From protecting against anaemia and maintaining a healthy metabolism to the healthy development of your unborn baby, there are lots of reasons to ensure you are getting enough vitamin B9.
Overview
Why do I need vitamin B9?
It can protect against one form of anaemia, encourage a healthy metabolism and may protect against heart disease. In pregnancy, it is important for the development of a healthy foetus
What are the symptoms of vitamin B9 deficiency?
B9 deficiency anaemia can make you tired and fatigued, and lead to memory problems and confusion. In pregnancy, vitamin B9 can protect against spine and brain defects.
How do I get vitamin B9?
Eat more green, leafy vegetables, asparagus, beetroot, beans, granary bread and citrus fruits.
How do I know if I am vitamin B9 deficient?
A simple blood test is all you need. Book yours now.
Did You Know?
Your body cannot ‘stockpile’ vitamin B9, so you need to have it every day.
What does vitamin B9 do?
All vitamins help your body’s organs and cells do their job. Vitamin B9 (known as folic acid) helps your body create new blood cells, protects against anaemia, and has an important role to play in ensuring a healthy pregnancy.
What are the symptoms of vitamin B9 deficiency?
A vitamin B9 deficiency can lead to a specific form of anaemia. Folic acid helps your body produce healthy blood cells, but when you do not have enough vitamin B9, production slows. This vitamin B9 (or folate) deficiency anaemia can result in a wide range of symptoms including:
- Feeling tired
- Looking pale
- Breathlessness
- An unexplained rash
- Tingling or a burning sensation in the hands or feet
- Lip or mouth sores, or cracks at the corners of the mouth
- Swollen tongue
- Irritability or depression
- Memory problems
Whilst all the above can be symptoms of anaemia, it is also possible for a vitamin B9 deficiency to result in several the above symptoms without having the accompanying anaemia.
Why do I need vitamin B9 in pregnancy?
Folic acid has an important role to play in pregnancy. It supports healthy development of a baby’s spinal cord and can protect against neural tube defects such as spina bifida.
The Department of Health recommends that you take 400 micrograms of folic acid as a supplement when you are trying to conceive, and that you continue taking the same supplement for the first 12 weeks of pregnancy (although there is no harm in taking it for longer).
If your doctor diagnoses your pregnancy as being at higher risk or a neural tube defect, you may be recommended a larger supplement.
How do I test for – and treat – vitamin B9 deficiency?
Better2Know’s vitamin B9 testing will help you understand the levels of folic acid within your body. If you have a folate deficiency, simple changes to your diet are usually enough to correct the problem.
Eating more green, leafy vegetables (e.g. cabbage, lettuce); asparagus, cauliflower, beetroot, granary bread and citrus fruits should help.
Occasionally, the body has difficulty absorbing vitamins, which means that even eating a diet rich in the above foods may not be enough to give you the vitamin B9 you need. A supplement may help but see your GP first.
To get tested, contact Better2Know on the number above.