Could Your Mouth Ulcers Be Due to a Vitamin Deficiency?

If you frequently suffer from mouth ulcers, it may be due to vitamin B12 deficiency. This vitamin helps the body make red blood cells, ensuring your nervous system remains healthy and can extract energy from food. People who are deficient in B12 can produce abnormally large red blood cells that don’t function correctly, and which is associated with anaemia. The deficiency can cause a whole host of symptoms, including mouth ulcers.

Symptoms of a Vitamin B12 Deficiency

Possible symptoms include a lack of energy or muscle weakness and extreme tiredness. In addition to ulcers, you could develop a sore and red tongue. You may feel breathless or faint or will have headaches, and you could lose your appetite.

Getting a Diagnosis and Treatment

Vitamin B12 deficiency is easily detected with a blood test, and it’s important to get a diagnosis and treatment as soon as you can. While some of the symptoms will improve with treatment, others may be irreversible if you have been deficient in B12 for a long time. Food that contains vitamin B12 includes dairy products, meat and fish, eggs, fortified breakfast cereals, and yeast extract.