B Vitamins, Your Physical & Mental Health

Did you know that B vitamins are essential for both your physical as well as your mental health?

B vitamins are required to perform many functions of the body. They aid in breaking down simple carbohydrates into glucose, which fuels the entire body, including the brain. They help manufacture new red blood cells and help them carry iron and create hemoglobin. But the most dramatic benefits of B vitamins are seen in relation to the brain and nervous system.

Deficiencies in B vitamins can cause any problem from simple fatigue, all the way to death. In between these extremes lie a host of symptoms and diseases including many mental health issues from depression, anxiety, mood swings and irritability to paranoia, dementia, delusions and psychosis.

If you are dealing with any of these issues, realize that B vitamins in their natural form are destroyed by processing foods. There is no place for processed foods in a truly healthy diet. Processed foods are generally filled with trans fats, GMOs, sugar, high fructose corn syrup, artificial flavors, artificial colors and preservatives. If you are dealing with any mental health issue, a clean, healthy diet is the first and most important step to treatment. If you are seeing a mental health professional for treatment of one or more of the above mentioned mental conditions and you are not addressing your diet, you are falling far short of the progress that you could be making.

Consuming a whole food diet, which doesn’t contain GMOs and processed foods and is rich in nutrient dense foods such as fresh organic fruits and vegetables, fermented vegetables, beans, lentils, grass fed beef, wild salmon, nuts and berries, will greatly enhance your mental function. Fiber is also vitally important to keep you regular and to eliminate toxins from your colon. Try to eat fruits and vegetables from all of the colors of the rainbow. This will vary your phytonutrients that are rich in antioxidants.

B vitamins are water soluble, which means we do not store them in our fat tissues the way we store fat soluble vitamins. B12 is the only exception; it is stored in the liver. Animal protein is the only food source for B12, which is vital for the brain and nervous system. Since we do not store the other B vitamins, we need to eat good sources of B vitamins each day.

If you do choose to supplement, know that our bodies do not utilize synthetic vitamins as well as whole food vitamins. Make sure your vitamins are from a good source.

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