Heart Palpitations
Vitamin B deficiency can cause heart palpitations, episodes of a person’s heartbeat feeling unusually fast or irregular. These episodes can be scary, but they’re not usually dangerous.
Both vitamin B12 and folate are essential to making red blood cells in the body, so if you have either of these deficiencies, it can lead to anemia. In addition, the resulting condition of low oxygen levels in the blood makes it more challenging for your heart to pump blood around your body. The extra load on your cardiovascular system is like adding stress to your cardiovascular system, and that’s one way that heart palpitations can start.
It’s common for people with vitamin B deficiencies also to be deficient in iron, which increases the risk of developing anemia. Anemia is a condition where too few red blood cells are in the body, leading to low oxygen levels throughout the body—and again, that stresses the heart just by the nature of the decreased oxygen levels.
In some cases, people with vitamin B deficiencies experience neurological symptoms that make it feel like their heart is skipping beats or fluttering. Many people describe this sensation as something icy cold crawling up their spine or down their arms and legs.
