Are you feeling out of sorts or like you are more irritable than usual with your spouse or your kids? There are times when stress starts to take its toll on us and we end up having a bad day, but if it continues; it could be something more. Your body responds to changes that it may be dealing with. Sometimes, those changes may be obvious, but other times, your body may not give obvious signs of distress, but they are still there. For these issues, you may want to look at your vitamin intake. One of the best health tips you will ever receive the one that explains how to spot some health deficiencies.
The Importance of Vitamins
Your body needs specific vitamins to ensure that everything functions properly. You may need to increase your intake of iron or folic acid if you are carrying a child or you may need to decrease your intake of iron if you start to feel stomach pain. It is proof that your body needs a healthy mix of all the good things, but too much of a good thing can also be bad for you. This is why it is very important that you have a basic understanding of what happens when you are experiencing a vitamin overload or a deficiency of certain vitamins. In some cases, knowing it could save your life.
Vitamin B Deficiency
When thinking about vitamin B, you should remember that there are several different types of it. They include B6, B12, Folic Acid, and many more. These vitamins all do a variety of things for your body. They help you maintain a healthy metabolic system, form red blood cells, and ensures that your brain is functioning properly. It also provides you with a little more energy than you would have without it. If you do not have enough vitamin B in your system, a variety of health issues will begin to appear. They may include:
- Fatigue
- Irritability
- Confusion or Dementia
- Cracked Lips
- Anemia
- Shortness of Breath
- Panic Attacks
Vitamin B deficiency can often be fixed by taking the right kind of supplement. However, it is important that you talk to your doctor to make sure that you need a little boost in your vitamin B intake. Not all of these common health deficiencies should be treated the same, so be sure to ask your doctor.
Vitamin C Deficiency
Everyone knows that vitamin C is good for you. It is a vitamin that works as an antioxidant. When you are fighting off colds during the winter months, you may be encouraged to eat oranges. It is abundantly available in most all fruits and vegetables, but since we often fail to eat healthy foods, you may still end up lacking the vitamin C that your body needs. If you are lacking vitamin C, you may have more infections, bleeding gums, dry hair, weight gain, pain in your joints, and a variety of other issues.
Vitamin D Deficiency
Your heart and body depends on vitamin D. It is a vitamin that we get from being outside in the sun. Without it, you have an increased chance of having to deal with heart disease, depression, and in some cases; cancer. Your body will tell you if you need to up your intake by making you feel tired, depressed, anxious, and irritable. You may also experience muscle cramps and joint pain. Small cuts may take a while to heal. Almost everyone is deficient in Vitamin D. If you are unsure how deficient you actually are, you can get a simple blood test to determine this. Most people need around 2,000 IU per day, but if you are severely deficient of vitamin D, you may need up to 10,000 IU per day. Ask your doctor before you take that amount of Vitamin D though!
Magnesium Deficiency
Magnesium is a vitamin that regulates your muscles and your nerves. It is also good for improving your blood pressure, helping your body make protein, and strengthens bones. Most people do not have enough magnesium in their body and if you look at My Magnesium Deficiency, you will see that not having enough of it can cause a variety of issues for your health and well-being. You may have more headaches, irregular heartbeats, weakness, fatigue, and a decreased ability to concentrate on simple tasks.
If you want to add more magnesium to your diet, you should focus on eating green leafy vegetables, whole seeds, or legumes. However, our body does not digest all the magnesium that we take in, so you may have to eat it for quite a while before you start to feel better.
Calcium Deficiencies
It should not come as a surprise to most people to know that a calcium deficiency can be very bad for your overall health. It is the vitamin that we attribute to strong bones and healthy teeth. What you may not know is that it does more than strengthen bones and teeth. It is required for healthy cell function, hormonal secretions, your muscles, and your blood’s ability to coagulate. For all that it does, most of us do not have enough calcium in our body to keep us healthy because certain illnesses, including common health deficiencies, can cause us to lose calcium. These health issues that drain calcium include, but are not limited to:
- Kidney Disease
- Chemotherapy
- Seizure Medications
- High Sodium Levels
If your body is lacking calcium, you may have chest pain, numbness, or tingling in your extremities, trouble swallowing, muscle cramps, fatigue, seizures, coarse hair, chronic itchiness, personality changes, osteoporosis, cataracts, as well as many other symptoms. To increase your intake, you should consider eating greens, sesame seeds, canned salmon or sardines with bones, and broccoli, rather than milk, which isn’t as good for bones as we have always been taught.
You should never underestimate the power of vitamins and supplements. If you are feeling run down, moody, cramping a lot, losing your hair, or experiencing any other noticeable problems, it is important that you talk to your doctor to rule out these common health deficiencies. Even if you do not feel that it is a potential issue, your doctor may want to run lab tests to make sure that you are healthy, and your body is functioning properly in every way.
Your body tells you when you have an issue that should be dealt with, but it is your responsibility to listen to it. You have to know the signs and symptoms of these common health deficiencies so that you can start to improve your diet. You only get one body and one life to live. Pay attention to it.
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