match it up to Z in ice niazid okay and that peripheral neuropathy is really this picture we have this exclamation point and somebody’s really having trouble feeling their fingers uh so fingers and toes That uh, a lot of times for that peripheral neuropathy shows up, it may show up as not being able to button a shirt as well. So it doesn’t necessarily show up as pain, it’s just can’t always just really use your fingers as you’d like to. Biotin that helps enzymes break down carbs, fats and proteins but really skin and hair is where we see it in beauty products especially. So the ‘in’ from Biotin for skin and then the hair again. I just got a picture of someone who’s an athlete, good hair, good skin.

B9 is folate. This is where we want to prevent those neural tube defects and think of the F in folate and F in defects. Deficiency is a reduced hemoglobin level and really B9 is critical for red blood cell production. To be honest, you need B9, iron and B12 and if you think of a nine iron if you know golf a little bit, a nine iron being used on the 12th hole you can put the nine, the iron and the 12 all together. And there’s a very famous shot on the 18th hole that where someone just yelled out ‘be right’ and the B from ‘be right’ is just you know, be right, be the right shot.

And so here again we’re using that B so B9 iron on the B12 hole um hopefully that helps you remember that iron B9 and b12 need to go together to really form those red blood cells properly.

B12 is cobalamin so it’s for macrocytic not microcytic and pernicious anemia so the ‘ma’ in cobalamin for macrocytic, the ‘ni’ in cobalamin for pernicious anemia and then a lot of the letters from anemia are in cobalamin so if you’re somebody that can kind of do those word scrambles I think that’s helpful.

A lot of those people that have gastric bypass surgery you think oh my gosh that’s so great they you know they don’t aren’t hungry and things like that but really it does cause a lot of problems in terms of B12 um uh Celiac and Crohn’s disease these are two issues that would definitely necessitate adding some B12.

And then deficiency again just like with B9 and folate I will D equal reduced hemoglobin level for red blood cell production so again both of these really work in tandem to help you know those red blood cells properly form.

And then this was supposed to be uh the nine iron and the golf course and all of that but it turned out to be just grass and sky but think of a nine iron on the 12th hole and uh I think it’ll be a lot easier to remember.

Again this is for informational purposes only it is not medical advice so if you’ve got a medical condition consult a medical professional. Thanks for listening to the Memorizing Pharmacology podcast. You can find episodes, cheat sheets, and more at memorizingfarm.com. Again, you can sign up for the email list at memorizingfarm.com to get your free suffixes cheat sheet or find our mobile-friendly self-paced online pharmacology review course at residency.teachable.com/P/mobile. Thanks again for listening.

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