You can prevent vitamin b12 deficiency by eating enough eggs, meat and seafood or supplementing with vitamin b12 chewable or if you very low on b12 the gp may tell you to get vitamin b12 shots for a few weeks. Sometimes our bodies can have trouble absorbing vitamin b12 even if you are eating a healthy diet.. disorders such as pernicious anaemia or crohns disease.

Each person’s symptoms may vary. Symptoms may include:

• Weak muscles
• Numb or tingling feeling in hands and feet
• Trouble walking
• Nausea
• Decreased appetite
• Weight loss
• Irritability
• Lack of energy or tiring easily (fatigue)
• Diarrhea
• Smooth and tender tongue
• Fast heart rate

Its worth asking your GP to check your vitamin b12 levels if you have any of the above symptoms, a lot of people have low levels and don’t even know it ! You run the risk of going to the doctor with the above symptoms only to be told to take the wrong medications.

Very low vitamin b12 levels can cause restless leg syndrome where your legs have muscle spams and a big major red flag of a deficiency is colder extremities and tingling in hands and feet. The sad thing is that when your levels are low for to long it can cause irreversible nerve damage!

I once diagnosed a friend of mine who was going to the gp with restless legs, bad headaches, vertigo and skin rashes, She obviously had depression suffering these constant symptoms.. she got worse and started getting shortness of breath and pain in her heart. I remember her telling me about this over a period of months. The gp gave her antidepressants and painkillers and also told her the symptom’s were panic attacks and just in her head ( hate when doctors tell that to people! ) She was so sad and unhappy and would tell me every new symptom, she must have went to the gp more than 30 times, begging them for help but every time just had pills thrown her way. After thinking it all through carefully and doing a bit of research on my friends symptoms, I finally realised she must have vitamin b12 deficiency. I sent her a large list of symptoms as there are so many, more than i listed in this blog post. She had them all.. she was stunned. She read up on it online and then I told her to ask gp to do blood test and see what’s happening to her b12 levels. She was dangerously low.. so low that if she had gave it more time she would have slipped into a coma or cardiac arrest. Shockingly she had believed the doctors that it was just her “anxiety“. My friend could have lost her life because of this situation. She was also swallowing pills that she didn’t need to be taking, the doctor ordered her on a course of vitamin b12 jags and she started to get well very slowly. Please don’t just take a gps word for it.. sometimes they get it wrong!