Vitamin B1: Health Benefits, Source, And Dosage

Vitamin B1: Health Benefits, Source, And Dosage

Vitamins are crucial to life functions. Without them, you die quickly. Vitamins work together with enzymes, (chemical catalysts), thus their being called as co-enzymes.

Among the essential vitamins needed by the body is the vitamin B complex. This is a group of a dozen or so vitamins that are needful for the proper functioning of the body, specially the nervous system.

Among them is Vitamin B1 or thiamin. This vitamin helps and protects the brain, nervous system, muscle, peristalsis, blood circulation, and red blood count. It works with other B vitamins in energy metabolism. It prevents thiamin deficiency in diabetes, Crohn’s disease, multiple sclerosis, and other neurological diseases, including epilepsy. This vitamin is also used to prevent and treat impaired mental function in the elderly, including the Alzheimer’s disease.

Deficiency symptoms include slow heart beat, weight loss, mental depression, chronic constipation, muscular weakness, diabetes, beriberi, edema,and defective hydrochloric acid production. Drinking alcohol, eating refined foods, and eating lots of sugar can lead to thiamin deficiency. Severe deficiency results in psychosis, that accounts about 30 percent of those admitted in psychiatric wards.
Vitamin B1 is needed in the assimmilation of manganese and other B vitamins. This vitamin is easily destroyed by alcohol, by tannins in tea and black coffee, by sulfites, and by uncooked freshwater fish and shellfish. Magnesium is needed in the the conversion of thiamin to its active form.

The richest sources of vitamin B1 are brewer’s yeast, wheat germ, wheat bran, most whole grain cereals especially wheat, and oats, sunflower seeds, unpolished rice, torula yeast, peanuts with skin, all nuts, seeds, all beans especially soybean, and some vegetable such as beets, potatoes, and leafy vegetables.

Dosage: Recommended is 50-100 mg daily. For the elderly with age-related mental impairment, including Alzheimer’s, 3-8 mg per day.