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Vitamin B1(Thiamine)
Vitamin (water-soluble)
Functions
Good food sources
Deficiency symptoms
Low levels of several B vitamins have been found in psychiatric patients and in senile dementia. Sugar metabolism requires vitamins B1, B2 and B3, magnesium and chromium. A high sugar consumption uses up these nutrients without replacing them, because sugar does not contain any vitamins or other nutrients except calories. (Beware the advertisements about sugar giving you energy; energy is simply the scientific name for calories!) Alcoholism can also lead to B vitamin deficiency, and alcohol itself can impair the absorption of B vitamins from the intestines. Many countries make the replacement of some of the lost B vitamins compulsory in products made from refined (white) flour, since the B vitamins are mostly found in the bran and germ of the flour, not in the white, starchy portion. Since white flour products are staple foods for many people, diets could otherwise become dangerously inadequate. Manufacturers may advertise this so-called fortification as 'added vitamins', giving rise to the mistaken impression that their products are nutritionally superior when this may be far from true. To avoid thiamine and other B vitamin deficiencies, your diet should be low in sugar (for instance you could restrict your intake of sugary food or drink to just one small item a day), and you should use wholemeal bread, flour and cereals whenever possible, but not in raw form, since cooking is often needed to improve bioavailability. The bioavailability of vitamin B1 is reduced in the presence of a folic acid deficiency and by the consumption of alcohol and so-called anti-thiamine factors found in fish, shellfish, blueberries, blackcurrants, brussels sprouts, red cabbage and beetroot, but only when these foods are eaten raw. Vitamin B1 is one of the least stable of all the vitamins and huge losses occur during normal processing and cooking. The more finely ground a food (such as minced beef or pork) the greater the loss of vitamin B1, which escapes via the juices. Vitamin B1 is completely inactivated by the widely used preservative sulphur dioxide, and by sulphite solutions used, for instance, to keep chipped potatoes from turning brown. Uncooked freshwater fish and shellfish contain the enzyme thiaminase, which destroys 50 per cent of the vitamin B1 found in the food. Tea also contains an anti-thiamine factor (ATF) which destroys vitamin B1. Doctors and other practitioners working in the field of nutritional medicine and therapy consider that an individual's requirements for B vitamins can be raised if he or she has gone without adequate amounts for any length of time. This may be why deficiency symptoms can exist even when the diet later becomes adequate by normal standards, and in these cases it may be necessary to take dietary supplements for a limited period of time to correct any damage to the B-vitamin dependent systems. SUPPLEMENTATION In research studies, Vitamin B1 supplements have been found to:
Preferred form and suggested intake B vitamins should not normally be taken singly, since they work together as a team and good nutrition is about avoiding imbalances. A B complex supplement providing 50 mg of each B vitamin is enough for most purposes. However a practitioner or doctor of nutritional medicine or therapy may work for short periods with higher doses. The co-enzyme form of vitamin B1 is known as octothiamine, which is biologically more active than the more commonly available thiamine supplements as it is readily usable by the human body. Nutritional therapists sometimes use octothiamine for people with serious energy deficiency problems such as chronic fatigue syndrome. Vitamin B1 is one of the safest known supplements. There is no known unsafe dosage. B complex supplements are also considered to be very safe. Adapted from the Nutritional Health Bible by Linda LazaridesDownload the whole database |
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