What are the symptoms of anaemia, my daughter eats a very poor vegan diet. No pulses or beans or lentils,?

she is so pale in appearance and has started to keep falling asleep with the tv on, she has never done it before. Her friends at work say aneamia can cause headaches, palpitations shortness of breath. I have told her to ignore her panic merchant friends and if she is so worried just have an iron tablet a day, and eat more vegetables, she eats bread chips and fruit. she loves jam on toast. When she lived at home she had a really good diet because I cooked for her and made sure she got her vitamins, now she cant be bothered. She says her friend looked in her eyes she pulled the lower lid back and said it has got no colour there, I looked in her eyes and I saw very, very pale pink. They looked all right to me.

Humans are carnivores. We are designed to eat meat. No other carnivore on the planet will ever go without meat if it can avoid it. There are many nutrients and vitamins that we all need to stay healthy. It is not cruel eating meat, that's what we're designed to do, it's nature. There are also amino acids that are the building blocks of protein. Meat is a very good sourse of protein. I think that there are about thirteen of what are called essential amino acids, which means you have to get them from food; mainly meat. If your daughter looks unwell, then that's probably because she is unwell. As identified by an earlier contributer, there's also vitamin B12, cobalamin, which only comes from animal products. Bones use B12 and iron to produce red blood cells, that's why your daughter is looking pale and falling asleep; she will start fainting eventually. This will be due to a lack of oxygen to her brain. Iron will not work without vitamin B12. (your daughter probably has pernicous anemia, which can be fatal) There will also be missing amino acids in her body, which, if missing, can have absolutely devastating effects upon the body. Give her a good hearty steak pie as soon as you can. It's imperative that, you'll have to excuse me, you get some red meat inside her soon. There is a lot of noise made about vegetarianism and how good it is, but the truth is that it's rarely good for anybody. We are designed to eat meat. We need the elements that meet is made of to live. You must stress to your daughter that she needs to eat meat. The consequences are that if she doesn't then soon you may not have a daughter. White meat doesn't have B12 in it.

Gaunt, sunken eyes, pale and weak are the signs of anaemia, tiredness and exhaustion.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/conditions/a...

Take a look at the above link

Sounds anemic to me. Sometimes vegan/vegetarianism can be an excuse for anorexic behavior. It sounds like that might be one of the reasons. You can eat very well on a vegan diet if you make the commitment.

You need to take her to a doctor for a complete blood workup!
Also, if she eats cup after cup of ice, she is anemic!

You need to get her blood tested for anaemia before it is too late, sometimes too low blood pressure have similar symptom as well. Also watch out for Anorexia and bulimia.

Most commonly the only symptom is tiredness. Breathlessness would eventually occur, but only if the anaemia were severe.

She should be persuaded to go to her GP and have a full blood count and iron store check. If this showed deficiency, unfortunately it would be a marker that her diet was leading to multiple deficiencies. We were not designed to be vegan and unless the diet is carefully constructed it risks being very unhealthy!

try pinching her fingernails, they take longer to get their colour back. Pull down bottom eyelid and see how red flesh is. Should be quite red, sometimes anemia causes the flesh inside the eyelid to look very pale

Its vital that your daughter takes Vitamin B12 - otherwise she will become deficient and that will cause all types of symptoms,some are dangerous and cant be reversed.
look on some vegan websites,or see a doctor for advice .