Vitamin B12 and your Sex Drive: If your libido is low, then you may need for vitamin B12- it’s great for fertility and sustaining a healthy sex drive! Conversely, vitamin B12 deficiency can have the opposite effect, making it harder to conceive and carry a baby to full term.
Let’s talk about Vitamin B12
When you think about vitamin B12 deficiency, you normally link it with fatigue, memory loss, depression, and that annoying painful numbness in your hands, feet, arms, and legs. These symptoms can be debilitating, and won’t go away until you replenish your vitamin B12 levels.
But few people realize that vitamin B12 also plays an important part in your reproductive system functioning. With so much focus on the importance of taking plenty of folic acid, another B vitamin, during pregnancy, much of the attention is taken away from the necessity to also get plenty of vitamin B12 before, during, and after pregnancy.
Vitamin B12 not only increases energy, revving up your sex drive, but it also promotes good fertility. In studies where women suffering from severe vitamin B12 anemia were trying to conceive, most saw positive results after supplementing with more vitamin B12.
In men, vitamin B12 deficiency can lower sperm count and impair erectile functioning.
Having babies
Scientists believe that vitamin B12, along with other essential B vitamins boost the sex drive by regulating sex hormones, keeping them in good balance to enable fertility.
Likewise, a deficiency in vitamin B12 can cause symptoms that negatively affect your ability to procreate, including low libido, impotence, difficulty conceiving a baby, depression, anxiety, miscarriages, premature births, and increased risk for birth defects and failure to thrive.
Get checked!
Before planning a family, it’s vitally important to make sure you don’t have vitamin B12 deficiency. If your blood test comes out positive or you experience some of the telltale signs of vitamin B12 deficiency, then increase your vitamin B12 uptake before trying to have a baby, and continue through the rest of your pregnancy and while breastfeeding.
Symptoms of vitamin B12 deficiency
Symptoms of vitamin B12 deficiency to look out for:
- Depression
- Poor sex drive, loss of interest
- Anxiety
- Brain fog
- Memory loss
- Poor concentration
- Constant fatigue
- Painful tingling and numbness, particularly in hands and feet
- Sore, burning red tongue
- Difficulty walking in a straight line
- Muscle pain, spasms
- Decreased muscular coordination
- Frequent miscarriages
- Fertility problems
More on B12 deficiency
Have you noticed any of the symptoms mentioned, but didn’t know what they mean? For many, a diagnosis of vitamin B12 deficiency comes as a shock.
That’s because many of us eat a healthy diet with lots of protein foods that supply vitamin B12. Yet, a rising number of people in the US suffer from vitamin B12 deficiency caused by vitamin B12 malabsorption- that means that regardless of how much meat, fish, or poultry you eat, you still are unable to maintain adequate amounts of vitamin B12 in your blood supply.
Many factors in American life contribute to this, including medications for diabetes and acid reflux, bariatric surgery, long-term pain medications, antidepressants and antibiotics, autoimmune disorders, and also old age.
Vitamin B12 Deficiency Caused by 33 Medications
To replenish vitamin B12 supplies when you are unable to absorb it through food, it’s necessary to take non-dietary forms of vitamin B12 that are absorbed through the skin and muscle tissues, bypassing the digestive system completely.
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Image CC license Angela/flickr
