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How do you know if you are deficient in vitamins?

, medical expert
Last reviewed: 04.07.2025
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Sometimes it is difficult for a person to understand that he lacks vitamins. We will tell you which symptoms will help you.

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Main symptoms of vitamin deficiency

The most obvious symptoms of avitaminosis (lack of vitamins in the body) are weakness, rapid fatigue, you constantly want to sleep and do not want to work at all.

The largest human organ by area – skin – can also tell you that there are not enough vitamins in the body. It starts to turn red, become covered with wrinkles, peel, and sometimes has an uneven shade or turns pale.

Eyes can also tell a lot about vitamin deficiency. The whites of the eyes are dull, covered with a mesh of red veins. You quickly get tired when working at the computer, and begin to see poorly.

Your head will also tell you that your vitamin menu is very poor. It may hurt, spin, your hair may fall out, you may be bothered by constant temporal pain.

Lips are an excellent mirror of a lack of vitamins in the diet. Cracks, boils, so-called pustules, and rashes, which are difficult to get rid of, can appear on them.

The tongue, teeth and gums are also an indicator of whether everything is in order with your vitamin diet. If there are not enough vitamins, the tongue may swell and hurt, the gums may bleed even with slight pressure or even just like that, the teeth tend to wobble and fall out.

If you have found at least one of these symptoms or all at once, go to the doctor immediately for an examination. He will prescribe you vitamins in the right doses, combinations and ratios. Because if you decide to take all the vitamins at once, hypervitaminosis (hypovitaminosis) can manifest itself in the same way as a lack of vitamins - with malfunctions in the body.

What vitamins are most lacking?

The worst situation, according to surveys, is with a lack of vitamin C - ascorbic or folic acid. More than 70% of children and the same number of adults lack this vitamin. The deficiency of this vitamin causes the most harm to pregnant women and the elderly, whose bodies are most vulnerable to any kind of infection and pathogens of colds.

More than half of our country's population lacks B vitamins. If we talk about vitamin B6 separately, its deficiency worries almost 90% of expectant mothers.

What to do if you have a vitamin deficiency?

First of all, you need to know that one vitamin will not do the trick. If by all indications you have a vitamin deficiency, then most likely it is not one, but a whole complex.

Pay attention to your menu. If you stopped eating animal food, then you will most likely have a deficiency of vitamins E, A, D, which you get from it.

If you are a meat eater and do not really respect plant products, then you will probably have a lack of vitamin C and some B vitamins.

What to do in such a case?

Be sure to balance your diet and do not starve yourself for a long time on mono-diets - this will not bring good results. You will disrupt the metabolic processes in the body, deprive it of useful substances, and you will still return the lost kilograms within a few days.

Bring back into your diet all the necessary foods from which you get vitamins: meat, milk, eggs,

Be sure to visit a doctor who will help you choose pharmacy vitamins taking into account your age, physical activity and work schedule.

Be healthy and do not self-medicate. Your vitamins are in your hands.

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