Symptoms of vitamin B12 deficiency

B12 deficiency can cause:
• extreme tiredness (fatigue)
• lack of energy (lethargy)
• breathlessness
• feeling faint
• headaches
• pale skin
• noticeable heartbeats (palpitations)
• hearing sounds coming from inside the body, rather than from an outside source (tinnitus)
• loss of appetite and weight loss

If you have anaemia caused by a vitamin B12 deficiency, you may have other symptoms, such as:
• a pale yellow tinge to your skin
• a sore and red tongue (glossitis)
• mouth ulcers
• pins and needles (paraesthesia)
• changes in the way that you walk and move around
• disturbed vision
• irritability
• depression
• changes in the way you think, feel and behave
• a decline in your mental abilities, such as memory, understanding and judgement (dementia)

Some of these symptoms can also happen in people who have a vitamin B12 deficiency but have not developed anaemia.

Causes of vitamin B12 deficiency

-Pernicious anaemia
-Diet
-Conditions affecting the stomach or the intestines
-Medicines  
Some types of medicine can lead to a reduction in the amount of vitamin B12 in your body 
-Functional vitamin B12 deficiency
Some people can experience problems related to a vitamin B12 deficiency, despite appearing to have normal levels of vitamin B12 in their blood. This can happen as the result of a problem known as functional vitamin B12 deficiency, where there's a problem with the proteins that help transport vitamin B12 between cells. This results in neurological complications involving the spinal cord.

Treating vitamin B12 deficiency

Vitamin B12 deficiency anaemia is usually treated with injections of vitamin B12.
Loading dose of 5 injections within a 2 weeks period followed by one injection every 12 weeks.
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