Food for thought
Exhaustion: a symptom of the season. But new guidelines point to another culprit. Here’s how to tell if your tiredness is masking something more sinister
THE EXPERT
Laura Tilt, registered dietitian and founder of tiltnutrition.co.uk
’Tis the season of TATT – and for reasons unrelated to unwanted gifts. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, it stands for ‘tired all the time’, with one in eight of us now needing an acronym to articulate our exhaustion*.
But while December is one culprit, fresh guidelines from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) point to another. Among the symptoms of vitamin B12 deficiency is fatigue, with NICE now advising that anyone with at least one symptom and risk factor be offered a blood test to rule it out. So when does your tiredness become a health risk?
If you’re unfamiliar with B12, it’s a water-soluble vitamin found in animal foods such as fish, poultry, meat, eggs and dairy. Getting it into your system is a complex process: it’s released from food by stomach acid before teaming up with a protein known as intrinsic factor, which is produced by specific cells in your stomach. Only then can it journey to the far end of your small intestine where it’s absorbed.
When it does, it’s responsible for some pretty crucial stuff. It helps cells transform carbohydrates into adenosine triphosphate (your body’s primary energy currency). It’s also involved in producing healthy red blood cells, which deliver energy-producing oxygen to your tissues, and synthesising neurotransmitters, such as dopamine, that affect your mood.
Symptoms of deficiency are physical and mental – including fatigue, anxiety, pins and needles and a sore tongue. But certain risk factors make you more vulnerable (type 1 diabetes, gut-related health conditions and long-term use of some medication), either beca
