What Your Body is Telling You About Your Diet

When your body is trying to tell you something — for example, that you’re skimping on critical vitamins — it may go to some strange lengths.  Check out these unusual vitamin-deficiency warning signs. The good news: Most are fixable with dietary tweaks — all the more reason to make nutrition a top priority. When food cures don’t work, be sure to check in with your doctor.
 
 
Cracks at the corners of your mouth.

Deficiency: Iron, zinc, and B vitamins like niacin (B3), riboflavin (B2), and B12.
 
It’s common if you’re a vegetarian to not get enough iron, zinc, and B12; or if you’re skimping on essential immunity-building protein due to dieting.

Solution: Eat more poultry, salmon, tuna, eggs, oysters, clams, sun-dried tomatoes, Swiss chard, tahini, peanuts, and legumes like lentils. Iron absorption is enhanced by vitamin C, which also helps fight infection, so combine these foods with veggies like broccoli, red bell peppers, kale, and cauliflower.
 
Red, scaly rash on your face (and sometimes elsewhere) and hair loss.

Deficiency: Biotin (B7), known as the hair vitamin.
 
While your body stores fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E, K), it doesn’t store most B vitamins, which are water-soluble. Body builders take note: Eating raw eggs makes you vulnerable, because a protein in raw eggs called avidin inhibits the body’s ability to absorb biotin.

Solution: Reach for more cooked eggs (cooking deactivates avidin), salmon, avocados, mushrooms, cauliflower, soybeans, nuts, raspberries, and bananas.
 
 
Red or white acnelike bumps, typically on the cheeks, arms, thighs and butt.

Deficiency: Essential fatty acids and vitamins A and D.
 
Solution: Skimp on saturated fat and trans fats, which you should be doing anyway, and increase healthy fats. Focus on adding more salmon and sardines, nuts like walnuts and almonds, and seeds like ground flax, hemp, and chia. For vitamin A, pile on leafy greens and colorful veggies like carrots, sweet potatoes, and red bell peppers. This provides beta carotene, a precursor to vitamin A, which your body will use to make vitamin A. For vitamin D, though, we recommend a supplement—5,000 IU a day in one that also contains vitamins A and K, which help with D absorption.
 
 
Tingling, prickling, and numbness in hands, feet or elsewhere.

Deficiency: B vitamins like folate (B9), B6, and B12.
 
It’s a problem directly related to the peripheral nerves and where they end in the skin these symptoms can be combined with anxiety, depression, anemia, fatigue, and hormone imbalances.

Solution: Seek out spinach, asparagus, beets, beans (pinto, black, kidney, lima), eggs, octopus, mussels, clams, oysters, and poultry.
 
 
Muscle cramps in the form of stabbing pains in toes, calves, arches of feet, and backs of legs.

Deficiency: Magnesium, calcium, and potassium. If it’s happening frequently, it’s a tip-off that you’re lacking in these. And if you’re training hard, you can lose more minerals (and water-soluble B vitamins) through heavy sweating.

Solution: Eat more bananas, almonds, hazelnuts, squash, cherries, apples, grapefruit, broccoli, bok choy, and dark leafy greens like kale, spinach, and dandelion.