Vitamin B Deficiency – The Best Treatment?
Vitamins and minerals – the salt and pepper of any advertisement for healthy food products. As important as these nutrients are, a lot of health products and supplements today are proven to be unnecessary and redundant. Vitamin deficiency is becoming less common in urbanized parts of the world, but this issue, unfortunately, still exists. Vitamin B, for example, is one of the common vitamins found to be deficient, especially in vulnerable groups. So how do we tackle this deficiency problem? What are the options for vitamin B deficiency treatment?
The first step in getting to the solution is to address the problem. In order to get treated for vitamin deficiency, a diagnosis is needed. But how do we know someone is not getting enough vitamins? For vitamin B, the characteristics of its deficiency include anemia, cracked lips, fatigue, loss of appetite, confusion, and more serious manifestations like pellagra and beriberi. Beriberi usually comes with muscle wasting and disrupted sensory and motor function, while pellagra with its dementia, diarrhea and dermatitis. This wide range of features is due to the fact that vitamin B is not a single entity but rather a family that consists of vitamin B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B7, B9 and B12 with their respective functions in various body processes.
Today, most cases of vitamin B deficiency are caused by underlying conditions like gut absorption problems and alcoholism, instead of low intake. But insufficient intake from diet can still happen if a person is a strict or picky eater, whether due to religious teaching, personal belief and philosophy or just someone following a trend. Still, the next logical step if you are found to be deprived of some nutrients is to simply increase that particular nutrients in daily consumption. It helps to know what sorts of food are rich in vitamin B. if you normally eat eggs, meat, fish, potatoes and other green leafy vegetables, the odds are you are getting plenty of vitamin B. if this is the case, there is no need for supplements as vitamin B is water-soluble and any extra dose that you took will be eliminated through urine.
One measure that some countries are taking, in their fight to end vitamin deficiency, is by adding vitamins or other nutrients in widely consumed food products such as breads, grains and cereals. These are called fortified food products. Even if a person does not consume food that is rich in vitamins, he or she can still gain these vital nutrients through the fortified food. This is a similar initiative that sees iodine fortified into salts and breads in quite a number of countries and it is proven to be an effective way to combat iodine deficiencies.
The use of supplements perhaps is the most well-known way to get additional vitamins outside of food intake. While there are supplements like folic acid that needs to be taken by pregnant women to prevent birth defects in babies, most of the others are just plain unneeded. Today, even people who are getting enough from their meals are buying more supplements. But for the people who need them, vitamin products like Neurobion can be a good choice.
The options mentioned are meant to be used to correct any deficiency of vitamins, as these cases of nutrient deficiency are still existing around the globe. However, it is wise to try and evaluate which way is working and what kinds of products are needed rather than just start grabbing and buying blindly.
