I just tried breaking open one of the oil bottles. The container is entirely plastic with a silvery coating. There is a plastic plunger that gets drawn up as you suck out the oil, so it keeps the oil at a level where the squirt pump can reach it. That's why you can sometimes get some more squirts out after it starts to spatter -- unscrew the top, then use a paper clip (in the hole on the bottom of the bottle) to push the plunger up. Or just pour it into your next bottle, which is usually easier. Just don't push the plunger too high, OR pour too much into another bottle, or it will spill all over when you screw in the pump top. (Guess how I know.
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@dannybex, you'd have to ask Greg at b12oils.com if the plastic container is a risk. I'm sure he thinks it's a safe container, but he might not be aware of the metals issue.
For contents of the oil, see
http://forums.phoenixrising.me/index.php?threads/transdermal-b12-oils.33172/ -- the adeno/methyl oil has roughly 7.5 mg adenosyl per ml of oil, and 2.5 mg/ml methyl. Since each dose is roughly 0.25 ml, that makes it about 1.875 mg adenosyl and 0.625 mg methyl per squirt. They've documented about 80% absorption in animal testing, so that means each 0.25ml dose is equivalent to an injected dose of about 1.5 mg adB12 and 0.5 mg mB12.
Be careful comparing sublingual mg to injected or transdermal mg. They aren't equivalent. Sublingual usually has very low usable absorption. Freddd and others say anywhere from 1% to maybe 10%. Also the sublinguals tend to spike your serum levels for a very short time, so unless you keep sublinguals in your mouth all day, you still end up with low levels much of the day. Whereas the oil diffuses into your system over about an 8 hour period, keeping the levels consistently high. For me personally, before I found the oil, I was using over 30mg/day of Country Life 5mg sublinguals, and that wasn't keeping my symptoms in check. Then with the oil, 3 doses/day (4.5mg adenosyl and 1.5mg methyl) worked vastly better than the 30+mg/day of sublinguals. (I wasn't taking adB12 consistently at that point, and that probably also contributed to the bad results with just CL.)
A week ago my last bottle ran out much earlier than I expected. (Turns out it wasn't actually empty, but the plunger at the bottom didn't move up appropriately. I was able to force it up with a paperclip stuck into the bottom of the bottle.) It started to spatter the day after I placed an order, and it takes 7-10 days to deliver from Australia. So I was looking at at least a week without my 3/day doses. In some desperation, I went back to the Country Life. But this time I followed Freddd's suggestion that "time in contact with oral tissues" was more important than "mg in the tablets." (You want a steady supply over a long period, rather than a short spike.) I broke the tabs into quarters, meaning I had the stuff in contact with my mucosa 4x longer. I also put it under my lip, which makes it dissolve much more slowly. That actually worked pretty well. I took some adB12 (dibencozide) & mB12 in the morning, then some mB12 during the day if I remembered it, then a bit more in the evening and a single shot of ad/me oil at bedtime. Maybe a total of 1-2 5mg mB12 tabs and about 4mg adB12 tabs, plus 1 shot/day of oil. Didn't work as well as 3x/day oil, but it worked much better than taking 6 * 5mg Country Life per day, one whole tab at a time under my tongue.
BTW if you're wincing at the price of the oil (try it when you need 3 doses a day!!), that approach of breaking the tabs into quarters works pretty well, and it's a lot cheaper. Even if I took 2 * 5mg per day, at $14 for a 60-count bottle that's only $0.14 a day, vs about $0.75/dose for the oil. If you're like me, you should also add in a healthy shot of adB12 with sublingual dibencozide. The oil uses about 3x more adB12 than mB12. If you do this, choose your sublinguals with care to avoid acids, sugars, and folic acid.
