23 Signs of Nutrient Deficiency in Your Body

Key Points:

• Discusses 23 signs of nutrient deficiencies in the body.
• Identifies common causes for these deficiencies.
• Offers solutions and dietary suggestions based on signs.

Today we're going to talk about the 23 different signs that your body is deficient in vital nutrients. Now, the problem with me teaching you this is you're going to pretty much evaluate everyone you know. So you're going to have to withhold that temptation because people will be offended if you start explaining why they have these little white specks on their nails or why they might have erectile dysfunction.

Now let me first just tell you the three reasons why people are deficient.

Okay, number one: their guts are damaged, so they can't absorb nutrition. This is called malabsorption; it's a digestive barrier. Now, it could also be that you're missing a gallbladder or you're lacking bile and you can't pull in the fat-soluble vitamins: vitamin A, D, E, and vitamin K. Or it could be that you're not eating enough of the right foods, or the foods that you're eating are not nutrient-dense, which is a big problem because the soils unfortunately are really, really poor quality.

So if you're growing food on soil that's not soil but just dirt, you might get a really nice-looking tomato, but it's going to be tasteless. Why? Because the flavor chemicals are tied in with the nutrient density.

So we get these beautiful-looking vegetables that taste like nothing and then you're going to be craving Doritos and wanting other spices to try to flavor them up when in fact they should normally come there with nutrition.

So unfortunately, the farmers sell these products based on weight and volume, not nutrient-dense type foods.

Now, the third way that you become deficient is by consuming refined foods and sugars that deplete you and rob you of nutrition.

So let's just go through the list:

Number one: White spots on your nails. What does that mean? That is a zinc deficiency, but it's not really a zinc deficiency; it is consuming too much sugar that robs you of zinc. So if you look at your nail and you see this little white speck about halfway down the nail, you know about three months ago you had a lot of sugar or refined carbohydrates.

Let's say you had this huge birthday party and you ate the whole cake, and that depleted zinc from your body, creating that little white speck. So you have two options: you can stop eating sugar or you can take some zinc.

All right, number two: Oily skin. This is usually a problem with the oil glands of your body, called sebaceous glands, that make something called sebum, which is a type of oil. That usually occurs when you have an imbalance with androgens; you're producing too many androgens, which is the male hormone, and so one really key nutrient to regulate androgens is zinc. Okay, so oily skin can be greatly improved if you start taking trace minerals, specifically zinc.

Now, if you're female and you have too many androgens, you may have something called polycystic ovarian syndrome, and in that case, that's coming from too much insulin because the carbs are too high.

And of course, the combination of that sugar depleting zinc as well as lacking zinc and having an uncontrolled androgen situation means that with oily skin you just need to take some zinc and you need to make sure that your sugar is not very high.

So as you can see, zinc is involved with quite a few things.

All right, number three: Cracking on the corners of your mouth or cracked back of your heels. Okay, so that is a vitamin B2 deficiency. It could also be a vitamin B3 deficiency, but it definitely involves the B vitamins.

So the B vitamins are very important in preventing small fissures on your skin. If you have enough B2 or B3, you won't get them. You see a lot of people in the winter that get these fissures in their skin, and that normally comes because they don't have enough vitamin D because they're not in the sun.

Vitamin D feeds the microbes, and your microbes make the B vitamins, so that is a connection between cracked heels and cracked corners of your mouth, which I used to have as a kid, and it could be very easily handled by taking vitamin D or vitamin B2 in the form of nutritional yeast.

All right, the next one is flaking skin. A lot of times you'll see that around the nose or even the forehead, where the skin is kind of like a scaling flakiness. That is a deficiency of omega-3 fatty acids, and that occurs because you're consuming too much omega-6 fatty acids.

So the essential fatty acids that our body needs because the body doesn't make them are both omega-3 and omega-6. So if your ratios are off because you're doing too much omega-6 to omega-3, that's what happens with the skin. It becomes dry and flaky, with white little flakes usually around the nose or the forehead.

So you need to do two things: you need to start cutting down the omega-6 fatty acids. That means reduce the amount of nuts, peanut butter, chicken, fried foods, or going out to restaurants or fast food. All are very high in omega-6, like corn oil, soy oil, and cottonseed oil.

And you need to eat more fish, sardines, and cod liver oil. In fact, cod liver oil would be the quickest thing to handle this flaking skin.

All right, number five: Yellow eyes. That is a jaundice situation; it's a liver problem. It could be a gallbladder problem where the byproducts of your red blood cells are backing up through the system, through the liver and into the blood, and the byproducts of these red blood cells have a yellow color.

If your skin or the whites of your eyes are yellow, that is definitely a backup of the liver and gallbladder, and that is usually a deficiency of bile salts.

Bile salts allow the flow of stuff through the liver and through the bile ducts, and if you don't have enough bile, this thickened cholesterol sludge tends to back up and you develop these yellow eyes.

So a simple remedy would be to take some purified bile salts to open up this kind of clogged drain plug to allow the body to eliminate the byproduct of red blood cells.

All right, number six: Chronic cough. If someone has a chronic cough, they usually have a calcium deficiency. A little calcium, especially at night, works like magic for these chronic coughs.

Calcium improves the immune system, but it also relaxes the throat and the larynx, just like you might want to take for cramping in your calves.

Basically, it helps something called laryngeal spasm or this tightness in the structures of your throat. You might want to try calcium lactate, not calcium carbonate, and you don't need much; maybe 200 milligrams before you go to bed.

All right, number seven: Bleeding gums or reddened, swollen gums in your mouth. That is a classic vitamin C deficiency. Another term would be subclinical vitamin C, or a very mild version of scurvy.

In the vitamin C complex, we have different parts, and one part is vitamin P, which is the bioflavonoids. They don't call it vitamin P anymore; that was an older term, but that P stood for permeability and vascular permeability.

If the blood that goes through the capillaries leaks, you get all sorts of issues, one being bleeding gums. You can also get nosebleeds as well, but bleeding gums or reddened gums is classic vitamin C deficiency.

So you need to consume more leafy greens as well as avoid sugar because the chemistry of sugar is almost identical to vitamin C. If the body has sugar, any vitamin C that you're getting from foods or a supplement will not go in the body; it will always take up glucose or sugar before vitamin C.

All right, number eight: Night vision issues. Let's say you can't see in the dark or you're driving when it's raining and you're just having a hard time seeing clearly; that is a classic vitamin A deficiency or night blindness.

Are people usually deficient in vitamin A? Well, around the world they are. There are a lot of people who have a vitamin A deficiency simply because they're eating a lot of cereals and refined grains.

They may even be eating plant sources of vitamin A, but those are precursors. Like beta-carotene, for example; they call it vitamin A, but it's not the active form of vitamin A called retinol. Retinol usually comes from animal products like dairy or butter or fish, particularly fatty fish. Cod liver oil and animal liver, like beef liver for example, have a lot of vitamin A.

So if you're trying to get your vitamin A from plants, it's going to be very hard for you to convert that into the active form of vitamin A, which is retinol. But a really good source of retinol would be egg yolks. If you want to have enough retinol, just eat some egg yolks and you will definitely get enough, and then you'll start seeing better.

All right, the next one is chapped lips. The cause of chapped lips is the same cause as cracking in the corners of the mouth or on the heels; it's a vitamin B2 deficiency.

And so what would create a B2 deficiency? It's either you're consuming too many refined grains that are depleting B2 because naturally, the B vitamins, especially B2, are normally in grains. But basically, when you refine them, they get lost.

So one really good thing would be to stop eating grains and then start taking nutritional yeast. With nutritional yeast, I would always get it unfortified. This way, you'll get a complete spectrum of the B vitamins, and you'll notice your skin will be much better.

You can get conditions like pellagra with serious B vitamin deficiencies. With pellagra, you get devastating effects on your skin because B vitamins are not just about giving you energy; they're about helping you form normal tissue so it's not too roughened or cracked.

A lot of times, people will start using chapstick or certain types of lotions or oils on their lips, but what they find is that maybe an hour later it's right back to being chapped because sometimes they put other ingredients into these products, like alcohol or mineral oil, which pulls out a lot of the key nutrients or fats that you need to keep your skin the right texture.

All right, the next one is the pitting edema on the top of your foot or your ankles. This is a deficiency of potassium. When you don't have enough potassium or the ratios of potassium versus sodium, like sodium being way too high and potassium being way too low, refined sugar causes you to retain sodium and deplete potassium.

That's why diabetics often have so much sugar in their blood that they get a lot of swelling, especially in the ankles and the feet. If you push your finger into the foot or the ankle, it leaves a dent.

Now believe it or not, when I had blood sugar issues long ago in my mid-30s, I used to have pitting edema, and I didn't even know what it was. I would press into my ankle; I'm like, what is that dent? That was a severe potassium deficiency.

You want to start eating foods high in potassium. Leafy greens are a great source of potassium, but you need volumes—large salads, things like that—to give you enough potassium versus consuming more salt. Salt's okay as long as you have enough potassium, or you might want to get a quality electrolyte with a lot of potassium, but that will push fluid out of the ankles very quickly.

Now, next one is craving ice. If you're craving ice, chances are you're deficient in iron. You see this with kids; sometimes you see this with females who are going through their menstruation, where they're losing blood and iron, and they're becoming anemic.

They start eating more ice, trying to get iron, but unfortunately, ice doesn't give you iron, so you end up still deficient. The best sources of the iron that you need are red meat, and you can also get it from liver or eggs.

And for some reason, if you can't eat any of those products, you can also get them in a supplement—not an iron supplement, but a supplement that is either a grass-fed liver extract, or believe it or not, there are spleen extract products that are loaded with iron.

So that's one way to get it.

All right, next one is angina. That's chest pain. So that is where the heart is cramping, and your heart is having an attack, usually referred down the left arm. That is a classic vitamin E deficiency.

There are two things you need to know about vitamin E. What creates a deficiency usually is refined grains, as in breads, pasta, cereals, crackers, and biscuits. When you consume those products, they generally have a good amount of vitamin E in it, but when they add chlorine to bleach it, they oxidize it and kill all the vitamin E.

When it sits on the shelf, all that vitamin E is lost, and then when you consume those products, it creates a vitamin E deficiency. The most important tissue for vitamin E is the inside of your arteries, and if you don't have enough vitamin E, you get a lot of rusting and oxidation and you start getting clots, the formation of calcium, and all sorts of things that come in there.

So vitamin E is very important. The best way to prevent vitamin E deficiency is to stop consuming refined grains, and if you want a very good vitamin E, I would get the type that's tocotrienol, not tocopherol. The tocotrienols work about 50 times stronger than the tocopherols, so it’s really great for angina type chest pain.

All right, number 13: Leg or calf cramps. That is a magnesium deficiency. Where do you get magnesium? Well, it's at the heart of chlorophyll. Where do you get chlorophyll from? Green plants!

So again, we're coming back to that salad where you get a good amount of magnesium. There's also potassium in there and chlorophyll. But when you get leg cramps, chances are you're missing magnesium, and you need more. Usually, they go away.

There are other deficiencies that might lead to cramps, like potassium, sodium, and vitamin B1, but the most common one is the magnesium deficiency.

All right, number 14: Irritability, excessive thinking, feeling nervous tension, even grouchy or angry is a B1 deficiency. If you take a little nutritional yeast when you're irritable, boy, it just chills you out!

You'll feel really calm, and you'll be nice to be around—people will like you a lot better. Also, before you go to bed, if you have excessive thinking, just take some nutritional yeast before bed.

You can get it in tablets as well; I'll put a link down below for more information. But you talk about turning off that excessive thinking, solving all the problems of the world, which prevents you from sleep. It's really nice to be able to go to bed and not have to solve a million problems so you can drift off and sleep.

All right, number 15: Asthma. Asthma is a situation where you have inflammation in the lungs, and this can be greatly improved with vitamin D. If you're deficient in vitamin D, which most asthmatics are, boy, that can really reduce inflammation and help you breathe.

That's why during the summer months, when kids that have asthma are exposed to the sun, their symptoms go away. There's a very important video on a breathing method that can help asthma; I'll put that down below if you haven't seen it. It's a really important way of breathing to pull someone out of an asthmatic attack within minutes.

So you can check that out.

Number 16: Loss of the outer eyebrows. This is usually a thyroid problem or an iodine deficiency situation, where they're not able to make the thyroid hormones. When it comes to T4 and T3, you're really looking at the number of iodine molecules in that thyroid hormone.

T4 is an inactive thyroid hormone; T3 is the active form because the body strips off an iodine molecule. So if you don't have enough of either T4 or T3, then you could potentially lose the outer eyebrows as one of the symptoms.

So if you don't have eyebrows or you don’t have the outside, just take some iodine in the form of sea kelp. That's one of the best sources.

Tightness in the right trap area—if you have tightness right there, suspect the gallbladder and suspect a lack of bile salts. If you don't have the bile salts, things get stuck underneath the right rib cage.

There's a little nerve called the phrenic nerve that goes right up to the right side, and so if you take purified bile salts, it thins the bile and allows drainage. All of a sudden, your right trap feels loose, and it feels better.

I have additional information on that; I will share that in the description. But tightness in the right trap, 9 out of 10 times, is totally gallbladder-related because you don't have enough bile, and it's getting stuck and jammed up, backing up into the system and showing up in your right trap.

Number 18: Nightmares. One of the best ways to get rid of a nightmare is to take B1 nutritional yeast. There's this little thing in the brain called the amygdala, which regulates the emotion of fear.

It's involved in this fear response, of course, and nightmares involve fear. Its function is very similar to what the adrenals are all about, which is like a stress gland. But it's mainly involving the emotion of fear, and there are receptors for thiamine.

If you take more B1 thiamine, it just chill people out and they feel better, and they don’t have nightmares anymore. So if your kids have nightmares, give them a little nutritional yeast. But the real question is, why are they deficient? Because they're consuming refined carbohydrates in the form of all the refined grains: breads, pasta, cereals, crackers, those things, as well as sugar.

So you need to handle that as well.

Number 19: Craving for salty chips at night. If your body is deficient in sodium, you’re going to crave salt. But if you're exercising a lot and sweating, the need for sodium goes up.

One of the symptoms or signs of salt deficiency, or sodium deficiency, is craving for salt. If you're craving salt at night in the form of chips, the next day I would start to increase the amount of sea salt—not sodium chloride—in your diet.

Start beefing that up, putting it on your food, maybe even putting some in some water and drinking that to the point at night where you no longer crave salty chips.

Okay, then we know you have enough. For years I had this false idea that salt was bad, and I rarely consumed salt, so I always ate foods lacking salt, lacking fat. Of course, at night, I was downing all these chips and salty popcorn and salty Doritos, but during the day, I was pretty much salt-free. I had no concept of nutrition or this whole idea that salt was not bad if it was in the form of sea salt and if I had enough potassium.

I didn't know that at the time, but if you're craving salty chips at night, you need to balance your electrolytes by adding more sea salt and make sure you have enough potassium. You will find those cravings will go away.

All right, number 20: Stiff low back or low back pain is usually a vitamin D deficiency, especially if it's in the winter. All you need to do is take a good amount of vitamin D, or you can even make your own vitamin D.

I'll put that link down below if you haven't seen my recent video. But vitamin D is one of the best things to get rid of inflammation fast anywhere in the body, especially in the lower back.

I would recommend taking at least 10,000 international units per day, and it might be beneficial to take it right before bed or at a meal because if you take it right before bed, it actually enhances your sleep. And if you take it with meals, it's better absorbed.

The type of vitamin D I recommend is my own brand, and of course, I'm not biased, but I am sarcastic. In my vitamin D, I have put K2 in there; I've put MCT oil so that way you don't have to take extra oil; everything gets absorbed nicely.

All right, the next one is 21: You're craving dirt. Now, normally, most people don't crave dirt, but sometimes kids crave dirt or even women who are menstruating, losing blood, anemic, are craving dirt.

What they're trying to get is iron. Even your pets, like your dog, may start eating dirt; they need iron. The best source of iron is red meat. It gives you the best form of iron that's bioavailable versus consuming spinach or things like that.

So if you have anemia or you need iron, red meat would be the best thing to take or some liver with onions, of course.

All right, number 22: Erectile dysfunction; that's low testosterone. That is a deficiency of zinc. Zinc is one of the best things to increase testosterone and handle this symptom.

And lastly, number 23: Depression. If someone's depressed, they're usually vitamin D deficient. Vitamin D greatly boosts serotonin, which is a neurotransmitter. So it's like a natural form of Prozac without the side effects.

If you're depressed or know someone that's depressed, just give them a little vitamin D and see how fast their mood elevates.

Another thing to try, as a side note, is to start doing more fasting; that really elevates your mood as well.

Now, if you haven't seen my video on how to figure out liver problems, check that out; I put it right here.