Professor Luke O'Neill

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1,535 appearances 7 recordings 2 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 3 Sep

Professor Luke O'Neill’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 7 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 3.

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Show Me the Science with Luke O'Neill · The Science of Vitamins · 3 Sep 2026 podcast

They are cofactors in how enzymes work to break down food and extract the nutrients.

Nutrition from food.

So a major function of the B group then overall is to help with nutrition.

Some of them help your skin, some of them help your eyes, a bit like vitamin A.

And a very important function for some of the B group vitamins, especially vitamin B12, is red blood cells.

So if you have a deficiency in vitamin B12, you get anemia because you can't form red blood cells.

So B12 is an important function in the formation of red blood cells.

blood cells.

And one of the B group vitamins is called folic acid.

Now, folic acid is very important for red blood cells as well, but it really was in the news uh oh I suppose two twenty, thirty years ago this began.

Low folic acid, and if you get pregnant, there's a high risk of the baby having what are called neural tube defects.

Spina bifida is caused by a deficiency in the diet in folic acid.

Now John Scott and Donald Weir, my two great colleagues in Trinity, they provided all the

Evidence for that.

So women are now told, because of their research, make sure you top up on nutrients.

You can take folic acid as useful.

A good balanced diet rich in folic acid, which occurs in all kinds of green vegetables, make sure you're taking them to help ensure that the developing baby develops a normal neural tube and then they don't develop spina bifidus.

So really good discovery in Ireland by John Scott and Donald Weir on folic acid.

There's talk at the moment of

fortifying bread actually with tolic acid folic acid. 'Come some some some women they don't know that they're pre it's it's before you know you're pregnant.

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