3 Vitamin Deficiences

Here i'm gonna show you 3 interesting diseases linked to vitamin deficiences.

"3 Beriberi

Beriberi is a disease whose symptoms include weight loss, body weakness and pain, brain damage, irregular heart rate, heart failure, and death if left untreated. It was endemic in Asia for a long time. Strangely, Beriberi occurred almost exclusively amongst the richer members of society, and was unknown in the poor. Although recognized to be a nutritional deficiency, doctors were baffled as to why wealthy people with plentiful and clean food would fall victim to beriberi whereas the poor with limited food did not. As it turned out, beriberi is a deficiency of vitamin B1 (thiamine) which is found in cereal grain husks. The rich had been washing their rice so well that they removed the husk with its vitamin B1, whereas the poor did not wash their food as well and consumed enough vitamin B1. White bread can also potentially cause beriberi, so today developed countries add extra vitamin B1 to it. Beriberi is now found mostly in alcoholics whose bodies become poor at absorbing vitamin B1.

2 Pellagra 

After the discovery and exploration of the Americas, corn was grown by settlers and all around the world. The natives who had originally grown it would treat it with lime, but the taste was unpleasant to the Europeans and they omitted this part of the preparation. As corn was increasingly farmed, the disease pellagra began to spread. Symptoms included diarrhea, dermatitis, dementia, and finally death. Many people believed that corn was in some way toxic, but could not explain the lack of pellagra among native New Worlders. After thousands of deaths, it was discovered that corn, although high in carbohydrates, lacked vitamin B3 (niacin). Farmers would sometimes eat little other than corn and succumb to the deficiency. The Native Americans had actually been using lime as a way of adding vitamin B3. Today it is well known that by eating a variety of foods vitamin B3 is freely obtained and pellagra is easily treated.

1 Rickets


Rickets causes muscles and bones to become soft, which can cause permanent deformities in children. It is most common in children and infants who have a poor diet or who are housebound, but is nowadays relatively rare in developed countries. Breast-fed babies are at higher risk if they or their mothers do not take in enough sunlight, and baby formula is now designed to prevent this. Rickets is caused by a lack of vitamin D or of calcium. Vitamin D is required for calcium to be properly absorbed into bones to strengthen them. Adults rarely develop rickets because their bones are not growing and do not need much calcium. Vitamin D itself is obtained from many foods but the body can only use it if it has been converted into its active form via sunlight. In recent years there has been a slight increase in children with rickets possibly due to too many of them staying indoors.

By Kate Mulcahy, ListVerse.com"

Source: http://listverse.com/2012/03/16/top-10-vitamin-deficiencies/

It's really interesting to see how these diseases works. At least we've taken a step ahead of it, with multivitamin supplies we can avoid those diagnostics. Unfortunally these diseases are still common in Africa and some South American countries.