thiamine deficiency Archives

Narcolepsy, Basal Ganglia, Mitochondrial Fitness, and Kickboxing

Published on December 11, 2025

11.5K views

Several years ago, when I just beginning to understand the role of nutrient co-factors in mitochondrial health, I was working with a young woman who had been injured by Gardasil. She was my first ‘case’, contacting me online after a post I wrote about the thyroid damage done by this vaccine. Thyroid damage is among the more common disease processes initiated by many drugs and vaccines. It is one of the easiest problems to rule in or out, but more often than not, it is missed by most practitioners. Inasmuch as thyroid and mitochondrial function are reciprocally connected, where there is damage in one, there is damage in the other, and inasmuch as thiamine is requisite for healthy mitochondria, correcting thiamine deficiency can, in many cases, improve thyroid function. When I first met this woman, I did not yet fully appreciate that connection. Eventually, I would be introduced to Dr. Lonsdale and his work on thiamine deficiency, and so began my education. Together, we wrote a book about the role of thiamine deficiency in mitochondrial illness: Thiamine Deficiency Disease, Dysautonomia and High Calorie Malnutrition.

Exercise and Mitochondrial Healing

Her case is unique for a number of reasons, but mainly because, in addition to the thiamine and other nutrients required to heal, she used, and continues to use, exercise to manage her health. That is what I would like to talk about today: the role of exercise in mitochondrial health. Before we do that, below is a synopsis of her case, as reported in our book on pages 286-87. Her full story was provided on our website here.

In 2008, 26-year-old G.C., a previously healthy, athletic young woman, finishing a Master’s program in finance, received the three injections of the Gardasil vaccine. It bears mentioning that 2 years prior she received several travel-related vaccines including diphtheria, typhoid, yellow fever, hepatitis A and B, the flu vaccine, and a tetanus boost and suffered no apparent ill effects.
After the second injection of Gardasil she experienced a flu-like episode with high fever lasting over a week. Full-blown hypersomnia manifested shortly thereafter and worsened to the point where she was able to sustain wakefulness for only 45 min to a maximum of 3 h per day. She experienced fatigue, muscle weakness, and dizziness. Over the next several months she developed tachycardia, intense salt cravings, with concurrent dizziness and thirst. The salt cravings led to blackouts and as she described “waves of extreme somnolence” that included slurred speech, lack of coordination, and imbalance. She learned to keep salt with her at all times. Both physical (e.g., walking, standing up, cooking) and mental exertion were profoundly draining. She reported that if she became angry or experienced any emotional event, she would immediately fall asleep. Multiple doctors had been seen and tests completed. By 2010, only low levels of vitamin D had been recognized.
Narcolepsy, Hypersomnia and Exercise
In late 2010, the fifth physician seen, it was diagnosed as narcolepsy without cataplexy–hypersomnia. She was prescribed 300 mg per day of Modiodal (Modafinil, Australia; Provigil, United States). Wakefulness increased, but she was still dizzy and required multiple hour naps after any exertion. She returned to working out. By the end of 2010 she began a PhD program and was determined to “power through.” She found that exercise, though difficult, allowed her to avoid blackouts. Of note, cardio-type workouts provided respite from the dizziness for 4–6 h, whereas weightlifting netted 24 h without dizziness. Similarly, she observed that if she ate simple sugars or carbohydrates the dizziness and blackouts would return.
Six months after beginning Modiodal her health continued to decline despite experiencing greater wakefulness. She developed severe noise and light sensitivity, continued to experience dizziness, and required excessive amounts of sleep, sea salt, and water. She developed a thick, dry, painful scale on her scalp. Another series of doctors could offer nothing and suggested the illness was in her head, inferring that she “needed to pull herself together.” Despite her health issues she defended her PhD in July 2013.
By October 2013 she had seen 10 physicians as her health continued to decline. She read our work on post-Gardasil thyroid dysfunction and other adverse reactions and requested additional testing. Hashimoto’s, hypogammaglobulinemia, vitamin B deficiencies, and low potassium levels were identified. On several occasions she attempted to get transketolase testing but was unsuccessful. In Nov. 2013 she decided to treat empirically beginning with 100 mg thiamine tetrahydrofurfuryl disulfide (TTFD). She subsequently developed the paradoxical reactions discussed in Chapter 4, with her symptoms worsening.
The Paradox or Refeeding Syndrome
With the dizziness and increased heart rate she reduced her dose to 50 mg of TTFD. Over the course of the next 5 weeks, the tachycardia landed her in hospital on four occasions. By December 2013 her body adjusted to the dosage of TTFD and the tachycardia and dizziness subsided. This is important to note. Long-term dysfunction of this nature requires new knowledge from the physician. Though not damaging to the patient it is regarded as “side effects” and either the patient or the physician stops the treatment. This effect was known to the ancient Chinese and regarded as examples of yin and yang by acupuncturists.
Over the course of the 5 years of progressively declining health she saw a total of 24 doctors. None of whom was able to identify or treat what was ultimately a metabolic disturbance brought on by thiamine deficiency that was likely triggered by the vaccine. Her final diagnoses included cerebral salt wasting, POTS, beriberi, hypersomnia, and Hashimoto’s. Arguably, the thiamine deficiency and the mitochondrial damage that ensued were at the root of each of these diagnoses.
Maintaining Health Post Gardasil
Since 2013 she has continued to maintain her health with thiamine, magnesium, and a cocktail of other mitochondrial supplements (which included very high doses of coenzyme Q10), along with thyroxine for Hashimoto’s and Modiodal to treat the somnolence. As of this writing she is doing well, training in various Asian forms of kickboxing daily and working full time. Without the balance of heavy training, the cocktail of supplements, the Modiodal, and thyroxine, her symptoms reappear.

Her case is remarkable for a number of reasons. First, that she recovered at all is impressive. Many women injured by Gardasil do not recover. She did and continues to thrive all of these years later. Her recovery was not linear though and her continued health requires aggressive attention. I think this process throws many people. We have been trained to expect that recovery from illness proceeds in a logical, linear, and expeditious manner. It does not. There were many setbacks, including several hospitalizations when she first began supplementing with thiamine. Had she not persisted through these setbacks, she might not have recovered her health. Moreover, had she not recognized the fragility of this recovery and continued to actively manage her health all of these years later, she could have easily become seriously ill again. kickboxing, basal ganglia, narcolepsy Indeed, there have been many relapses over the years, where her health declines significantly and requires extended periods of recovery. Nevertheless, she is able to recover and that is remarkable.

Secondly, and what I think is particularly unique about her case, is the role that exercise has played in her ability to recover and maintain her health. It is not something that conventional or even functional medicine gives much credence too. Sure, we all recognize the role of exercise in health generally, but mostly, we ignore it. I think this is a mistake. In her case, exercise was and remains critical to maintaining her mitochondrial health and as I have come to understand recently, the type of exercise that she gravitated towards naturally, kickboxing, may be exactly what her brain needs to function.

The Role of Exercise in Recovery

From the beginning of her illness, she forced herself to exercise, even though it was an immense struggle. On her own, she learned that certain types of exercise would prevent her dizziness and blackouts. Specifically, if she did cardio-type exercise, she could prevent a blackout for 6 hours or so, but if she added some weightlifting, the effects would last for up to 24 hours. I attributed this to exercise-induced mitochondrial biogenesis. That is, exercise was forcing the birth of new mitochondria, and somehow, shifting her balance of unhealthy to healthy mitochondria more favorably. It was also likely improving the respiratory capacity of her existing mitochondria. Although it is still not clear to me why one modality yielded better results than another, as the research in this area seems to suggest that the opposite is true, that cardio yields more mitochondrial benefits than weightlifting, the research is clear that exercise induces both mitochondrial biogenesis while improving their functionality.

Her seemingly innate realization of this was and remains one of the more noteworthy aspects of her case. Remember, for several years after Gardasil vaccine, she was seriously ill. When she first contacted me, she weighed less than 100 lbs, was severely fatigued, and could not maintain wakefulness for more than a few hours at a time without blacking out; and yet, somehow, she managed to drag herself to a gym to exercise (and maintain her graduate work in finance). Not only that, she observed a pattern of response to exercise (and salt and other dietary components) and used what she learned to help herself function better. Indeed, throughout her recovery, she would actively observe the patterns and optimize those that appeared beneficial and eliminate those that did not; something that we all should be doing as a matter of course, and yet, very few of us do.

To exercise throughout an illness where intractable fatigue, excessive somnolence and blackouts dominate is very difficult to do, and more often than not, would be discouraged. When I first wrote about her using exercise to heal, the backlash was immediate and intense. For her though, the exercise became an integral component of maintaining her health just as surely as the nutrient elements. Even now, 12 years from initial vaccine-induced illness and with 7 years of recovery under her belt, she indicates that when she misses training because of work or travel, her health declines rapidly and does so in a fairly specific manner. She becomes dizzy, loses balance, and her cognitive capacity diminishes significantly. Her ability to maintain wakefulness declines while fatigue increases. Additionally, when the stress of normal everyday illnesses come into play, a viral infection for example, and her exercise program naturally takes a hit, in order to fully recover she has to double-down on the training for a period of time once the illness passes.

Is this need to exercise unique to her case specifically or could we learn something about how we approach recovery from illness? I would argue that given the mitochondrial fitness attributable to exercise and the noted mitochondrial decline in its absence, some form of movement or exercise should be approached with any recovery plan. If this is the case, the questions become, at what point in the illness or recovery should exercise be considered, how much, and in what form? While the answers to these questions are far too individual to explore fully here, what we learn from her case is that exercise, when implemented early, improves recovery. That brings us to a more complicated question; why kickboxing, boxing, or other dynamically challenging programs might be useful for narcolepsy specifically. From what I have learned, it may be related to activating and training neural connections in a region of the brain called the basal ganglia. And of course, the mitochondria are still involved.

Enter Kickboxing and the Basal Ganglia

I believe there is damage to the basal ganglia for her and other Gardasil injured women. To this point, among the more common symptoms associated with Gardasil injury are tremors, ataxia, and gait issues. While those symptoms can easily be attributed to cerebellar and thyroid damage as well, and both of which are affected by the vaccine and thiamine deficiency, it is not without warrant that we look at the basal ganglia for these symptoms, as well as for the sleep and wakefulness issues. Neural tracts between the cerebellum and basal ganglia suggest that if one is damaged, messaging and functioning to the other would be impaired. Indeed, research shows both efferent and afferent disynaptic (from and too, two neuron) connections between the cerebellum and the basal ganglia. Additionally, personal communications with other women affected by Gardasil regarding imaging results confirm damage to the basal ganglia in some women. This is in addition to potential cerebellar damage.

Symptomatically, many post-Gardasil women display an ataxic, drunken sailor like gait, which is indicative of cerebellar involvement while their tremors occur at rest, along with muscle rigidity and dystonia, indicating basal ganglia involvement. All of them suffer from what could be termed hypersomnia and excessive fatigue, but none that I have met thus far were diagnosed with narcolepsy, like this patient. Of course, that does not exclude the possibility that it does not exist. The post vaccination symptoms are diverse as one might expect with mitochondrial damage and autonomic system dysfunction.

Why the Basal Ganglia?

The basal ganglia are set of nuclei buried deep in the brain that are responsible for controlling movement, motor learning, executive function (via connections with the frontal cortex) and emotional regulation and motivation (via connection to the limbic system). See figure 1.

brainstem basal ganglia — Figure 1. Tracts of the basal ganglia.

The basal ganglia act as a breaking system to complex movement patterns and activities.

The most well known disorders of these nuclei include Parkinson’s and Huntington’s diseases. These are dis-inhibition syndromes, where the normal inhibitory control that the basal ganglia hold over motor movements is lost resulting in tremors and chorea respectively. There are also problems with initiating movement. This occurs via connections to the limbic system, particularly a set of nuclei located in what is called the ventral tegmental area (VTA). These nuclei are central to motivating behavior, addictive behavior in many cases, but also, behavior in general. The dopamine released by the VTA neurons provide reward and reward, as we all know, encourages habit and learning. That hit of dopamine gives us the drive to act. As Parkinson’s disease progresses, patients lose these connections and with them that internal, unconscious motivation that initiates behavior. They become stuck and so absent an external cue, patients will become unable initiate a movement internally on their own. This stuckness might sometimes also manifests as a sort of depression; one where there is no motivation to act at all.

One of the latest alternative treatment modalities for Parkinson’s disease, aside from thiamine, involves boxing. Yes, boxing. Boxing, because of the balance requirements, the bilateral, stop/go and cognitively active nature of the exercise seems to activate tracts in the basal ganglia that increase inhibitory control, reduce tremors, and allow for a smoother initiation of movement patterns. It also improves gait speed and balance, conditioning, cognitive ability, and overall quality of life.

What does all of this have to do with the ability to maintain wakefulness, and as our patient indicated, cognitive clarity? This, as far as I can tell, has not been studied, but I suspect it has to do with enhancing motivation. Not motivation in the psychobabble sense, but motivation as a fundamentally physiological, survival-based behavior; motivation that is controlled by the basal ganglia via connections to the limbic system and the frontal cortex, respectively. That hit of dopamine that engenders motivation is key for not only movement but arousal. When there is damage to that system, wakefulness is near impossible. Rodent studies have born this out. Without ‘motivation’ we cannot remain awake and we cannot sustain the arousal necessary for mental acuity.

Consider for a moment, the key aspect among all of the behaviors controlled by basal ganglia is that they necessitate wakefulness. Given that, it makes sense from a purely logical perspective that the basal ganglia might be involved in maintaining the arousal necessary to perform these activities. Similarly, it makes sense that damage to certain tracts within these nuclei could impair not only one’s ability to maintain wakefulness, but also, one’s ability to manage motor movement with altered sleep/wakefulness patterns. Finally, absent sustained and vigilant wakefulness, mental acuity is impossible. The cognitive fogginess, so often reported by these patients, may very well be linked to disruptions in basal ganglia functioning.

But Wait, There is More: The Orexin System and the Basal Ganglia

When narcolepsy and other sleep/wake disorders are researched, the basal ganglia have only recently come into view. This is despite the fact that the most well-known disorders of the basal ganglia, like Parkinson’s, demonstrate clear sleep/wake disturbances. Instead, another set of neurons located in the hypothalamus, called the orexin/hypocretin neurons (same neurons, different name), dominate the research landscape. Damage to these neurons is clearly linked to narcolepsy, cataplexy and other sleep/wake disturbances, and for our purposes, directly attributable vaccine reactions, especially the flu vaccine. The basal ganglia, not so much. How do we reconcile the known connections between orexin system, narcolepsy, and vaccine damage, the paucity of research on the basal ganglia. Well, like everything in the brain and body, we look for communication patterns. And it just so happens, the orexin neurons clearly interact with the basal ganglia to manage arousal, both directly via orexin receptors in various regions of the basal ganglia and indirectly, via vast projections throughout the limbic system, which then project to the basal ganglia.

Backing up just a bit, the release of orexin induces wakefulness. I have written about this system here, here, here, and here. When orexin neurons are turned on and firing appropriately, arousal is maintained. When orexin neurons are turned off, diminished or dysfunctional, melatonin, the sleep promoting hormone, is turned on. The two work in concert to manage wakefulness and sleep. Orexin receptors are located throughout the central nervous system and in the body. For our purposes, the orexin receptors in the amygdala and throughout the limbic system directly activate the release of dopamine from the VTA. Recall, dopamine projections from the VTA to the basal ganglia are critical for motivating and sustaining wakefulness in Parkinson’s patients. Additionally, orexin receptors have been found in different regions of the basal ganglia themselves, suggesting direct regulation of arousal. Perhaps even more importantly, the orexin neurons have been found to be instrumental in integrating motor movement patterns.

“…numerous neuroanatomical and immunohistochemical studies reveal that essential subcortical motor structures, such as the basal ganglia, cerebellum, and vestibular nucleus, receive direct innervation from orexin neurons. Moreover, during movements, orexinergic neurons are particularly active and orexin release increases. The evidence suggests that the orexinergic system directly participates in central motor control.”

So what we have is an integrated system of arousal, movement control, and cognitive behaviors that relies heavily on the health and functioning of the basal ganglia and its connections through out the brain, including with orexin system in the hypothalamus. And the orexin system itself relies heavily on functioning mitochondria, as does everything, but the orexin neurons are particularly sensitive to diminished mitochondrial function as these neurons require as much as 5-6X the amount of intracellular ATP to maintain firing compared to other neurons. The orexin neurons cease firing when ATP stores become low, inducing sleep to allow the reallocation energy towards more basic survival functions like heart rate and respiration. That means that excessive sleep is to be expected with mitochondrial damage.

Putting It All Together

With direct stress to the mitochondria via vaccines and medications we can expect a variety of negative symptoms. In this case, our patient developed thyroid damage, autonomic dysfunction (cerebellar and brainstem involvement), and likely also, some degree of basal ganglia injury. The hypersomnia, so commonly experienced during illness or adverse medication/vaccine reactions, represents diminished orexin activity likely initiated by diminished mitochondrial capacity. Narcolepsy suggests a specific injury to oxexin system. With the diminished orexin capacity, we can anticipate that basal ganglia function would be impacted, and with it, the ability to maintain the requisite ‘motivation’ for arousal and wakefulness and to coordinate movement and maintain cognitive acuity. Nutrients and exercise improve the respiratory capacity of mitochondria, which in turn, provides the requisite energy to manage autonomic function from the brainstem and cerebellum and to sustain wakefulness by maintaining orexin firing in general and to the basal ganglia more specifically. Additionally, exercise that demands dynamic, bilateral, complex movement patterns, such as kickboxing, may serve to retrain or maintain the strength of synaptic connections to, through, and from the basal ganglia, which ultimately, may offset any damage done by the initial insult.

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This article was published originally on March 12, 2020.

Western Medicine: A House Built on Sand

by Derrick Lonsdale MD, FACN, CNS

Published on December 1, 2025

12.7K views

Let Food Be Medicine

At the risk of repeating myself too much as in former pages of this website, I want to return to discussing in some depth the fallacies incorporated in our present approach to health and disease. You may or may not remember that I have stated a number of times that Hippocrates (400 BCE) uttered the formula “Let food be thy medicine and medicine thy food”. Having been construed as the “father of modern medicine”, it has seemed to me for a long time that he has been ignored as a “parent”.

For centuries, there was no idea about disease. The early Egyptians bored holes in people’s heads “to let out the evil spirits”. Throughout medieval history the only treatment seems to have been “bloodletting”. In our modern world, horns from the rhinoceros are regarded so highly for their medical properties, that this wonderful animal is reaching the point of annihilation. Pharmaceutical drugs, with the exception of antibiotics, only treat symptoms. I ask you, does this make any sense at all in the light of what Hippocrates suggested?

Because humanity tends to follow a collective pattern and only rarely listens to an idea derived from rational deduction, I view medicine as like a traveler on a road without a known destination. In my imagination, he comes to a fork in the road, but the signpost records information on only one fork. It reads “kill the enemy”, reminding me of the story of Semmelweiss, a lone thinker in his time and who “gave thought to the message on the signpost”. Most physicians are familiar with this story but it is worth repeating.

Semmelweiss was a physician who lived at a time before microorganisms had been discovered. He presided over an obstetric ward where there were 10 beds on one side and 10 beds on the other. The physicians would deliver their patients without changing their clothes or washing their hands. As we would expect today, the death rate from infection was extremely high. Semmelweiss said to himself, “they must be bringing [the enemy] in on their hands” and he devised the first known clinical experiment. He made it a rule for the physicians on one side of the ward to wash their hands in chlorinated lime before they delivered their patient. The physicians on the other side of the ward continued to deliver their patients in the same old way. As we would easily recognize today, it did not require a statistician to see the difference between the incidences of infections on the two sides of the ward. Irrespective of the fact that this was a dramatic discovery that later had obvious meaning, Semmelweiss was accused by the medical authorities of the day of being non-scientific because he could not explain what it was that was supposed to be on the hands of the physicians. Of course the medical establishment had no idea that their model for disease was catastrophically wrong, although collectively certain that their philosophy bore all the hallmarks of scientific truth. Semmelweiss had offended the medical establishment and they threw him out of the hospital. He died a pauper in a mental hospital.

The First Medical Paradigm: Kill the Enemy

When microorganisms were discovered to be responsible for infections, it fulfilled the message on the signpost and it became the first paradigm in medicine. Kill the bacteria: kill the virus: kill the cancer cell, but try not to kill the patient. If we look at the history of this time, we find that a lot of patients were killed in the concerted attempts to find ways and means of killing the enemy. We all remember the discovery of penicillin and how it led to the antibiotic era, still the major therapeutic methodology, even though we know that it is running into bacterial resistance and has never been a good idea for viruses or cancer cells.

Although the germ theory had been around for a long time, Louis Pasteur, Ferdinand Cohn and Robert Koch were able to prove it and are regarded as the founders of microbiology. However, Pasteur was said to have uttered the words on his deathbed “I was wrong: the microbe (germ) is nothing. The terrain (the interior of the human body) is everything”. Perhaps he had unknowingly voiced the principles of the next paradigm in medicine.

The Second Medical Paradigm: Genetic Determinism

The monk, Mendel, by his work on the segregation of peas, formulated what came to be known as the genetic mechanisms of Mendelian inheritance and the discovery of DNA modeled the next stage in our collective development. The fact that each of us is built from a complex code that dictates who we are was a remarkable advance. The fact that the construction of the code sometimes contained mistakes (mutations) led us to explaining many diseases and for a long time we believed that the genes were fixed entities, dictating their inexorable commands throughout life. However, the newest science of epigenetics has shown us that the DNA that makes up our genes can sometimes be manipulated by nutrition and lifestyle, as well as by artificial means in the laboratory.

Health: The Ability to Respond Effectively to a Hostile Environment

We are surrounded by germs that exist everywhere, many of which cause disease as we are all too well aware. Nevertheless, whatever evolutionary mystery guides our development, we are all equipped with an extraordinarily complex, genetically determined, defense system. We now know that this is organized and directed by the brain. Assuming that the genetic determinations of the terrain are completely intact, we can be reasonably assured that we can defend ourselves from any germ that Mother Nature can throw at us. Built in mechanisms in the brain require a huge amount of energy when it goes into action directing the traffic of the immune system. It is a crisis and can be likened to a war between the body and the attacking organisms. Thus, if Pasteur may have stated the next paradigm in medicine, what does it mean?

As an example, a typical microbial attack causes a common disease that goes by the name of febrile lymphadenopathy (strep throat). The throat becomes inflamed, perhaps because the increased blood supply brings in white blood cells, acting in defense. An increase in circulating white cells also occurs, bringing a brigade of defensive soldiers. The glands in the neck become swollen because they catch the germs that get into the lymph system. Lastly, the increased temperature of the body is also part of the defense. Germs are programmed to have their most intense virulence at 37°C, the normal body temperature. If this temperature is increased, the attacking germ does not have its maximum efficiency. In other words, what we are looking at as the illness is really the act of brain/body defensive interaction. Besides attempting to kill the attacking germ as safely as possible, should we not be assisting the defense? The answer calls into question the relationship between genetic intactness and the required energy to drive the complex defensive action. Perhaps a genetic mistake (mutation) can sometimes be manipulated by an epigenetic approach through nutrients, just as advised by Hippocrates.

Disease: The Inability to Adapt to the Environment

If we look at health as the ability to respond effectively and adapt to environmental, mental and physical stressors, it is possible to re-conceptualize illness by the manner in which that response is carried out. A healthy individual will respond to stressors without problem, because of an efficiently effective mobilization of energy dependent mechanisms. In contrast, individuals who are not healthy will respond in one of two ways. Either the defense mechanisms will be incomplete or absent or over-reactive and inconsistent. Listed below are examples of both. Note that this is in line with the ancient philosophy of Yin and Yang or, in modern terms “everything in moderation”. Too much of anything is as bad as too little.

Exhausted Defense Systems

When I was a resident in my English teaching hospital, before the antibiotic era, I admitted a patient with pneumonia who was known to have chronic tuberculosis. He was seen to be “unconsciously picking at thin air with his fingers” and the physician for whom I was resident pointed out that it was a classic example of “a sick brain” and that he would die. He never had any fever, elevation of white blood cells or any other marker of an infection but at autopsy, his body was riddled with small staphylococcal abscesses. He had lived in the east end of London, notorious for poverty and malnutrition at that time. In fact, as an organism, he never showed the slightest sign of a defense. His “sick brain” was completely disabled in any attempt to organize his defense.

Excessive or Aberrant Defense Mechanisms

Many years ago I was confronted with two six-year-old unrelated boys who for several years had each experienced repeated episodes of febrile lymphadenopathy. Both boys had been treated elsewhere as episodes of infection. In each case the swollen glands in the neck were enormous. One of the boys had been admitted to a hospital for a gland to be removed surgically for study. It had been found that the gland was just enlarged but had a perfectly normal anatomy, only contributing to the mystery. One of the curious parts of the history was that each of these boys had been indulged with sweets. Because I was well aware that sweet indulgence could induce vitamin B1 (thiamine) deficiency, I tested them and found that both were indeed deficient in this vitamin. Treatment with large doses of thiamine completely prevented any further attacks. The mothers of the boys were advised to prohibit their sweet indulgence. I needed some evidence and asked one of the mothers to stop giving thiamine to her son. Three weeks later he experienced a nightmare, sleep walking and another episode of lymphadenopathy that quickly resolved with thiamine. A nightmare and sleep walking supported the contention that the brain was involved in the action. In addition, his recurrent illnesses had been associated with increased concentrations of two B vitamins, folate and B12, both of which decreased into the acceptably normal range with thiamine treatment. Of course, this added complexity to an explanation.

What I had already learned about thiamine deficiency is that it makes the part of the brain that controls automatic mechanisms much more sensitive. One or more reflexes are activated unnecessarily. No reflex activation is as bad as too much. Thus, the “trigger-happy” defense mechanisms were being activated falsely. Thiamine is perhaps the most important chemical compound derived from diet that presides over the intricacies of energy metabolism. All that was required was an improved energy input to the brain. Folate and B12 are vitamins that work in energy consuming mechanisms and I hypothesized that their respective functions were stalled for lack of energy, causing their accumulation in the blood. Whatever the explanation, the facts were as described. It is interesting that the high levels of folate and B12 had been found at the hospital where a lymph node had been removed. The mother had been accused of giving too many vitamins to her child. She had told me that she did not understand this explanation because she had not given any vitamins to him. I had measured them solely to verify this finding.

The Treatment of Disease Should Begin with Host Defenses

We exist in a hostile environment. Each day throughout life we live in anticipation of potential attack. A physical attack may be an injury, an infection or an ingested toxin. A mental attack, divorce, grieving, loneliness, generally referred to as “stress” may be virtually anything that causes the brain to go into increased action. In facing both physical and mental forces, it is the brain that organizes the defense and it demands an increase in energy output that depends solely on the ability to burn fuel. The fuel burning process is governed by a combination of genetically determined ability and the nature of the fuel. Thus, the treatment of all disease is dependent on this combination being effective. It can be seen as obvious that killing the enemy is insufficient. As our culture exists at the present time, trying to get people to understand the necessity of perfect nutrition is a pipe dream. This particularly applies to youth and the artificiality of the food industry. However, our culture is also virtually brainwashed to accept tablets as a means of treating anything.

In our recently published book “Thiamine Deficiency, Dysautonomia and High Calorie Malnutrition“, Dr. Marrs and I have shown that thiamine deficiency is extraordinarily common and that supplementary thiamine and magnesium together balance the ratio of empty calories to the required concentration of cofactors necessary for their oxidation. The question remains, would vitamin supplementation, just as artificial, be a more successful sell as a preventive measure? We have shown that the symptoms derived from prolonged high calorie malnutrition can last for years as an unrecognized polysymptomatic illness that haunts many physicians’ offices. Early recognition represents an easy cure. There is a good deal of evidence that ignoring the symptoms and the persistence of high calorie malnutrition creates a gradual deterioration that then turns up as chronic disease. Some drugs, metronidazole being an example, will precipitate thiamine deficiency, so we have to recognize the precarious nature of the present medical approach in the use of drugs whose action in treating disease is often unknown. Although recognition of the artificiality of thiamine supplementation is implicit in this proposal, it is better than allowing a common example of continued morbidity to exist.

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More people than ever are reading Hormones Matter, a testament to the need for independent voices in health and medicine. We are not funded and accept limited advertising. Unlike many health sites, we don’t force you to purchase a subscription. We believe health information should be open to all. If you read Hormones Matter, like it, please help support it. Contribute now.

Yes, I would like to support Hormones Matter.

Photo by Phil Hearing on Unsplash.

This article was published originally on July 19, 2018.

Rest in peace Derrick Lonsdale, May 2024.

Elimination Dieting and Progressive Thiamine Deficiency

by M. Ross

Published on November 25, 2025

6.1K views

My issues began after the birth of my second child 21 years ago. I would get extreme indigestion for a couple days each month and my skin broke out. This continued for years until I ended up having several rounds of antibiotics. Months later, I developed severe and never ending acid reflux. After struggling for a year, my local health food store owner mentioned the blood type diet and recommended I avoid dairy. The result was magic. Unfortunately, this started a cascade of elimination diets that would set the tone for the next fifteen years.

After eliminating dairy and seeing a resolution of symptoms, at least temporarily, I decided to eliminate gluten too. As with the dairy, the indigestion disappeared temporarily when I eliminated gluten, but other symptoms eventually crept in, including hypothyroidism and bile reflux. I read about a vegetarian diet and decided to give it a try. Again amazing results from removing meat. The bile reflux disappeared. I thought things were going pretty well, but in these years I started to have other issues: ataxia, fatigue, heat intolerance, numbness and tingling, gait and bladder issues. In addition, I was always starving. I ate a tremendous amount of food each day, but at the same time I was losing weight.

My naturopath had mentioned possible problems with my gallbladder, but I didn’t think too much about it until I had constant pain. It was eventually discovered that I had a non-functioning gallbladder and I reluctantly had it removed, hoping it would solve my problems. I had tried changing my diet to the autoimmune paleo several times, but would always crash after a couple weeks. After surgery, I could eat meat without major issues, but nothing seemed to digest well. I felt like I never really recovered and other issues started to creep in.

My calf muscles would spasm upon standing and I was so weak I was having difficulty walking a block. A year after surgery, I was diagnosed with primary progressive multiple sclerosis, as it matched my symptoms and lesions were seen on my cerebellum and down my spine. The hallmark of PPMS is neurodegeneration without inflammation. The next three and a half years were a quick decline. I quickly became unable to walk unaided, mainly because I was too fatigued and my muscles too weak. PPMS used to be called creeping paralysis and that is exactly what was happening; I was unable to move my arms or legs, my equilibrium was so off that I couldn’t stand without tipping over and I couldn’t look down to even zip up my jacket.

I had really bad edema in my lower legs and feet and they were a nice shade of purple. My brain was easily overwhelmed and not committing things to memory, which left me going in circles. I lost my appetite, but blamed it on my ever changing diet and my fear of eating the wrong food. I would alternate between diets, cutting various food groups with very limited success.

I visited multiple naturopaths, a functional medical doctor, a NUCCA chiropractor and a MS specialist. I have researched endlessly and have a cupboard full of supplements. I had tried B vitamins before but had not noticed a difference. I joined a Facebook group called Understanding Mitochondrial Nutrients and did not think much about the vitamin I needed most, thiamine, until a post by a desperate husband came up in my feed. I began to research thiamine and found I was able to piece together a timeline of my life based on a progressing thiamine deficiency. I am only three weeks into dosing with thiamine (I take 200mg thiamine HCL and 240mg benfotiamine) and a B complex, but it has made such a difference in my balance, fatigue, edema and mental energy. My appetite is back and I can zip up my coat! I am cautiously optimistic, only because I have suffered so much disappointment in the past. I am hopeful that I can make a recovery.

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More people than ever are reading Hormones Matter, a testament to the need for independent voices in health and medicine. We are not funded and accept limited advertising. Unlike many health sites, we don’t force you to purchase a subscription. We believe health information should be open to all. If you read Hormones Matter, like it, please help support it. Contribute now.

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This story was published originally on March 7, 2023.

My Decade of 24/7 Depression

by Jen

Published on November 12, 2025

7.3K views

I am a 60 year old female who has been experiencing severe depression with anhedonia for over a decade. I often feel oxygen and energy deprivation in my head more often when I lie down. I have a lot of short term memory problems and executive functioning issues that began around age 50. Sometimes I feel the earth move under my feet and I am occasionally dizzy and have double vision. If I look intently at things, it appears as though they are moving. I also have some visual tracking issues. This is partly do being blind focally in one eye and floaters in both, but I suspect there is more too it. I have endured restless leg syndrome for years, which has been significantly less for the last few weeks after beginning thiamine, as have some of my other symptoms, but the depression, anhedonia and general loss of motivation and lack of joy remains. I have begun using a variety of supplements but feel as though I am still missing something. I am sharing my story in the hopes that someone can offer some help.

Childhood Through Early Adulthood

Since childhood, I have felt physically crappy. I was never able to breathe through my nose. I had asthma and constant, intense itching in my ears, nose, throat, head, and eyes. Insomnia plagued me as a child due to anxiety, along with the inability to breathe and the intense itching in my head. Regularly, and especially at night, I fantasized of putting an icepick into my ear to scratch the horrible itch in the center of my head. All day, everyday, I choked on the constant snot that continuously poured out of my nose and clogged my throat. I choked often on my food being a total mouth breather. I needed a box of Kleenex’s to get through a day. Despite it constantly running, I could not breathe through my nose at all. Encumbering as all this was, I still managed to feel somewhat hopeful, played outdoors, had friends, and attended school most days.

I chose to leave home quite young (at 15 years old) because of family dysfunction. By 16, I stopped consuming liquid dairy, thus leading to a nose-breathing liberation. I still was plagued with sinus issues but could breathe occasionally through my nose to some degree for the first time ever.

As a youth, I experimented with drugs, but never really took anything regularly as the hangovers were horrible and weakening for me. I did a fair amount of drinking in twenties as well but paid the price health wise, and since have not had a drink in many years.

In my twenties, I became aware of sugar causing severe hypoglycemia in me, caused huge mood swings and vision loss. I also self-diagnosed myself with hypothyroidism. I went to see doctors assuming this was causing my miscarriages but the doctors invalidated me at every turn, insisting I was fine. So my Hashimoto’s went untreated for many years until I discovered I could treat it with over-the-counter desiccated thyroid.

Even with all of this going on, I just kept dragging myself along through life on what felt like sheer willpower alone. During this time (my 20’s), I ate more vegetables (fresh organic) and less meat, I had a lot of stomach pain that plagued me on top of everything else, even though my diet was quite good and full of organic vegetables grown nearby. I wasn’t a trying to be a vegetarian, I always thought of myself a bit more of a carnivore, but being that I lived among vegetarians I didn’t eat meat on a daily basis. I noticed that when I did eat meat, I felt a little better. I wish I had taken it more seriously then, but I was still in my optimistic youth, and every day was a new day where I thought I was going to magically feel better.

Lifelong Anxiety and Stage Fright

Prior to the depression, I was a violinist, but one who suffered from lifelong, crippling stage fright. As a child I couldn’t sleep at all for days prior to an audition or performance, which was often. This continued my whole life. Nevertheless, I was able to push through and have performed and recorded many pieces with many different people through the years. Over time though, I began to avoid auditions, and mostly, only performed solo for strangers like at weddings and parties where there weren’t high expectations. Many times, I convinced myself to get over this anxiety, I just had to do it, to get out there and perform. This never worked. I never got over it. Oddly enough, no one realized what I was going through while I played.

I took immediate release Adderall 40-60mg 2-4 x a week for about 5 years in my late 40s to early 50s. It was prescribed for ADHD and for stage fright during violin performances. It also helped with motivation. I have always had a pretty scattered ADHD type personality and felt that I was a high functioning autistic person.

I take trazodone to help sleep when I can afford to get it, but it doesn’t always work. So lately I have been taking a break. Sometimes I will take an over the counter antihistamine/cold medicine like Tylenol when I am desperate to sleep, like when I’m caring for mother. It is a last resort though. I prefer not take anything being it makes me a little nauseous and I worry about liver damage.

I tried Wellbutrin for depression for several months about a year and a half ago, but felt nothing. I tried Prozac for four weeks in my 40s and also felt nothing.

Mumps and Loss of Vision in One Eye

I got the mumps in my forties. This was the closest I ever felt to death in my life. I subsequently lost vision in my right eye. When I lost my vision, it was assumed that I had ocular histoplasmosis but a few years prior to that I had lost vision in one eye for a few months to an unusual eye condition called MEWDS, (multiple evanescent white dot syndrome). MEWDS can be induced by a virus, perhaps having the mumps virus had something to do with it. I also wonder if I was actually type 2 diabetic off and on in my life, or at least borderline, and if that cost me my eye.

Debilitating Depression

After a lifetime of feeling crappy, multiple miscarriages, carpal tunnel, loss of vision in one eye, foot, back, and joint pains, continuous often intense neck pain that has been there since my twenties, along with severe insomnia and allergies, I arrived at 50 years old and began a quick descent into an abyss of deep and unexpected depression and anhedonia. I have been stuck here and have wanted to die 24/7 for 10 years, but haven’t because I do not want to hurt my grown son, and I am sharing the out of state caretaking of my mother and stepfather with dementia with my brother. I have been desperately trying for the last decade to recover my health. To that end, I have taken many supplements but none have really noticeably worked.

Attempts to Recover

Seven years ago, I took to injecting B12 after self-diagnosed pernicious anemia, but never felt a noticeable difference. I was extremely fatigued. I also injected a B complex regularly for several weeks or more without noticing a difference. I still feel a lot of fatigue but with the loss of motivation I think it is possibly more mental than physical.

Ten months ago, I began a strictly carnivore diet. Carnivore has helped inflammation. My bowels are way better and my lifelong mouth ulcers stopped immediately. There have been many other small wins. Unfortunately though, it means next to nothing to me because it has not fixed my depression, my enjoyment, or will to live. These are the core symptoms that I need to fix. I don’t understand why others get over their depression and insomnia and I cannot seem too. I also still loose lots of hair, but this has been going on for about 7 years. This is traumatic for me (constantly).

About three months ago, I experienced tachycardia plus dizzy spells for several days. The doctors said my iron was fine but I upped my heme iron and b12 and I think it helped. I eat a lot of liver/meat so it surprises me that I would ever be low in b12 or iron. I still feel a little floaty at times, but my heart rates are more normalized.

Recently, I discovered the literature and videos on high dose thiamine. I was very excited, and finally, once again hopeful.

I have taken both TTFD and benfotiamine for a couple weeks now and am not really noticing any changes paradoxically or feeling better. I recently added the HCL too. I have tried upping my doses significantly to where I was taking over 2000mg of Benfotiamine, 400mmg of TTFD and 400mg of thiamine HCL for several weeks. But I have since lowered it considerably. I also take magnesium (100mg), glutathione, riboflavin (100mg) the other B vitamins via yeast, B12 with intrinsic factor (500mg), and electrolytes, and I eat head to tail carnivore including bone broth. I take a substantial amount of more than 400mg of desiccated thyroid as well for the Hashimoto’s disease.

I started taking high dose niacin, perhaps a week ago and I think it kind of helped the thiamine. I felt a certain weight in my head lessen. It was not so much emotionally noticeable but like a bunch of swelling must have loosened. Then two nights ago, my body, legs, and some in arms, swelled up horribly. It was very itchy, painful and lumpy; like I had gained 20 pounds overnight. I haven’t had a history of noticeable edema. This scared me and I decided it was lymphedema, so I began doing lymph draining exercises. I finally felt it was not expanding any longer and perhaps even subsiding a day and half later. I felt hopeful that the brain inflammation FINALLY made a breakthrough, and my body was dealing with the toxicity that had been stuck in there, but I’m not sure what caused the sudden swelling. I also noticed during the swelling that I was urinating less, no matter my fluid intake. Perhaps my body was trying to dilute the toxicity and thus the necessary accumulation. I didn’t take the niacin or thiamine for the next two days. Then yesterday, I took a 1 gram niacin dose and felt a decline in the swelling, and later, around 3 am, I took another niacin, which somehow helped my body hurt less and I could relax. Now a few weeks later, the swelling has decreased considerably. I think it’s going to take some time to feel the results of brain regeneration and habitual behavior, but I don’t feel that feeling of a huge lump of coal stuck in my head anymore. I am currently taking 300mg of benfotiamine, 100 thiamine HCL and 100 allithiamine along with my minerals, electrolytes and vitamins. I also added oregano oil protocol that I heard could help with Hashimoto’s.

Please Help

I used to be highly creative and performed violin for a living, whereas now I cannot find any hope or inspiration to play or do anything and haven’t in years. I desperately want to clear the fog from my brain and regain my will. It is as if I am overwhelmed and underwhelmed at that same time. It is difficult to describe, except that I am miserable. What am I missing? Please any advice appreciated. Thank you!

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More people than ever are reading Hormones Matter, a testament to the need for independent voices in health and medicine. We are not funded and accept limited advertising. Unlike many health sites, we don’t force you to purchase a subscription. We believe health information should be open to all. If you read Hormones Matter, and like it, please help support it. Contribute now.

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This story was published originally on November 30, 2023.

Childhood Trauma, Diet, and Behavior

by Derrick Lonsdale MD, FACN, CNS

Published on November 6, 2025

10.5K views

Adverse Childhood Experiences and the Diet Variable

Nearly one in eight children (12%) are reported to have had three or more negative life experiences associated with levels of stress that can harm their health and development. In 2011, nearly 60% of children age 17 and younger were exposed to violence within the year, either directly as victims or indirectly as witnesses. Twenty-one per cent of children in the United States suffer from mild behavioral health problems and an additional 11% struggle to overcome significant behavioral health, according to the Adverse Childhood Experiences study. This estimate translates into a total of 4 million youth who suffer from major mental illness (US Department of Health and Human Services 1999, 123-124). An estimated 26% of Americans aged 18 and older (about one in four or over 57 million adults) suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year.

As if this were not enough, the Children’s Crisis Treatment Center in Philadelphia indicated that “in 2011, 29% of students in grades 9 through 12 reported feeling sad or hopeless almost every day for two or more weeks in a row in a year. Up to 70% of children and teenagers in the juvenile justice system have a diagnosable mental health disorder and up to 44% of high school students suffering from behavioral health issues drop out of school”. If these statistics are accurate, they are deplorable.

Malnutrition as a Major Cause of Brain Disease

With these huge numbers involved, of many potentially causative issues, there is considerable evidence that bad nutrition may dominate them. It is interesting that, many years ago, a Probation Officer in Cuyahoga Falls in Ohio persuaded a judge to hand over to her care all the juvenile criminals that stood trial in his court. She regulated their diet and supervised it. The recidivism (habitual lapsing back into crime) dropped to almost zero. Unfortunately, good nutrition is commonly overcome by hedonism (love of pleasure) and is usually governed by the sweet taste. There are two aspects to this. Sugar in all its different forms precipitates thiamine deficiency and the signal from the tongue to the brain is responsible for its addictive qualities. There is little doubt that thiamine deficiency is heavily responsible for much of the mental disease that is so commonly represented in our culture. It is especially damaging to the lower part of the brain that governs our emotional responses and our ability to adapt to a hostile environment. Because thiamine deficiency produces an effect similar to that of oxygen deficiency (hypoxia) it has been seen as a cause of pseudo-hypoxia (false hypoxia). Either true or false hypoxia is interpreted by the brain as a potentially dangerous threat to the organism.

Some years ago I had the opportunity to visit the Philadelphia Crisis Treatment Center that then existed under another name. I learned of a neurosurgeon who had been deeply involved with its original inception. He had suggested that seizures (epilepsy) were caused by a deficiency of oxygen (hypoxia) in the brain, perhaps explaining the usual resistance of juvenile seizures to drug treatment. Although the statistics above did not specify the nature of “major mental illness” in 4 million youths, I pondered over the years whether hypoxia or any part of its equivalent mechanisms (pseudo-hypoxia) could be the underlying cause common to brain disease in a variety of different expressions, including even epilepsy in some cases.

After my visit to Philadelphia, I had an opportunity to test the neurosurgeon’s suggestion by treating a 12-year-old boy in “status epilepticus” after his current medication had been suddenly withdrawn. I gave him an intravenous injection of thiamine tetrahydrofurfuryl disulfide (TTFD), a synthetic derivative of thiamine) and this quickly stopped the continuous seizuring. I then started TTFD by oral administration but it was discontinued by a neurologist who saw the incident as “spontaneous remission and nothing to do with vitamin therapy”. Unfortunately, I did not have any data to be able to publish the case. Status epilepticus is the name given to a situation where the seizuring is continuous and often very difficult to stop. It usually occurs when a medication is suddenly withdrawn. Many years later, I discovered that thiamine deficiency could produce the same symptoms as brain hypoxia, thus giving rise to describing this deficiency as pseudo-hypoxia (false hypoxia). I had evidently treated the SE by relieving the pseudo-hypoxia in the brain cells responsible for this patient’s potentially fatal illness.

Maternal Diet and Neurological Development

There is growing concern about the long-term neurologic effects of prenatal exposure to maternal overweight and obesity, a result of malnutrition. The causes of epilepsy are poorly understood and in more than 60% of the patients no definite cause can be determined. Authors from the well-known Karolinska Institute showed that there was indeed a relationship between obesity in pregnancy and the risk of epilepsy in the offspring. Although the mechanism is not articulated, micronutrient deficiency may be culpable. Increasingly, it has become clear that a person’s weight does not correspond to their nutritional status. Indeed, in many cases, obesity is associated with a state malnutrition; a malnutrition we call high calorie malnutrition.

Clinical thiamine deficiency is defined by both consistent clinical symptoms and either a low whole-blood thiamine concentration, significant improvement, or resolution of consistent clinical symptoms after receiving thiamine supplementation. Of 400 obese patients, 66 (16.5%) were shown to have clinical thiamine deficiency. Their symptoms included gastrointestinal, cardiac, peripheral neurologic and neuropsychiatric manifestations, the characteristic symptoms of beriberi. Hypoxia threatens brain function during the entire life span, starting from early fetal age up to senescence. A relatively common condition in newborns is lack of adequate oxygen supply to the brain and is known as hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy. This has been shown to correlate with multiple organ dysfunction and must surely be a severe legacy in the affected child.

The outstanding question then is whether poor diet, perhaps coupled with genetic risk in some cases, could be a substantial causative factor in widespread brain illness. Dr. Marrs and I have published considerable evidence that high calorie malnutrition, by inducing thiamine deficiency, is widespread throughout America and is responsible for a variety of brain related symptoms. With an excess of simple carbohydrate calories, the action of thiamine in burning those calories is overwhelmed. Thiamine might well be in a sufficient concentration for a healthy diet but insufficient for an excess of empty calories. It is the proper calorie/thiamine ratio that results in oxidative efficiency. Unfortunately, the many symptoms produced by thiamine deficiency in the brain are not recognized by the vast majority of physicians for what they represent. If thiamine deficiency is even suspected, they find a “normal” blood level of thiamine that is the usual result in moderate deficiency. The symptoms are falsely attributed to “a more acceptable diagnosis”. No appropriate laboratory tests are usually performed and in many cases the patient is diagnosed with psychosomatic disease, without even considering a necessary underlying mechanism.

High Calorie Malnutrition and Emotional Lability

This kind of malnutrition can severely affect emotional reactions, resulting in a variety of manifestations that include persistent anxiety, depression and bizarre behavior. We have even suggested that poor emotional control can lead to expressions of violence that hitherto have had no explanation for their almost daily occurrence in America. Poverty, poor education, environmental pollution and hedonism are all components that are predictable causative agents. When energy production in the brain is compromised by inefficient use of oxygen (oxidation), the affected person is unable to muster an adequate biological response in the process of adapting to virtually any form of stress. The affected patient is also wide open to succumbing from infection by any microorganism. Brain function becomes abnormal from lack of energy drive.

This may explain the breakdown in health in the children exposed to the stress of active (physical) or passive (mental) violence referred to at the beginning of this post. The well-known saying that “we are what we eat” should be broadened to “we behave according to what we eat”. So many books have advocated the principles of healthy nutrition, without producing much overall health improvement. There is a fairly consistent refusal to “give up” sugar, mainly because its ubiquitous consumption makes it hard to understand its inherent danger to complete health and its addictive properties. Perhaps a more logical attitude might be required to the use of nutritional supplements. The pharmaceutical industry has most people attuned to consumption of pills, so that a transfer of principle would probably be easy. However, it also demands a realization that disease can be reduced to an understanding of energy deficiency as the root cause.

We Need Your Help

More people than ever are reading Hormones Matter, a testament to the need for independent voices in health and medicine. We are not funded and accept limited advertising. Unlike many health sites, we don’t force you to purchase a subscription. We believe health information should be open to all. If you read Hormones Matter, like it, please help support it. Contribute now.

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This article was published originally on January 13, 2020.

Rest in peace Derrick Lonsdale, May 2024.

Are Thiamine Deficiency Symptoms Too Narrowly Focused?

by Chandler Marrs, PhD

Published on September 2, 2025

18.7K views

thiamine deficiency symptoms too narrowly focused

Much of our understanding regarding thiamine deficiency comes from early reports of illness from far-off lands, case reports that suggest rarity, and from rodent studies. While all of these are useful, none easily translate to the realities of this disease process on the ground, in the clinician’s office, or in the hospital. Do we really know what thiamine deficiency, or more appropriately, thiamine insufficiency looks like in everyday practice? Would we recognize it in the patients who walk through the doors of any medical facility? Probably not. And that is a problem.

We tend to think about nutrient deficiencies as emerging only in populations affected by starvation or absence-based malnutrition. This interpretation evolved from the early descriptions of beriberi, where the individuals most afflicted included Japanese sailors, Pacific Island communities, and regions afflicted by food scarcity. Later, alcoholics were added to the list of potential populations affected by thiamine deficiency. More recently, post gastric bypass patients, hyper-emetic pregnant women, and patients with critical illnesses were identified as at risk for deficiency. With each set of populations though, we are given the impression that thiamine deficiency is rare but easily recognized. It is neither, but the lens through which we view this disease process was focused generations ago on only the most severe examples, and that lens has remained ever since.

The Legacy of Early Scientists

The typical descriptions of thiamine deficiency disease, come from the perspective of the early investigators who described these conditions and have changed very little in decades since. Definitions of beriberi, which in Japanese means I cannot, I cannot, was, and still is, largely focused on the progression to heart failure in later stage deficiency. Here, there are two primary types of beriberi: wet beriberi, which is defined as high output cardiac failure with edema, and dry beriberi described as the central and peripheral nervous system and cardiovascular disturbances without edema. In recent years, gastrointestinal beriberi and neuritic beriberi have been added but they remain poorly recognized.

Likewise, our understanding of Wernicke’s encephalopathy (WE), a disease process that was first described by Carl Wernicke in 1881 and later associated with alcoholism and thiamine deficiency, is still described using Wernicke’s original triad of symptoms: mental confusion, ocular abnormalities, and ataxia. This despite the fact that 1) these symptoms represent a later stage manifestation of the disease process, where the deficiency is sufficient to produce brain damage and 2) these symptoms infrequently present, either alone or in combination, in most cases of WE. In fact, one study found that 80% of cases WE were identified only postmortem, meaning they were missed entirely while the patient was alive. Of those, only 16% had documentation of all three symptoms, 44% had one or two of the classic triad symptoms and 19% had none at all. This suggests that the classic triad, while a brilliant original observation, requires adjustment.

Korsakoff’s syndrome, a later stage and more severe form of thiamine deficient brain damage that includes neuropsychiatric and neurocognitive manifestations like confabulation, psychosis, and significant memory deficits, shares a similar lack of diagnostic clarity and is often mistaken for more traditionally defined psychiatric cases and dementias. Like Wernicke’s syndrome, Korsakoff’s is named after the scientist who first reported it in the late 19th century, a Russian by the name of Sergei Korsakoff. Like Wernicke’s, the lens through which we view this disorder owes largely to the original descriptions. Both syndromes are now combined as Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome (WKS). For that reason, there are no clear data on the prevalence of Korsakoff’s syndrome or on how many patients progress through the different stages of brain damage associated with thiamine deficiency.

Those Rare Cases of Thiamine Deficiency

Modern case reports reinforce these legacy definitions of thiamine disease and continue to portray thiamine deficiency as a rare manifestation of severe illness. The literature is replete with cases of patients who demonstrate none of the classic symptoms associated with thiamine deficiency and yet are clearly deficient. Likewise, in each of these reports, the development of thiamine deficiency is considered rare. Indeed, the rareness of this condition is almost always explicitly emphasized in the text with statements like:

“A severe depletion is not commonly seen, except in cases of inadequate nutrition and/or alcoholism.”
“Cardiac beriberi, or heart failure due to thiamine deficiency, is considered rare in the developed world.”
Thiamine deficiency is rare in developed countries and is most commonly associated with chronic alcoholism. The other predisposing conditions include chronic dietary deprivation and impaired absorption or intake of dietary nutrients.
Nowadays, in the developed world it is relatively rare.

Next time you are reading a case study, or really, any report on thiamine deficiency, note the remarks of rarity. What if thiamine deficiency is not rare, but simply under-recognized? If we rarely consider it based on the lack of matching symptoms, how do we know what the real prevalence is?

Of Rodents and Men

The rodent research, although more adept at addressing the progression of deficiency symptoms across time, is still problematic. Aside from the obvious differences between rodents and humans, the highly controlled and contrived experimental conditions under which this research occurs in no way reflects the messiness of life. Rarely are we exposed to an absolute deprivation of a single nutrient, unless under some sort of duress or a medical error. More frequently, the progression to thiamine deficiency is an extended process of months to decades, where exposure to thiamine or anti-thiamine factors varies across time, and as a result, so too does the expression of illness.

From the rodent research, we do know, however, that there is a clear progression of symptoms across the period of deprivation. Here, among the first manifestations of thiamine deficiency are hair loss, apathy, and anorexia. These symptoms emerge within two weeks of thiamine deprivation. At about 4 weeks, neurological symptoms emerge, and death by cardiac arrest occurs at about 6 weeks.

Whatever the problems there are translating patterns gathered from animal research to those of human studies, and there are many, at least with these studies we can see the early indicators of problems. If a patient were to complain of new-onset hair loss, apathy, or anorexia, or even newly emerging neurological symptoms, more often than not, the symptoms would be dismissed as stress-related and relegated to the category of psychosomatically induced. An antidepressant or anxiolytic would be prescribed and that would be the end of it. Thiamine or other nutrient deficiencies would not be considered until a much later stage, if at all.

The Progression of Symptoms in Human Females

From some highly unethical studies conducted on female psychiatric patients in the late 1930s and early 1940s, we know that the human progression of thiamine deficiency does indeed mirror what is illustrated by animal research somewhat. The early symptoms are so benign that most would miss them. Similarly, as the symptoms build over time, although they worsen considerably, they remain more general than specific and might easily be ascribed to other conditions if one were not trained to consider thiamine.

A few notes about the studies. There were three in total, two with four women each and one with 11 women maintained on a diet of .15mg of thiamine per day for 147 days, .45mg of thiamine for 88 days, and 11 women at ~.15 – .2mg thiamine per day plus 1mg of thiamine given intermittently for up to 196 days, respectively. In the third study, where additional thiamine was provided, when averaged, the total thiamine consumed was ~.175mg per 1000 calories of food or .35mg for a 2000 calorie per day diet. Also, in this study, 5 of the 11 women were maintained on the diet for an undisclosed period before resuming a normal diet, while the remaining 6 were kept on the diet for as long as 196 days. This is approximately 30% of the recommended daily allowance needed to stave off deficiency symptoms and syndromes.

Before each study period, the women were provided a normal ‘healthy’ diet for up to 52 days. It is not clear what that constituted. Upon beginning the study, the diets became quite unhealthy, consisting of food products using white flour, sugar, tapioca, corn starch, polished rice, raisins, egg white, cottage cheese, American cream cheese, butter, hydrogenated fat, tea, and cocoa. Additional B vitamins, as well as some fat-soluble vitamins, were provided via supplement, even though thiamine was all but eliminated.

Below is a compilation of the observed symptoms in two of the case descriptions provided.

First few weeks: emotional instability, irritability, moodiness, anxiety, agitation, depression, reduced activity, and numerous, often vague, somatic complaints. Weakness and anorexia begin to present.
30 days: anorexia, weight loss, epigastric distress, increasing weakness, periodic vomiting
50 days: nausea and vomiting after meals, progressive weakness from low energy to bedridden, sometimes constipation
70 days: constant nausea, severe weakness, apathy, confusion, numbness, and tingling in extremities
90 days: inability to read or focus, aberrant to absent sensory recognition, tender calves, inability to stand from squatting position, hypoactive Achilles tendon reflex, nausea continues progressing to regular vomiting after meals
110 days: appetite fails, apathy, vagueness and confusion, low blood pressure and heart rate at rest, rapid increase upon ordinary exertion, aberrant and absent sensory perceptions, aberrant and reduced reflexes, reduced flexion of ankles and knees, ataxia, inability to stand on toes.
120 days: impaired pain perception on legs, loss of patellar and Achilles reflex, weakness in abduction, adduction, and flexion of thighs, weakness in the legs with limited ability to extend legs with quadriceps, inability to stand or walk without support, ankle and knee clonus absent, Babinski response absent.

One of these two subjects developed severe neurological defects at 120 days and so the experiment was stopped. The researchers noted that appetite had completely failed and remarked that ‘inanition seemed imminent. They also remarked that with 60-80mg of thiamine given orally and parenterally many, but not all, of the deficits. Appetite returned and strength was regained within the first week, and within 30 days, the less severely ill of the two women was mostly recovered. At 60 days, she was fully recovered. For the other women, recovery was incomplete, even after 120 days of treatment. Of note, it was the younger and more active woman who suffered the most serious neurological deficits and who was unable to fully recover.

In the 88-day study, the most common and debilitating symptoms included vomiting and subsequent anorexia. The authors note:

We nevertheless are impressed by the degree of debility induced by the isolated withdrawal of thiamine. Fatigue, lassitude, and loss of interest in food developed early and increased progressively as the period of deficiency extended, to the point of intolerance for food. So great was this intolerance that uncontrollable vomiting, even after tube feeding and parenteral injection of solutions of sodium chloride and dextrose, automatically brought the observations to a close.

Also observed in this study, was an association between pre-deficiency energy levels and severity of illness propagated by the deficiency.

The time of development of symptoms and the time of development of severe symptoms differed among the subjects and seemed to be related to physical activity. The subjects who were more active showed symptoms earlier and were more seriously affected later than others who from the beginning were less energetic.

A few additional observations:

When thiamine was added intermittently, even though the total levels were still considerably below normal, symptoms improved for a period of a few days to a week. This happened repeatedly. The improvement was so noticeable that some of the women begged to remain on the higher levels of thiamine.
Pyruvate and lactic acid levels were higher throughout the period of thiamine deprivation but peaked differentially by individual, by duration of thiamine deficit, and across time, relative to when dextrose was given.
Pyruvate and lactic acid levels increased variably after meals and when dextrose was given but returned to the pre-meal/pre-dextrose basal rate within 120 minutes.

Finally, the most notable symptoms in each of the studies involved gastric distress, with vomiting, severe constipation, severe food intolerance, and anorexia. This, of course, was in addition to a decline in energy, polyneuropathy, changes in blood pressure, heart rate, and rhythm, and a decline in cognitive capacity.

So What Does Thiamine Deficiency Look Like?

Everything. And nothing. It is non-specific. It is the sickness behaviors of which Selye writes that underlie all illnesses. Thiamine deficiency looks like every other non-specific illness until it becomes severe enough to approximate some of the more well-recognized aspects of beriberi or WKS. Even in its most severe stages, however, the symptoms could easily be ascribed to other types of illness. Making matters more difficult, unlike the research presented above where thiamine is restricted consistently across time, in modern, developed countries, thiamine is rarely restricted so consistently. Thiamine consumption waxes and wanes across time, as does the demand. It is that mismatch between consumption or availability and needs that initiates the molecular events, deep in the mitochondria where thiamine is critical, that is responsible for the bevy of symptoms attributable to thiamine deficiency. This means that if we rely on the conventional diagnostic parameters, defined generations ago, we are all but guaranteed to miss it. Instead, we ought to be considering thiamine and other nutrient deficiencies in all cases of illness, whatever their manifestation, but that demands an entirely new lens through which to view health and disease; a lens that is quite at odds with the current model of medicine.

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This article was published originally on April 29, 2021.

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Depression, Anxiety, and the Chronically Hypoxic Brain

by Derrick Lonsdale MD, FACN, CNS

Published on August 20, 2025

30K views

I couldn’t help noticing the Wall Street Journal of Thursday, June 7, in which a column reported a completely unexpected suicide. The title of the column was “Kate Spade’s Family Recounts Her Battle With Depression”. It was reported that “Ms. Spade had suffered from depression and anxiety, and was being treated with medication and therapy. Depression and anxiety disorders occur simultaneously in about 25% of general practice patients. In the abstract, the author says “about 85% of patients with depression have anxiety and 90% of patients with anxiety have depression. Benzodiazepines may help alleviate insomnia and anxiety but not depression”. It must be obvious that the general impression is that these are two different expressions of psychological disarray that require different drugs to treat them. Evidently, Ms. Spade had left a suicide note indicating that she had been under mental stress from her marriage. There were other stresses reported. She had been living separately from her husband for 10 months and had been seeking help for the past five years.

The incongruity requires explanation. Here was a 55-year-old woman who was highly successful in the eyes of the world and her suicide appears to be completely incongruous, as indeed most suicides are. There should be a logical explanation for such an anachronism. The instinct for life is incredibly strong for us and indeed for all creatures in the animal kingdom. I offer my explanation here, based on the contention that the human brain is an electrochemical machine and that its functions are highly dependent on an adequate supply of energy. This does not take into account the concept of a soul that must remain one of the great mysteries of life.

Revisiting Freud: The Ego and the Id

According to Sigmund Freud, the id is the subconscious mind supervised by the ego and what he called the super-ego. All are built upon the presupposed existence of conscious and unconscious thoughts. Modern research has failed to find individual areas in the human brain dealing with the control of specific action. Its function is now regarded as an integrated organ, all parts of which share that action. However, much of this activity is entirely automatic and below conscious level. All brains in higher members of the animal kingdom are built on the same anatomical principle, presumably reflecting a “oneness” in design. If we are to accept evolution as the driving force, the brain of each animal has been developed to service that animal in its natural niche. The niche of Homo sapiens appears to be that of the dominant species and it has evolved from a more primitive state to a more sophisticated one, gradually introducing increased complexity. Brain action would be expected to become more and more sophisticated over time, perhaps making us more cooperative.

We have no idea what is in store for us with continued evolution, but it has long seemed to me that we are still relatively primitive at the philosophical level. Under stressful conditions, the actions of the human brain are much less predictable. However we consider the distribution of brain function, it is an electrochemical machine and a great deal of its activity is unconscious and purely automatic. Body organs signal the brain that then gives instructions to them via the autonomic and endocrine systems. It is therefore convenient to accept the ego and the id, each with its separate functions, however, they are controlled, by the conscious and unconscious mind. Some of the net behavior might be perceived as actions of the automatic component, governed and permitted by the conscious component. It has been suggested that human beings are built as “mean fighting machines equipped for self-interest”.

The Nervous System

Many posts on this website describe the difference between the so-called voluntary and the autonomic nervous systems. The term “voluntary” indicates that we can think and move at will and its actions are dictated by the conscious mind. The autonomic nervous system is almost completely automatic and governs many purely reflex actions, the fight-or-flight reflex being the best known. Hunger and thirst are self-preservatives. The sex drive preserves the continued existence of the species. Yes, these reflexes give us a sense of pleasure, which is the driving incentive and the brain provides us with sensory mechanisms that provide that pleasure. Everything is tied together by a complex code known as DNA, whose individual characteristics describe the physical profile and personality of each animal including humans. From a purely philosophical point of view, it calls into question whether we truly have free will or whether we are programmed by the environment in which we find ourselves. If all components fit together as designed, we can say that the “blueprint” for each person dictates the nature of the personality and reflects his/her mental and physical health. Our training to meet life starts in infancy and is in the hands of parents.

Of Stress and Stressors

Stress is a physical or mental event to which each of us has to adapt. As I have mentioned in other posts on this website, a Canadian researcher by the name of Hans Selye studied the effect of physical stress in animals for many years. He came to the conclusion that virtually any form of stress demanded an increase in the supply of cellular energy, much like the engine of a car climbing a hill. A stressed animal had to adapt to the injuries applied by Selye. He called it the “General Adaptation Syndrome”. He used many different methods to induce stress because he wondered whether there were different responses, depending on the nature of the stressor. He found that the stress response was uniformly identical across species and was able to divide the General Adaptation Syndrome into several predictable phases, each of which was repeatable in each experiment. Not surprisingly, his studies included an array of sequential biochemical changes in the body fluids. I found these changes to be similar to the laboratory changes seen in chronically sick patients. One of his students was able to produce the syndrome by first making the animal deficient in the vitamin thiamine, thus supporting the role of energy deficiency as the causative factor. Selye suggested that human health broke down as a result of energy failure, particularly in the brain, leading to what he called “the diseases of adaptation”. It is probably true that some form of life stress is absolutely necessary for a person to contemplate suicide. Therefore, it seems necessary to discuss the mechanisms by which the brain responds to stress.

The Biological Brain

Whether we like to recognize it or not, the brain is an electrochemical machine whose functions, like any machine, require energy. The fact that the brain requires 20% of the total oxygen inhaled is an absolute indication of its energy requirement. There is much evidence that even a mild reduction influences brain activity and this will be reflected in some kind of change in thought processes and the consequent behavior resulting from it. Nutrition affects mood. A deficiency of many vitamins is associated with psychological symptoms. In some elderly patients, folate deficiency is associated with depression. Iron deficiency is associated with apathy, depression, and rapid fatigue when exercising. In several studies, an improvement in thiamine status was associated with improved mood. One of the major manifestations of obstructive sleep apnea is profound and repeated (episodic) hypoxia (insufficient oxygen) during sleep. This increase in activity in the sympathetic nervous system affects blood pressure. Thiamine deficiency induces gene expression similar to that observed in hypoxia and has been referred to as causing pseudo-hypoxia. Magnesium and thiamine deficiency have both been implicated in depression.

Hypoxia and Pseudohypoxia in Depression and Anxiety

During many years of medical practice, I found that a mild degree of thiamine deficiency was responsible for symptoms that are often regarded as psychological. Chronic anxiety and depression were regularly alleviated by getting people to understand the importance of an appropriate diet, together with the administration of supplementary vitamins, the most important of which were thiamine and magnesium. I could never understand how a patient could be actually blamed for producing symptoms beyond the comprehension of the physician. Abnormal thoughts, emotions, and all forms of mental activity are produced by electrochemical reactions that are exaggerated by a mild degree of hypoxia or pseudo-hypoxia.

Anxiety and depression are perfectly normal emotional reactions but when they are sustained for absolutely no reason, it is because of this biochemically initiated exaggeration. In particular, the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system is easily activated because any degree of oxygen lack is obviously dangerous to the organism and a fight-or-flight reflex reaction would be initiated by the perception of danger. This reflex, because of its nature, might give rise to aggressive behavior when a nursed a grievance explodes into violence. The widespread intake of empty calories, particularly in the form of sugary and fatty substances, is responsible for polysymptomatic disease in millions. Such individuals cannot handle the normal stresses of life and are much more easily imbued with a sense of hopelessness. Suicide seems to be the only option. The idea that dietary excesses might be responsible for depression and suicidal ideation is not a presently acceptable concept, but the biochemical results of alcohol and sugar ingestion are identical in the part of the brain that has to deal with these inbuilt vital reflexes.

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More people than ever are reading Hormones Matter, a testament to the need for independent voices in health and medicine. We are not funded and accept limited advertising. Unlike many health sites, we don’t force you to purchase a subscription. We believe health information should be open to all. If you read Hormones Matter, and like it, please help support it. Contribute now.

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This article was published originally on June 20, 2018.

Rest in peace Derrick Lonsdale, May 2024.

Recovering From Medically Induced Chronic Illness

by KJ N

Published on August 14, 2025

16.5K views

Unexplained or Medically Induced Chronic Illness?

Unexplained. That’s what doctors call chronic illness. Conventional medicine says, ‘learn to live with it.’ Rather than offer a true treatment or cure for these debilitating conditions, they suppress the immune system and offer more drugs for depression and anxiety – none of which are effective. I’m here to tell you that common wisdom is wrong. I know, because my own lucky story proves we can heal from chronic illness. Pharmaceutical insults created my disabling illnesses – Chronic Fatigue, Fibromyalgia, estrogen dominance, adrenal fatigue, POTS, Graves’ Disease, Hashimoto’s, Bell’s Palsy, infertility and more. I share my journey to offer hope. The doctors were wrong. I have recovered and am once again, healthy.

Early Clues and Pharmaceutical Insults

My childhood had some clues – things I now know predict chronic illness. My lymph glands swelled when I was otherwise healthy. Mosquito bites turned into angry 3” welts. Childhood bunions and hyper-mobile joints suggested leaky gut. All these issues correlate with chronic illness and, seen in hindsight, hint at the difficulties that awaited me in adulthood.

My immune system may have been awry from the start, but pharmaceuticals tipped the scale toward chronic illness. As a teen, I took birth control pills for heavy periods and cramps. When vague symptoms appeared in my early twenties, I asked about pill side effects. The gynecologist laughed at the idea, but I trusted my gut and finally stopped the pill. I felt better in some ways but developed new symptoms. Sleep became difficult. I was hypersensitive to noise and light and struggled with unquenchable thirst. The doctor suggested my extreme thirst stemmed from hot weather and salty foods. This explanation didn’t add up to me, but I was young and so was the internet. I had no resources to connect the dots. Today, I recognize that 10 years of hormonal birth control created nutrient deficiencies (folic acid, vitamins B2, B6, B12, C, and E, along with magnesium, selenium and zinc) while also raising my risk for future autoimmune disease.

Recurrent UTIs, Fluoroquinolones, and New Onset Graves’ Disease

A few years later, recurrent urinary tract infections led to many doses of the fluoroquinolone antibiotic, Cipro. Cipro now carries a black box warning and is known to induce mitochondrial damage. My mid twenties also brought pre and post-menstrual spotting and bleeding for 10 days each month. Doctors did nothing for my hormonal imbalance but diagnosed Graves’ disease (hyperthyroidism). Everything about me sped up. Food went right through my system. I was moody. My mind was manic at times. I was unable to rest and yet physically exhausted from a constantly racing heart.

The doctor said Graves’ disease was easy – just destroy the thyroid and take hormone replacement pills for the rest of my life. I didn’t have a medical degree, but this treatment (RAI, radiation to kill the thyroid) just didn’t make sense. Graves’ disease is not thyroid disease. It is autoimmune dysfunction, where antibodies overstimulate a helpless thyroid.

As I studied my options, I learned that RAI could exacerbate autoimmune illness and many patients feel worse after treatment. It was surprising to find that the US was the only Western country to recommend RAI for women of childbearing age. Armed with this knowledge, I declined RAI and opted for medication. The endocrinologist mocked my decision. I was in my 20s and standing up to him was hard, but it marked a turning point and spurred me to take responsibility for my own health, rather than blindly trusting doctors. Recent reports suggest RAI treatment increases future cancer risks. My Graves’ disease eventually stabilized on medication, although I never felt really well. I pushed for answers for my continued illness, but doctors refused to test my sex or adrenal hormones.

IVF and More Damage to My Health

Things turned south again when I was unable to conceive. The supposed best fertility clinic in Washington, DC could not find a cause for my infertility. I’ll save that story for another day, but the short version involved a few years of torment and four failed IVF attempts. The fertility drugs and the stress worsened my overall health considerably.

Our last try at pregnancy was with a specialist who practiced functional medicine. Labs and charting uncovered a clear progesterone imbalance, and also explained my spotting. This simple diagnosis was completely missed by the conventional fertility clinic. A brief trial of progesterone cream resulted in two naturally conceived, healthy pregnancies. Isn’t it remarkable that several years and over $100,000 failed to produce a baby with IVF and $20 of progesterone cream on my wrist did the trick? This could be a cautionary tale about profit motive in modern medicine, but that, too, is a topic for another day.

Years of Conventional Medicine: Thyroid Damage, Autonomic Dysfunction, and Profound Fatigue

I weaned off thyroid medications and felt fairly well after my babies, but my system took a big hit when life brought an international relocation. The move was intensely stressful and my health sunk after we landed half a world away. I had no energy, gained weight, and lived in a fog. The tropical heat and humidity of Southeast Asia felt like a personalized form of torture.

Perhaps the stress of our move left me vulnerable to the reappearance of autoimmune and adrenal dysfunction, as my next diagnosis was Hashimoto’s Disease and adrenal fatigue. Doctors ordered functional medicine tests (hair, organic acids, stool, saliva cortisol and hormones) that identified nutrient imbalances, but their treatment ideas fell short. Despite replacement hormones and supplements by the handful, I remained very sick, with profound exhaustion, brain fog, sleep disruption, pain, and terribly imbalanced sex hormones.

Taking Matters Into My Own Hands

If setbacks have a bright side, it is in the drive to get better. I started studying when my doctors ran out of ideas to treat my illness. Fibromyalgia was the best description of my pain, but I knew conventional medicine offered no help for this condition. I dug into the topic and found the work of Dr. John C. Lowe, who used T3 thyroid hormone for fibromyalgia, and Paul Robinson, creator of CT3M, the circadian method for using T3. CT3M and high daily dose of progesterone cream improved my quality of life in the short term. Near daily bleeding eventually regulated back into a normal cycle and my adrenal function improved greatly.

Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS) was the next bump, bringing a very high heart rate, very low blood pressure, heat intolerance, and extreme sweating on the lightest activity. By this time, I didn’t even ask the doctor for help. My research pointed to salt and potassium, and so I drank the adrenal cocktail and salt water daily. POTS symptoms vanished quickly with this easy strategy, as did the nocturnal polyuria that plagued me for many years.

I steadied after this time. I was not well but functional, despite some major life stressors, including another international move and a child’s health crisis. Even though I managed the daily basics, things like house guests, travel, or anything physically taxing required several days to a week of recuperation.

The Next Step: Addressing Nutrient Deficiencies

The next step in my recovery came thanks to a B12 protocol that includes co-factor nutrients, developed by Dr. Gregory Russell-Jones. Addressing the deficiencies connected to B12 helped and things progressed well until I had a disastrous reaction after eating mussels, which I hoped would raise iron levels. I vomited for hours and stayed in bed for days. I kept up the B12 protocol, but just couldn’t recover. Largely bedridden, and napping 4 hours at a stretch, I got up in the evening only to drive to a restaurant dinner, too exhausted to prepare food or deal with dishes.

Debilitating exhaustion lasted for a month, and then two, with no relief. It was an awful time, but hitting rock bottom proved a blessing in disguise, as desperation turned me back to research. Slowly, I pushed through brain fog and started to review studies on chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia. This led me to a promising Italian study using thiamine for these conditions.

Studying thiamine, it seemed plausible that the allergic reaction to mussels drained my B1 reserves, making it impossible to recover. Inspired by the research, I started on plain B1 at very high doses. To my surprise, I felt better right away. The first dose boosted my energy and mental clarity.

I continued to learn about B1’s benefits, thanks to this website and the text by Drs. Marrs and Lonsdale. Two weeks went by and thiamine HCL seemed less effective, so I switched to lipothiamine and allithiamine, the forms recommended in Thiamine Deficiency Disease, Dysautonomia, and High Calorie Malnutrition. WOW. What a difference! Virtually overnight, my gears began to turn, and I felt better with each new day. In a single month, I went from bedridden to functioning well 2 out of every 3 days. I had ideas, I had energy, and I could DO things. The setback days were mild and disappeared entirely after 2 months on thiamine.

At the 2 month mark, I had to travel for a family emergency. My pre-thiamine self would have needed at least a week of rest following this kind of trip, and I expected pain and fatigue as I stepped off the plane. But to my great surprise, I felt well! I remember walking through the airport late that evening and thinking it felt amazing to stretch my legs. Maybe that sounds like an ordinary feeling, but years of chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia conditioned my body to stop, to sit, whenever possible. It was entirely novel to FEEL GOOD while moving! The next day came and I did not collapse, I did not require days to recover and was able to carry on like a normal person. It was a remarkable change in an unbelievably short time.

Recovery From Conventional Medicine’s Ills Came Down to Thiamine

Getting better feels miraculous, but it’s not. The real credit for my recovery goes to experts like Dr. Marrs and Dr. Lonsdale who spread the word about thiamine. Despite years of illness and dead ends, I believed I could heal and I kept trying. Tenacity eventually paid off when posts on this site helped connect the dots between my symptoms and thiamine deficiency. More than anything, my recovery is a story of tremendous luck, as I finally landed upon the single nutrient my body needed most.

The difference between my “before thiamine” and “after thiamine” self is beyond what I can describe. Birth control, Cipro, and Lupron created nutrient imbalances and damaged my mitochondria, leading to multiple forms of chronic illness in the years between my 20s and 40s. Replacing thiamine made recovery possible by providing the fuel my damaged cells so badly needed. At this writing, I am 7 months into high dose thiamine and continue to improve. I have not experienced any form of setback, regardless the stressors. My energy feels close to normal, the pain is resolving, and brain fog is a thing of the past. My sense of humor, creativity and mental functioning are all on the upswing. I owe thanks to the real scientists who dare to challenge wrong-headed ideas of conventional medicine, and who provide hope for these so-called hopeless conditions. My wish is that this story will do the same for someone else.

Share Your Story

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More people than ever are reading Hormones Matter, a testament to the need for independent voices in health and medicine. We are not funded and accept limited advertising. Unlike many health sites, we don’t force you to purchase a subscription. We believe health information should be open to all. If you read Hormones Matter, like it, please help support it. Contribute now.

Yes, I would like to support Hormones Matter.

Image by StockSnap from Pixabay.

This article was published originally on February 6, 2020.

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