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Hello,

I've been having white nails for around 8 years now. When I say it's white, the entire nail is as white as a ghost. I'm not talking about occasional white clouds that appear in normal persons from time to time. I want to know if it was normal for people with MS or people with low B12 level? I had low B12 in the order of 130 pg/ml when I last tested it.

Thanks,
Vaithiar

the white nails are probably iron deficiency anemia. are you female? i've been pretty low in iron before without the white nails, but i have seem them on a woman at work who said her docs said the white nails were because of her iron deficiency. for whatever that's worth!

Yes, I'm female. My blood iron level is in the normal range, which does not qualify me to be anemic. Also, I'm having gastro problems, which I do not know is due to M.S

serum ferritin can be elevated in ms, it's called anemia of chronic disease. it could make it appear that your iron is in the normal range when it's actually low. it's the long term inflammation that can make your ferritin go high. that means you may be interested in trying other tests to really determine whether you're anemic. i went looking for what kind of test that would be and found this:

New Test Diagnoses Anemia in Chronic Disease
Tool detects concentration of active hepcidin in the blood, researchers say
By Robert Preidt
TUESDAY, Aug. 5 (HealthDay News) -- A new tool for diagnosing anemia related to chronic illness and diseases of iron overload has been developed by U.S. researchers.
Both anemia and iron overload have various causes.
"It is hard to diagnose the anemia of chronic disease. Having an assay for hepcidin would make it much easier, and it would also help in diagnosing iron overload diseases," study senior author Jerry Kaplan, a professor of pathology and assistant vice president for research at the University of Utah Health Sciences, said in a university news release.
Hepcidin is a hormone produced in the liver. Iron balance in the body is regulated by the interaction between hepcidin and the iron transporting receptor ferroportin, according to background information in the news release. Hepcidin binds to ferroportin, resulting in decreased export of iron out of cells. An excess of hepcidin in the blood can cause anemia, while a deficiency of the hormone causes a build-up of iron that damages internal organs.

what kind of gastro probs? food sensitivities? zinc for you. ms patients are statistically lower, more so for the ladies too. usually the results are in the infamous "normal range" but still lower in ms, which suggests that there is suboptimal zinc that causes problems without being the definition of deficiency. the normal range is a real scam - ms patients are so low in uric acid compared to healthy controls, but they still tell you you're in the NORMAL RANGE even when you're spot on the MS average uric acid level.

so anyway you might want to have your zinc tested. when i got mine done my level was 8 and i think the normal range is 11-18 or thereabouts, and after i supplemented TOO MUCH it was 20 i think? way too high so i stopped for a while. it was nice though some really long lasting sores cleared up when i fixed the zinc deficiency.

interestingly, zinc can help you boost your uric acid too, how's that for weird. two birds with one stone.