Most of us eat foods that fulfill our appetite and we tend to ignore food that is good to health. When your food is deficient in essential nutrients such as fat-soluble vitamins, you may face health issues like poor eye sight or even loss of vision, swelling of body parts, weak bones and muscles, etc.
Read on this article to know the effect of deficiency of fat soluble vitamins namely, A, D, E and K on your health.
Vitamin A
Vitamin A is essential for maintaining normal eye sight. If food sources are deficient in vitamin A, it causes xerophthalmia. In xerophthalmia, the person experiences loss of tear production in the eyes. If xerophthalmia is ignored, it causes ulcers in the eye tissues and ultimately leads to blindness.
Nyctalpia, also known as “night blindness” occurs due to deficiency of vitamin A.
Xerosis is another condition where one experiences dry and scaly skin due to loss of water from the skin cells.
Vitamin D
Vitamin D is necessary for healthy bones. Its deficiency causes osteomalacia in adults. It is a medical condition where bones become weak, soft and brittle. In children, osteomalacia is referred to as rickets. Children experience difficulty in walking.
Other disorders because of vitamin D deficiency are muscle spasm and numbness in legs and feet.
Vitamin E
Deficiency of vitamin E causes ataxia, cystic fibrosis and skeletal myopathy. In ataxia, the nervous system is damaged. Symptoms of ataxia are difficulty in balancing the body, speaking and walking.
Cystic fibrosis is another condition because of vitamin E deficiency, where lungs are filled with mucous due to bacterial infection, which makes it difficult for one to breath. When this condition is left untreated it becomes life-threatening.
Skeletal myopathy, a muscle disorder is due to dysfunctional muscles with symptoms of muscle spasm and stiffness.
Vitamin K
Deficiency of vitamin K occurs when the body cannot absorb digested food. Vitamin K is essential for clotting of blood. When the body is deficient in vitamin K, it cannot make blood clotting factors to stop bleeding. In the event such a person is wounded, the bleeding doesn’t stop, which might prove fatal.
If you are deficient in vitamin K, your body cannot produce osteocalcin, the bone matrix protein. This results in impairment of repairing of bones and healing of fractures.
Take healthy diet including a variety of fruits and vegetables. Fat-soluble vitamins are found in eggs, milk, meat, fish, nuts, edible vegetable oils, green and leafy vegetables, etc. Eating these, you can recompense the deficiency of the vitamin and can stay healthy.
