Firstly, your body needs vitamin B6, otherwise known as pyridoxine, in order to use vitamin B12, magnesium and hydrochloric acid. This water-soluble vitamin also helps to keep your levels of potassium and sodium in balance, which plays an important part of regulating your body’s fluids and supporting normal nerve function. Vitamin B6 also benefits your body in the creation of erythrocytes and antibodies, and helps your liver release glycogen, which is essential for energy.
Another B vitamin that is essential for normal nerve function is thiamine, or vitamin B1. It helps your body break down carbohydrates into glucose, which you use for energy, and can also help you maintain a positive mental attitude. Because it’s water-soluble, vitamin B1 has to be replenished every day, as your body will just excrete what ever it doesn’t use. You can find it in wheat, rice, brewer’s yeast and blackstrap molasses.
You need vitamin B12 for the metabolism of your nerve tissue, and it’s found almost exclusively in animal proteins. This means that vegetarians will need to get this vitamin through supplements, as will those with a vitamin B12 deficiency, but otherwise you can find great dietary sources of the vitamin, such as organ meats, fish and dairy products.
Choline is another one of the B complex vitamins that help maintain nerve function, and can be found in egg yolks, liver, brewer’s yeast and wheat germ. Choline is important because it helps your body to use fats and cholesterol, supports the health of the myelin sheaths that protect your nerve cells, and aids the transmission of nerve signals. Finally, vitamin D, which you get from the sunlight on your skin, is synthesised by your body to support a stable nervous system and, as an added bonus, vitamin D also keeps your heart functioning normally.