Full Transcript Nail Signs of Zinc Deficiency 0:00 Did you know that there are some signals on your body that can tell you if you're deficient in some nutrients? 0:05 I'm an naturopathic doctor, so I love helping people to get their nutrition high and to digestion really healthy and functioning well so that you can absorb 0:14 nutrients from your food. 0:14 So let's look at some of these. 0:16 The first one's super easy. 0:17 It's on you fingernails. 0:18 Take a look your fingernail and see if there any little white dots. 0:24 And the white dots look like this and they are usually horizontal lines. 0:29 Sometimes if you've like smashed your finger in a car door, of course there's going to be a markup from that. 0:35 So don't count those ones. 0:37 But if see a lot of those little white lines, those can be signs of zinc deficiency. 0:41 And zinc is super important for men's health especially. 0:45 It's great for fertility in general. 0:48 If you don' have a lots of animal protein in your diet, especially if your a vegan, Zinc is not very common in the diet or it's not as easy to get to. 0:58 Oysters are the main powerhouse of getting zinc in a diet. 1:02 So if there's a bunch of little white spots on there, that could be a nutrient deficiency for zinc. 1:07 Now, I like to always give this disclaimer with zinc, but as you know, consult with your own naturopath or your doctor or nutritionist about this for you 1:17 and the specifics. 1:18 But if you end up taking a zinc supplement, let's say, you watch this video and you're super excited, be sure that it has copper in there as well because 1:27 zinc and copper work synergistically. 1:29 So if take zinc all by itself, your body will still be very happy about it most of the time, but for it to absorb appropriately and for to keep that balance 1:38 in your having zinc with a little bit of copper. 1:40 It's a really good place to start. 1:42 Let's look at the nails a little bit more. 1:44 So this one, you might just know this about your nails already, but if they're brittle or tend to splinter, that can be a nutrient deficiency at large, 1:53 But it can indicate just a couple of specific things.
Brittle and Spoon-Shaped Nails 1:56 It could be iron deficiency, it could biotin deficiency or vitamin B7. 2:01 It can also sometimes mean just calcium or other minerals are deficient. 2:05 So brittle nails isn't necessarily a tried and true sign of one particular thing, but brittle nail in general can mean that there's a weakening in the 2:16 structure and it can use some more nutrients. 2:18 So always important to do further testing to figure out for sure if any of these neutral deficiencies are true for you. 2:23 But it can be a good place to start. 2:25 Well, iron is really a fun one because there are a couple of other things that can show if you're iron deficient. 2:30 One of them, which is a classic iron deficiency nail type, is the spoon shaped nail. 2:36 And this is very much like looks like a spoon, a little concave shape. 2:42 This is if you have nails that are this shape, probably been a while that you haven't had iron. 2:48 But you know, it's good to check. 2:49 Good to good. 2:51 It could also be vitamin C. 2:53 Vitamin C and iron work in the same way that copper and zinc do. 2:57 They help each other out. 2:59 vitamin c especially helps iron get absorbed even better. 3:02 That's one of the main things that spoon-shaped nails because it could mean an iron deficiency or it would mean a vitamin C deficiency. 3:11 And since they go so well together, they can go hand in hand. 3:14 Why not feed two birds with one seed? 3:16 So the spoon shaped nails, that can be really interesting to look at too. 3:19 Let's do one more thing on the nails. 3:22 So this one, the Take a look more closely and you might even feel your fingernails like rub the soft part of your finger pad along your nail and see if 3:33 you can feel some vertical ridges. 3:36 If you could feel vertical ridge, that could also be a sign of iron deficiency, but it could be protein deficiency too. 3:43 That one is kind of interesting. 3:44 And you might just notice, oh, maybe I've never felt my nails before. 3:49 It's interesting to see if there's different texture on each of the different nail types. 3:53 So nails can be a first good place to start.
Keratosis Pilaris and Vitamin A 3:56 If you notice some of those patterns, take a mental note of it. 4:00 I always, always recommend testing to know for sure. 4:04 These can a good places to stop. 4:05 And I'll actually drop in the description here in comments some tests that you can do to see for sure if you have some of these deficiencies, 4:13 like looking more specifically at iron, protein, and zinc. 4:16 But let's talk about another nutrient deficiency. 4:19 This one is called keratosis pilaris. 4:23 These ones you might know more familiarly as bumps on the back of the arms. 4:28 So go ahead and feel the backs of arms and see if there's any smoothness, any bumps. 4:35 This one is a common sign of vitamin A deficiency or omega threes. 4:41 Oh, here's one more where they work together synergistically. 4:45 Omega threes are fatty acids. 4:48 They are most commonly in fatty fish. 4:51 The fattiest fish are the ones that live in the coldest waters, so salmon mackerel, sardines, these have a lot of omega-3s in them. 5:01 Because they're a healthy fat, vitamin A is absorbed better with omega 3s, because vitamin a is a fat soluble vitamin. 5:10 So there's four fat-soluble vitamins, Vitamin A, D, E, and K. 5:16 Usually the bumps on the backs of the arms only happen with the vitamin-A and omega threes. 5:21 So if you're like, oh no, I have bumps on the backs of my arms, maybe compete two birds with one seed with the vitamin A and omega-3s together, 5:30 since the omega 3s will help the, uh, vitamin a absorb better. 5:33 So that one's a fun one. 5:35 And you might be thinking, or at least from my, my naturopathic brain gets going and I'm like all of these deficiencies and be so, 5:43 so common for, for people to, to have, but especially if your on a plant-based diet, I love plant-based eating, I think it's incredible. 5:52 I used to be a vegetarian for many years, and I was even a vegan for a portion of that. 5:58 And I still would love to, be I'm not anymore. 6:01 But I chose that way of eating because it felt good to me ethically. 6:05 It felt aligned with my values. 6:08 and i also just love vegetables, like a good natural bath. 6:13 I noticed that when I was eating that way, I didn't feel very good. 6:16 First of all, it was just tired and floated quite often. 6:20 But I had all of these. 6:22 Well, not quite the spoon shaped nails, but I have brittle nails. 6:24 I've had a lot of those red bumps. 6:29 And this is the last nutrient deficiency that we'll talk about, but I had a ton of canker sores.
Mouth Signs of B12 Deficiency 6:33 And so it is so important to find out what eating pattern works well for your body, what works best for you. 6:41 So doing more specific testing can be so helpful just to see what is your your nutrient deficient. 6:49 Or maybe is there something that you're putting into your body or not putting it into the body that doesn't align very well. 6:54 So one of the tests that I'll put in the description here is also a food intolerance test. 7:00 Because at the time when I was a vegetarian and a vegan, I wasn't eating, well when i was vegetarian especially, i wasn' eating any meat. 7:08 I eating a ton of eggs and soy as my main protein sources. 7:11 turned out I have a food intolerance to both eggs and saline. 7:14 So no wonder I didn't feel very good. 7:16 It's so important to find out what works well on your system. 7:20 With the other piece, this other deficiency that we can look for is actually on the mouth. 7:26 If you've got a mirror or your phone nearby, take a look. 7:30 There's a couple of things we could look here. 7:31 One of them is something called glossitis, and it's where the tongue gets really quite red. 7:38 This could mean a couple of things. 7:41 It doesn't necessarily mean nutrient deficiency, but if the tone is really bright red and also maybe a little bit tender, 7:48 that can be a sign of B12 deficiency. 7:50 B-12 shows up a lot in the mouth, B12 deficiency can also cause something called angular oculitis, where the corners of the mouth are pretty easily cracked. 8:01 This is different than like a cold sore or something like that, but it can really be when the cracks keep happening or they get deep, 8:10 they can get painful. 8:11 That can be a B-12-deficiency sign too. 8:14 The last one that you can come and see sometimes with B 12 deficiency is those mouth ulcers that I was mentioning that it used to get. 8:22 Uh, canker sores are sometimes what they're called or apthosulcers. 8:26 So, so painful. 8:27 And I remember when I used get them, I, there would be the size of a dime and they would last for about five weeks. 8:35 Thankfully that doesn't happen anymore. 8:37 I usually just don't get that. 8:38 But if I get done, they don' get big and don''t stay that long just because I've worked on this nutrient palette and got myself more balanced. 8:45 But if you have canker sores, I'm so sorry. 8:48 I feel for you. 8:49 So the beefy tongue, the cuts on the edges of the lips, cankers sore that come pretty frequently or they don't go away very fast, 8:59 those can all be B12 cells. 9:01 It's so interesting to notice how the body is so intelligent and it tells us these things on these physical signs before we even have to do a test. 9:10 But testing can let us know for sure. 9:13 and it lets you know how much of a repletion needs to happen. 9:17 So check out the test and what I'd like to recommend too is talk with someone. 9:24 Talk with a health professional to see if these are aligning. 9:28 I offer free 15-minute phone consultations and I'll put the link in the description as well. 9:33 Love to connect with you and see any of these signs are showing up for you or if you'd like to do some further testing. 9:38 It can really be a powerful roadmap to help you figure out what's your body need to rebalance. 9:44 So check out those links. 9:45 In the next video, we'll talk about some simple tricks to increase digestion because sometimes it's something that you're maybe not getting in your diet. 9:55 Maybe you are not having enough nutrition there. 9:58 But sometimes it's the body's not absorbing those nutrients. 10:02 The digestive system isn't pulling them in from your food. 10:05 So that's where the rubber meets the road on looking at these colors from a nutrition standpoint and a gut health standpoint, 10:12 and finding that middle ground so that you can get all the nutrition from you food, if you're taking the efforts to eat healthy, 10:19 you want to make sure that your absorbing them too. 10:20 Definitely check out the next video for a simple trick to increase digestive health and increase absorption of your foods.
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