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Thiamine Deficiency and Sugar in Diabetes

Published on May 4, 2017

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Thiamine is one of the B vitamins and I need to explain its action. To put it as simply as possible, it regulates sugar metabolism in every cell within the body and has a special importance in the brain. About four years ago a researcher in England reported that there was a mild deficiency of thiamine (vitamin B1) in diabetic patients, a disease that affects sugar metabolism. He said that all diabetics should have a supplement of thiamine because he had anticipated that it will prevent complications in this devastating disease. If that is not enough to make a diabetic sit up and take notice I would be very surprised. I will try to explain this a little further.

A program on PBS television called “The Quiet Revolution” reported that there were 29 million patients in the United States with type two diabetes and as many as 70 million with pre-diabetes, meaning that they were on their way to contract the disease. If we had 29 million cases of “flu” it would be called a pandemic. Most people with type 2 diabetes have no idea that their health before the onset of the disease is within their own responsibility. Our culture says “go ahead, do what you like, eat what you like, drink what you like; if you get sick, it is just bad luck and you go to one of those clever characters called Dr. who will produce the magic bullet that “cures” you because of the wonders of modern scientific medicine.

Although both types one and two have different causative factors, I want to emphasize very strongly that both types are not purely genetically determined. The genetic risk in type 1 is much greater than in type 2 and is certainly the major component as the underlying cause. Type 2 is much more clearly initiated by dietary indiscretion in a person who might be, shall we say, at genetic risk. Much of our diet today involves the consumption of man-made foods developed by the food industry. Of course, the main drive of this industry is to sell their products and so it appeals to our palatability, a sensory phenomenon that has nothing to do with good nutrition. We all know what pleasure we get from tasting anything that is sweet. Since sweetness sells, it explains why so many man-made foods are laced with sugar, so long thought to be harmless and even good for you by supplying quick energy.

Sweet and Dangerous: Sugar and Thiamine Deficiency

In 1973, John Yudkin, a professor of nutrition in a large London Hospital wrote a book with the title “Sweet and Dangerous”, the result of his many years of research into the dangers of sugar. He reported that many diseases, including heart disease, were related to its ingestion. As so often happens, this terribly important book was ignored and cholesterol became the demon for the cause of heart disease. Now, 40 years later, many people know that the cholesterol story has been debunked. Because sugar requires vitamin B 1 to metabolize it, in much the same way as gasoline requires a spark plug to burn it, taking sugar on its own in the form of empty calories easily overwhelms the power of thiamine to carry out its function.

That means that you have an imbalance between the calories and the vitamin or a relative deficiency of thiamine. Your daily intake of thiamine may be sufficient for a good diet but not enough to take care of the overload of sugar represented as the bad diet which is so common. It may easily be accomplished by the consumption of the stuff that we consume in our social activities. Yes, there is no doubt that it makes the mouth water and the sweetness underlies the joy of the social event but if it is causing widespread disease, I ask you, is it worth it?

The lower part of the human brain is particularly sensitive to thiamine deficiency and because this part of the brain organizes the entire body in its performance of adapting to the environment in which we find ourselves, we easily become maladapted. For example, we may feel cold when it is hot or hot when it is cold, a mistake in sensory input and brain interpretation. The nervous system involved in this reaction is known as the autonomic nervous system and is entirely automatic. The message from the brain to the heart causes it to accelerate when it is a necessary adaptive need as, for example, running for a bus. But when this happens spontaneously for no apparent reason at all, we might take this to a physician and tell him that “I have palpitations of my heart”. Unfortunately the medical focus would be on the heart not on the nervous system that caused the acceleration. For this reason one of the complications in diabetes is called “autonomic neuropathy”, meaning that the autonomic nervous system is disorganized. Thiamine protects diabetics from complications because it improves the ability of our cells to produce adequate energy for function by “burning sugar as brain fuel”. Think of it as a change of inefficient spark plugs in a car engine.

Thiamine deficiency is sometimes referred to as pseudo (or false) hypoxia because it results in exactly the same symptoms as those from a mild to moderate deprivation of oxygen. Its effect on the lower part of the brain is to make it more reactive to all input signals. When you read a telegram giving you bad news, your eyes send a signal to the brain that has to interpret the meaning of the signal. I refer to the input signals, whether they are physical or mental, as “stress”. Your response to the stress is organized by the lower brain with “advice and consent” from the higher brain. Freud referred to the lower brain as the “id”. It reacts automatically to anything perceived as danger or self indulgence and the upper brain as the “ego” because it either permits or prevents the ensuing action. It is our moral censor.

I have studied the effects of this kind of “high calorie malnutrition” and it is responsible for a huge amount of mental illness and unpredictable bad behavior. It makes the “id” irritable and weakens the “ego” making a person much more likely to act in response to a whim or a nursed grievance. There is much evidence that it can even affect criminal behavior. This kind of malnutrition is widespread in America, but I have never seen it discussed in relation to whether the behavior exhibited at inexplicable school shootings is a potential factor. A recent exhibition of “road rage” projected on TV news might just be comprehensible because it was otherwise well beyond civilized behavior. Although this may sound too far-fetched, we have an epidemic of Attention Deficit Disorder, with or without hyperactivity, learning disability and obesity in our children that defies a genetically determined cause. Nature does not make that kind of mistake in so many individuals. Their young brains are irritable and disorganized because of dietary indulgence.

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The Sugar – Thiamine Connection in Adverse Reactions

by Derrick Lonsdale MD, FACN, CNS

Published on February 29, 2016

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sugar thiamine connection in adverse reactions

As published on this web site previously, we have scientific evidence that two girls and one boy were shown to be thiamine deficient (TD) after Gardasil vaccination. On the other hand, a girl who had similar symptoms to these three had not received the vaccine and her laboratory test proved that she also had TD. On the face of this information, it suggests that the vaccination has nothing to do with the illness of these individuals. In a previous post, however, I have suggested that the vaccine is a “stress factor”, given to an individual in a state of marginal, or even asymptomatic thiamine deficiency, thus exacerbating the first appearance of symptoms. In this light, medications and other vaccines may also be considered stress factors and evoke or exacerbate a previously asymptomatic thiamine deficiency. There are a number of facts that need to be seen collectively in order to understand the hypothesis that follows. In order to make this clear I am going to present the material under subheadings.

What Does Thiamine do in the Body?

All simple sugars that we take in our diet are broken down to glucose, the primary fuel of the brain. This oversimplified fact has long been used to suggest that taking sugar is the way to meet energy demands in the body. It is, in fact, an extremely complex chemical process which is well beyond the scope of an article like this. It can, however, be simplified by comparing glucose, as a fuel, to gasoline in a car.

Gasoline + Oxygen + Spark Plug = Energy + (ash/oxides)

Glucose + Oxygen + Thiamine = Energy + (ash/oxides)

Each one of these equations represents combustion, a combination of fuel with oxygen. Because combustion is always incomplete, waste products (oxides) are formed and must be got rid of as waste. It is obvious that combustion of gasoline without oxygen and spark plug, or glucose without oxygen and thiamine, will not occur. What is not quite so obvious is the fact that an excess of gasoline causes choking of the engine, black smoke from the exhaust pipe (unburned hydrocarbons) and loss of engine efficiency. This could be referred to as “oxygen/spark plug deficiency” since each of the three components must be present in proper concentration to produce efficient combustion (oxidation). The three component parts, glucose, oxygen and thiamine are the equivalents in the body. An excess of glucose “chokes” the “engines” (mitochondria) that create energy in all of our cells. This particularly applies to the brain because of its high rate of metabolism (energy consumption), thus providing a potential explanation for why the vaccine seems to pick off the brightest and the best students.

The Reptilian Brain and the Limbic Nervous System

All animal brains are built on the same basic principle, a lower, more primitive part and a higher, increasingly complex part. The lower part of the human brain, the limbic system, also known as “reptilian”, computes all the reflex mechanisms by which we automatically adapt to our environment. For example, we sweat when it is hot and shiver when it is cold, both adaptations to the ambient temperature. It also controls our emotional reflexes, represented by body language that we recognize easily. It uses two mechanisms, the autonomic nervous system and the endocrine system.

Autonomic and Endocrine Systems

We have two nervous systems. The one that we use to will our actions is controlled by the upper brain, here described as cognitive. The autonomic nervous system (ANS) automatically controls all the actions required by body organs to meet day- to- day adaptation. It consists of two major branches, known as the sympathetic and parasympathetic components. The sympathetic branch prepares us for mental and physical action while the parasympathetic switches us to a period of rest. As one goes into action, the other one is withdrawn. The endocrine system is represented by a group of glands, each of which produces one or more hormones. These are really messengers that induce actions in the cells to which they are aimed. When either or both of these systems are not functioning in their ordained manner in the brain/body of an individual, we can refer to him/her as maladapted.

Explanation of Symptoms in Reference to Thiamine Deficiency

As explained in previous posts on this web site, the disease known as beriberi occurs as a result of TD. The mother of a Gardasil affected girl had done her own research and had come to the unlikely conclusion that her daughter suffered from beriberi. Red cell transketolase, a blood test used to depict TD, showed that she was correct in her conclusion. Her daughter did in fact have beriberi and has responded, at least partially, to thiamine supplementation. We know, from historical data, that long term beriberi responds slowly to treatment and sometimes not at all, depending on chronicity. Since she has had her symptoms for approximately four years, I think that it would be fair to call this chronic. When the ANS is not functioning properly, it is called dysautonomia (dys, meaning abnormal: autonomia refers to the ANS). Beriberi in its early stages is the prototype for dysautonomia, the commonest effect being dominance of the sympathetic branch of the ANS.

Published Effects of Gardasil Vaccination

Although many symptoms have been reported related to this vaccination, two resultant conditions have been nominated: POTS (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome) and Cerebellar Ataxia. POTS is one of the many conditions that are described under the heading of dysautonomia and I have already reported in a post that the first case of thiamine dependency was in a six year old boy who had intermittent episodes of cerebellar ataxia, each of which was triggered by a stress episode that included mild infection, mild head injury or inoculation. A critical enzyme that depends on thiamine for its energy producing action was able to function until some form of physical or mental stress was imposed. The existing mechanism was insufficient to meet the energy requirement imposed by the stress.

Sugar, the Autonomic Nervous System and the Liver

New research provides one more clue to our emerging theory of thiamine deficiency in post vaccine and medication adverse reactions. The study: The Autonomic Nervous System Regulates Postprandial Hepatic Lipid Metabolism by Bruinstroop et al. demonstrates the influence carbohydrate intake has on autonomic control of liver lipid metabolism. Triglycerides are measured in a medical laboratory as part of what is known as the “lipid profile”, that includes the various components of cholesterol. The Bruinstroop study found that when the parasympathetic system was deactivated and carbohydrates were ingested, triglyceride levels rose significantly, inducing metabolic dysregulation. Other studies have found stress, combined with diets high in refined carbohydrates can increase blood triglyceride concentrations also inducing metabolic syndrome. Indeed, stress and the concurrent increased sympathetic system activity seem key to metabolic functioning with sugar intake triggering the ill-health.

Interpretation of Technical Language

The work by Bruinstroop and associates was done in rats. To understand what they found, it is necessary to remind the reader that the two branches of the ANS, sympathetic and parasympathetic, work synchronously. As one branch becomes active the other one is withdrawn. This is automatically controlled by the “reptilian” brain, thus enabling us to adapt to the physical and mental changes we encounter on a day -to-day basis. These authors were able to show that abolishing the parasympathetic input to the liver resulted in marked elevation of triglycerides in the blood. This would induce continuation of sympathetic dominance in any “stress reaction” in the animal if it was in a free living state. The effect was modulated by sugar intake. That is, when the animals were fed more, the effects were larger.

Hypothesis: High Sugar Diets Lead to Thiamine Deficiency, A Risk Factor for Adverse Reactions

I am proposing that an excess of carbohydrates in the diet, particularly fructose, results in a mild degree of thiamine deficiency. We know, from studies done as early as 1943 (Williams R D, et al. Arch Int Med 1943;71:38-53), that this results in what is typically called psychosomatic disease, in which a large component is reflected in emotional lability (instability), so common in the modern child and adolescent. Physical symptoms, such as unexplained “pins and needles”, in the hands or feet, may be so slight as to be ignored. The stress of the vaccination or a medication reaction triggers an energy crisis in the “reptilian” brain, specifically evoking autonomic dysregulation, typically with sympathetic system dominance and resulting in beriberi, POTS, or cerebellar ataxia and potentially other syndromes. Perhaps a rise in blood triglycerides as suggested by the Bruinstroop study, indicates the partial crippling of the parasympathetic branch of the ANS and sympathetic dominance. High blood triglycerides might well be a mark of the early stages of underlying autonomic dysregulation and thiamine deficiency and a potential risk factor for adverse reactions to certain vaccines or medications.

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Addendum

A 5th case of post Gardasil thiamine deficiency has been identified; a young woman who developed severe idiopathic hypersomnia, a variant of narcolepsy, post vaccination. The patient is undergoing treatment with success. A full case study will be presented soon.

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This article was published on Hormones Matter previously in January 2014.