The Common Vitamin Deficiency in Numb Hands and Pins and Needles
Dr. Berg’s Healthy Keto and Intermittent Fasting Podcast
Dr. Eric Berg
4.7 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 16 October 2023
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today I’m going to share one of the most ignored causes of numb hands and feet or a pins and needles sensation in the hands and feet.
Myelin is the coating around the nervous system, and it allows nerve impulses to travel. Without enough myelin, you may experience paresthesia or abnormal sensations.
One cause of numb hands and feet is diabetes. A thiamine deficiency may also be involved because it’s needed to make myelin. Taking fat-soluble thiamine (benfotiamine) and changing your diet may help improve this situation.
Another big cause of numbness in the hands is a vitamin B12 deficiency. Vitamin B12 deficiency is very common.
The loss of myelin commonly occurs in the cervical spine (neck), and the degeneration can lead to various problems throughout the body.
Other symptoms of a vitamin B12 deficiency:
• An imbalance in your gait
• Urinary retention or bladder problems
• Problems in the feet
• Shooting pain in the spine when moving your head down
• Neck stiffness
One of the biggest causes of a vitamin B12 deficiency is a loss of stomach acid, which can happen with age. Without enough stomach acid, you can’t absorb vitamin B12. Betaine hydrochloride can help acidify the stomach and increase B12 absorption.
Other causes of low vitamin B12:
• A lack of vitamin B12 in the diet
• Antacids
• Metformin
• A certain genetic weakness
• Inflammation in the stomach or intestines
• Gastric bypass surgery
You may need to go beyond consuming foods rich in vitamin B12 and take it as a supplement. In my opinion, the best supplement would be methylcobalamin.
If you have a genetic issue, you may need a supplement that contains methylcobalamin, methylfolate, and vitamin B6.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Let's talk about a hidden factor, okay, a vitamin deficiency in numb hands or pins and needles in your hands or your feet. |
| 0:10.9 | Okay. |
| 0:11.7 | A lot of people have this. |
| 0:13.2 | They might even have carpal tunnel syndrome. |
| 0:15.4 | And there's a hidden cause for it. |
| 0:17.6 | And I want to talk about it. |
| 0:18.8 | But I first want to kind of give you some definitions of |
| 0:21.4 | some words that might be new. The first term is myelin, myelin. Myelin is the coding around |
| 0:29.8 | the nervous system. It allows nerve impulses to travel. And without this myelin, you're going to have |
| 0:36.7 | a short circuit in the electrical system, |
| 0:38.9 | and you can get all sorts of what's called paresthesia, which means abnormal sensation. |
| 0:45.5 | And peristhesia could be a combination of numbness, tingling, pins and needles, cold, hot, burning pain |
| 0:53.3 | can come from a lack of myelin on your nervous system |
| 0:59.3 | or your spinal column. Okay. And the medical term for that is demyelination, the removal of this |
| 1:06.1 | myelin sheath around the nervous system. Now, and there's another term I want to introduce you to |
| 1:10.3 | and that's called mylopathy. Okay, what's mylopathy? Mylopathy, if you break it down, |
| 1:16.9 | myel meaning spinal cord, and pathy meaning suffering. Okay, so your spinal cord is suffering, |
| 1:26.4 | you know, from various reasons. And one reason is the myelin sheath is |
| 1:29.9 | breaking down. And when that myelin sheath breaks down, you start feeling sensations in your hands |
| 1:37.3 | and your feet. One cause of this could be diabetes, okay, where you have the loss of this milden sheath because your sugar's too |
| 1:46.9 | high. And that's usually a deficiency of thymine, okay, because thymine is also involved in making |
| 1:53.6 | this myelin. And so you would just take more thymine and change your diet, and that problem |
... |
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