What Is Pernicious Anemia?

When an individual suffers from a deficiency from receiving low levels of the essential vitamin B12 that your body needs, it can cause all sorts of different problems in the body. One of these conditions is known as Pernicious Anemia. This is the type of condition that can cause a person to suffer from nerve damage that is progressive, being forgetful, unable to concentrate correctly, unusual sensations that feel like itching, burning, and losing feeling sensations. Several individuals that have this type of anemia however, generally do not suffer from having a low level of B12 in the blood cells like you do with the other types. Because of this fact, it is a type of anemia that is generally not detected until the disease has already reached a late point in its course. Because of it being so hard to detect, a large number of individuals end up suffering from damage to the nerves that is permanent. Although the Archives of Internal Medicine, there are reports that state that only two percent of all Americans that are over the age of 60 show to have low levels of vitamin B12 in the blood, but as many as 50 percent of these individuals can end up suffering from the type of deficiency that can end up causing damage to the nerves. Unfortunately there are several elderly individuals who end up being diagnosed with senility when it is actually a deficiency of vitamin B12 and could easily be cured with supplements.