Always feeling tired and irritable, even after a good night’s sleep?
You may be suffering from a vitamin B deficiency. It has become increasingly clear that since the B vitamins occur together in food, no person is deficient in one B vitamin without being deficient in all of them.
There are, however, as many degrees and variations of B-vitamin deficiencies as there are different individuals.
Formerly the disease beriberi was thought to be caused by a deficiency of vitamin B1 (thiamine) and pellagra by lack of vitamin B3 (niacin).
When human volunteers stayed on diets lacking vitamin B1 (thiamine) or vitamin B3 (niacin) neither beriberi nor pellagra has been produced. These diseases actually result from multiple deficiencies of all the B vitamins, the lack of vitamin B1 or niacin being only more prominent.

Here are some common symptoms of vitamin B deficiencies:
• Waking up more tired than when going to sleep
• Rings under the eyes
• Poor concentration
• Irritable
• Depression (or shades of it)
• Mental fogginess
• Falling hair
• Bad breath

Your tongue
Generally, you can tell how adequate your intake of B vitamins has been by looking at your tongue.
It should be moderate in size, an even pink in colour, and smooth around the edges without coating or indentations showing where it has rested against your teeth.
The taste buds should be uniformly small and cover the entire surface and edges. If you can find a healthy child, you may see what the normal tongue should look like.
When the B vitamins are under-supplied, many changes take place in this organ.
The first change appears to be enlargement of the buds at the front and sides of the tongue.
Later these buds become small or even disappear, making the tip and sides smooth, whereas the buds farther back will progressively enlarge. These buds have a flat appearance like button mushrooms.
In a severe B-vitamin deficiency, the tongue may be so cut by grooves and fissures that it looks like a relief map of the Grand Canyon and surrounding territory or a flank steak run through a tenderizing machine.
When the deficiencies are still more severe, the taste buds literally disappear. This extreme condition is found most often in elderly persons whose diets have been inadequate for years; they complain that their foods has little flavour. In some cases such tongues are intensely sore.
The size of the tongue also indicates deficiencies of these vitamins. The tongue may be large, beefy, and full of water (edematous).
Often such a tongue shows scallops around the edges where it has rested against the teeth.
The beefy tongue is so named because it has the appearance of beef and is usually an intense deep red.
On the other hand, a vitamin B deficiency can cause the tongue to become small, or atrophied.
Source: Excerpted from Let’s Eat Right To Keep Fit by Adelle Davis.

* For more information about vitamin deficiencies, please contact Anya of LV Nutritional Products (Pty) Ltd on (011) 454-8892 or 083 748 2230, or lvnutritionalptoducts@worldonline.co.za or www.three6t5.co.za.