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A Role for Thiamine Deficiency in Cancer

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There is ever increasing evidence that energy metabolism is involved in the causation of cancer. A phenomenon known as the Warburg effect has been known for a century and was thought by Warburg to be the cause of cancer. To summarize this effect, normal cells primarily produce energy by the consumption of oxygen in a complex mechanism known as oxidative phosphorylation. This involves the consumption of glucose as fuel. The Warburg effect is because most cancer cells produce energy through a high rate of glucose metabolism by fermentation, even though there is abundant oxygen present. This is a less efficient method of producing energy, an effect that has been much studied but whose mechanism still remains unclear.

In cancer research today, the focus has been primarily on genetic mechanisms and the Warburg effect is considered to be a result derived from these genetic changes rather than the underlying cause. However, energy is vital to normal cell function, so a drop in energy synthesis might be a defect that has a secondary effect on genetically determined mechanisms. Since the vitamin, thiamine, is so closely involved with the metabolism of glucose, it is not surprising that a few researchers have looked at the involvement of this vitamin in relationship to the cause of cancer. For this reason I turned to looking at what medical literature has been published in regard to this and was surprised to find that it was relatively abundant.

Wernicke’s Encephalopathy, Thiamine Deficiency, and Cancer

It has long been known that a deficiency of thiamine in part of the brain causes a brain disease that was named after the person who originally described it. This is known as Wernicke encephalopathy (WE). I discovered a manuscript in which 18 patients had developed WE during cancer treatment. Cancers involving blood cells and the gastrointestinal tract were reportedly more common, but poor appetite and weight loss were common risk factors. All of the 18 patients presented with cognitive dysfunction represented by impaired alertness, attention deficit and poor short-term memory. Few of these patients developed the typical symptoms described for the clinical diagnosis of WE, thus making it difficult to recognize the cause of the changes in the patient’s mental status. Of course, the obvious question is whether this is secondary to treatment or whether it is involved as part of the causative mechanism in the cancer. I looked for further evidence.

Breast Cancer and Thiamine Homeostasis

A group of researchers set out to try to find whether there was a difference in thiamine homeostasis (its overall place in body chemistry) in breast cancer cells as compared with normal breast tissue. Without going into the scientific details, they concluded that their findings demonstrated an adaptive response by breast cancer cells to increase cellular availability of thiamine, thus demonstrating its importance to those cells. To explore further the relationship of thiamine in breast cancer, female breast cancer genetically susceptible mice were exposed to 4 diets that varied in fat and thiamine content. The scientific discussion is complex but the authors concluded that there was a potential role for dietary thiamine and an interaction between thiamine and fat in breast cancer progression. This may be important since thiamine has recently been found to be involved in the metabolism of some fats. The findings of a study support the protective effects of thiamine, folate, riboflavin and vitamin B6 against breast cancer in general.

A compound by the name of dichloroacetate has been found to kill cancer cells in breast, brain, and lung cancers in rats, while not harming healthy cells. The anti-cancer effects of this drug have been reviewed. Without indicating the scientific aspects of the study, the authors noted that their findings, together with limited clinical results, suggest that there is a potentially fruitful area for clinical trials with some tumors. A study suggested that high-dose thiamine reduces cancer cell proliferation by a mechanism similar to that described for dichloroacetate.

Surgery, Thiamine Deficiency, and Wernicke’s Encephalopathy

Cancer patients submitted to gastrointestinal surgery are at risk for thiamine deficiency and WE. They often remain undiagnosed and untreated and WE may become manifest several months after hospital discharge. The authors stated that “even in the absence of symptoms of thiamine deficiency the use of prophylactic thiamine supplementation should be taken into consideration, as the consequences of misdiagnosis can be severe “.

With Cancer Genetic Research Dominates

A well-known proverb states that “there is never smoke without fire”. The questions raised in this post suggest that there is indeed “smoke”. There are several obvious reasons why the “smoke” is not being recognized sufficiently to jump start major research. The first reason is that it has been concluded that the Warburg effect is secondary to genetic cause. Genetic issues have therefore become virtually the exclusive approach. However, the available literature suggests that nutritional issues may have an epigenetic (how genes are affected by nutrients and lifestyle) relationship with genetic activity.

I would like to suggest a third issue, the impact of stress. A definition of stress states that it is a mental or physical force requiring brain/body defensive interaction, requiring an individual to adapt to the existing situation. It makes little difference whether the stress is mental or physical. It is the brain that has to conduct the orchestrated reactions. Chronic long-term mental stress is just as debilitating as prolonged  physical illness or severe trauma. The reasoning is derived from the work of Hans Selye. For those unfamiliar with this research, Selye stressed rats physically by many different types of assault. It is probable that his cruel experiments, performed over many years, made the recognition of his work much less acceptable. Nevertheless, he was able to determine that physically stressed animals went through several stages of resistance that he called the General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS). These stages were repetitive from animal to animal and were reflected by laboratory changes in tissues and blood similar to those seen in human disease.  Selye’s most interesting conclusion was that a great deal of energy was required in order to meet the physiological needs of resistance and that it was a failure of this energy synthesis that caused final collapse. Skelton, one of Selye’s students, was able to induce the GAS by making an animal thiamine deficient, thus demonstrating a relationship with energy metabolism. Selye offered the statement that human diseases were “diseases of adaptation”. His conclusion was more remarkable since little was known  during his time concerning the synthesis of energy in the human body. Much more is known now, making Selye’s work more plausible.

Preventing Illness

We cannot avoid the situations of life that give rise to chronic long-term mental stress. If our ability to handle them successfully depends on pristine nutrition, it obviously entails self-discipline as possibly our strongest preventive method. Physical stress may be lethal in its own right but nonlethal injury demands brain activity in coordinating the adaptive defense and is thus just as dependent on brain function. We now know that  consumption of energy is greatest in the heart and brain so perhaps it is not surprising that heart and brain disease are so common.

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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 article was published originally on September 17, 2018. 

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Recovering From Suspected Thiamine Deficiency

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On and off over the last several years, I have had peripheral neuropathy along with a number of other strange symptoms like air hunger, light and sound sensitivity, and balance and gait issues that I believe are related to an undiagnosed thiamine deficiency.

Peripheral Neuropathy, Air Hunger, Dizziness, Altered Vision and Other Symptoms

I have always taken pretty good care of myself as well as taking supplements. I should note, that for the year prior to my health decline, I was drinking a lot of coffee, approximately 40-60 ounces per day. I have since learned that coffee diminishes thiamine. When I began to develop the neuropathy, I didn’t really know what it was. The strange sensations would come and go, but it became more and more intense in my legs and feet. Last summer, I also started to feel similar vibrations in my rib cage. It was extremely uncomfortable.

In addition to the neuropathy, I would wake up sometimes during the night gasping for air. Toward the end of last summer, I could really feel my energy slowly waning and in November of 2019, I had the flu. After I recovered from the flu, I still felt exhausted and weak. I went back to the doctor in December, 2019 and was found hypothyroid and put on Levothyroxine. I have been diagnosed with Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis. Anyway, I did not feel much better and I went back in January, 2020. I had a chest x-ray which showed lung inflammation and was told it could be COPD or asthma. I was asked if I had been smoking and I said it had been 35 years since I’ve smoked. (I am now 61.)  At this point, I had some serious nervous system disorder signs, which I now think were the signs of both dry and wet Beriberi.

My symptoms had progressed to the point that I was extremely sensitive to light and sound and had extreme lightheadedness/dizziness. My vision plane was tilted to maybe like a 30 degree angle. My gait was weird at times and my balance was terrible. I received a general blood test and was also tested for Lyme disease, Lupus, RA and other autoimmune diseases, with normal results. They also tested my adrenal and parathyroid hormones and that came back normal. My body overall had this continuous buzzing type of sensation. I am normally social but felt so bad that I wanted to withdraw from people.

Was It Thiamine?

I found Drs. Lonsdale and Marrs information about thiamine and started on Allithiamine in mid-March 2020 and continued to see the chiropractor. I started with one, 50mg capsule per day and now am up to three 50 mg capsules a day. I plan on increasing to four capsules per day soon. The dizziness, balance problems, visual disturbances, light and sound sensitivity issues, and gait issues are pretty much gone.

What has worsened is that I have a hiatal hernia that never really bothered me that has begun to bother me a lot over the last 4-6 weeks. When I am having a flare-up, I am short of breath and my abdomen feels extremely tight between my ribs. This happens every few days. I feel that I have been healing but the abdominal discomfort and the effect it is having on my breathing is extremely uncomfortable at times. I am wondering if it is normal for one set of symptoms to resolve and a new set to arise. It is clear that the thiamine is helping with a number of my symptoms, the dizziness, balance and gait and the light and sound sensitivity have all improved, but the hernia and the pressure it causes on my breathing, has worsened. Will Allithiamine possibly help heal my lungs of the damage caused by smoking all those years ago? Will it help with the breathing and hiatal hernia or am I missing something?

I would love to hear your comments about all of this. I am deeply grateful for all of the work and research your site has done shedding light on the importance of thiamine.

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Maternal Thiamine Deficiency and Fetal Brain Damage

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Over the last several months Dr. Lonsdale and I have been working on a book about thiamine deficiency and dysautonomia. Last week I wrote about the presumed connection between the Zika virus and microcephaly where I hinted at a thiamine connection. One might say, that I have thiamine on the brain and that would be a fair assumption. The old adage, ‘if one has a hammer, everything becomes a nail‘, may apply. I may be focusing too much on thiamine and its role on mitochondrial health. Alternatively, it could be that thiamine is just that important. After all, it sits atop at least two of the four energy producing pathways that give us ATP and is deeply embedded within the remainder of the oxidation process. The consequences of impaired oxidative metabolism in the brain are vast and include a range of disease processes like Alzheimer’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gerhig’s disease), Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, alcoholic brain disease, and stroke.  Without thiamine, the mitochondrial factories stop producing energy or ATP and without ATP, stuff slows and then dies. So yes, thiamine is critical to health.

It is not difficult to imagine what happens to energy levels when thiamine concentrations diminish even slightly in an adult. An unrelenting fatigue is one of the early symptoms of struggling mitochondria and thiamine deficiency. More fundamentally, however, all the organs tasked with maintaining life, demand energy. When energy stores diminish, those organ systems struggle. The organ systems requiring the most energy, like the brain and the heart, are hit hardest. Maintain a slight deficiency chronically and damage ensues. In Cuba, for example, trade embargo policies resulted widespread thiamine deficiency in the population, which in turn initiated an epidemic of neuropathy – nerve damage. Over 50,000 Cubans were reported to have developed optic neuropathy, deafness, myelopathy, and sensory neuropathy related to embargo imposed dietary changes. In contrast to the more insidious damage initiated by chronically low thiamine concentrations, severe and acute thiamine deficiency is life-threatening, especially in children, but also in pregnant women.

With low maternal thiamine concentrations, the effects on fetal development, especially fetal brain development that requires enormous amounts of energy, are likely to be devastating. And indeed, they are. But we don’t study that very often, even in rats. Do a search on the subject and there is not much research out there. Sure, some researchers have investigated maternal thiamine deficiency in fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS), postulating thiamine might be the mechanism by which FAS develops, but that is about it. Given how critical it is to fetal development, I expected more research.

It is not just alcoholics who are at risk of thiamine deficiency. An increasing percentage of Western populations are likely thiamine deficient. Thiamine depletion occurs with numerous medications and vaccines via multiple mechanisms, many of which are just beginning to be understood. Conventional farming practices use herbicides and pesticides that block vitamin B absorption and so even diets presumed healthy may not be as nutrient dense as in the past. Poor absorption from altered gut microbiomes may be another common mechanism for thiamine deficiency and emerging evidence finds that Type 1 and Type 2 diabetics excrete significantly more thiamine than non diabetics, making them thiamine deficient as well. Not studying this more broadly is leaving millions of folks to suffer with entirely preventable disease processes. During pregnancy, however, this lack of recognition and research is just downright negligent, especially when we consider fetal brain development.

Thiamine During Pregnancy

Thiamine is absolutely critical for both maternal health and fetal development. Women with hyperemesis gravidarum, excessive vomiting during pregnancy, are at a particularly high risk for thiamine deficiency and though there is increasing awareness of maternal Wernicke’s encephalopathy during pregnancy, a condition typically associated with thiamine deficient alcoholics, the full scope of damage associated with maternal thiamine deficiency is insufficiently understood. There is little to no appreciation of the long term effects on maternal health and even less recognition of how the deficiency impacts fetal development in either the short or long term.

Provided mom survives a thiamine deficient pregnancy, what happens to the growing fetus? In 37% of the cases of severe maternal thiamine deficiency, spontaneous fetal loss occurs. If thiamine is critical for mitochondrial energy production, and fetal development requires exorbitant amounts of mitochondrial energy, what happens if one of the key components to that energy production process is lacking? All sorts of things, it turns out, including microcephaly. Beyond a rare congenital defect in thiamine transport believed to affect only consanguineous Amish, there are very few studies that have considered the effects of epigenetic and more functional maternal or fetal thiamine deficits. We know from the Amish cases, that when the fetal thiamine transporters are impaired, microcephaly ensues. Is it so hard to imagine that we might impair those transporters epigenetically or reduce maternal thiamine concentrations functionally by dietary choices, medications or environmental toxicants that leach nutrients and/or by malabsorption?  And yet, as I dig into this, I find only a few studies that have addressed maternal thiamine and fetal brain development. Here they are.

Maternal Thiamine Deficiency and Fetal Brain Damage

A 2005 study from researchers in West Africa showed that the pups from thiamine deficient dams, had significantly smaller brains by weight. Digging deeper, they found far fewer neurons in the hippocampus, the region of the brain responsible for memory consolidation and retrieval, than the pups from thiamine sufficient diets. Brain damage in the offspring could be induced by maternal thiamine deficiency either leading up to, during, or after pregnancy (while lactating) but varied in scope, severity, and pattern. The most significant damage occurred when the dams were deficient during pregnancy.

In the offspring from perinatal thiamine deficiency, hippocampal volume was reduced by almost a third due to neural cell death.  The neurons that survived were smaller than normal and misshapen. The hippocampus is critical to memory. Hippocampal damage in human adults causes all manner of amnesias and aphasias (speaking and language comprehension deficits) and is found in neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s disease.

The neurons affected most by the thiamine deficiency, the CA1 neurons, are especially susceptible to oxidative damage and insult. Thiamine is integral to brain oxidation and so this makes sense. What we have to remember though, is that in a fully developed human brain, oxidative damage to the CA1 region is associated with hippocampal ischemia, limbic encephalitis, status epilepticus, and transient global amnesia – very serious conditions. To a developing brain, requiring vast amounts of energy to grow, the consequences of hippocampal deficits are largely under-recognized except again in fetal alcohol syndrome.

Another animal study looked at the effects of maternal thiamine deficiency to the cerebellum of the offspring. The cerebellum is the region of the brain responsible for balance and coordinated motor movements. Here again, the damage was severe with a significant reduction of size, loss of neuron viability, and conduction. There have been a smattering of studies across the decades (here, and here, for example) looking at thiamine deficiency and brain damage in non-pregnant rats, but that’s about it.

Not much else is out there.

From these few animal studies, the work on Amish microcephaly and the work connecting neurodegenerative disorders to thiamine deficiency, we can surmise that thiamine is essential to brain development. More specifically, in pregnancies where thiamine concentrations are low, cerebral development of the offspring will be impaired in some pretty significant ways. Namely, the number and size of neurons is reduced, and as a consequent, total brain volume is reduced. If the deficiency is severe enough, microcephaly is possible and has been identified in the two of studies mentioned above. I think this is what is happening in Brazil. That is, a combination of seemingly unrelated factors, coalesce to produce fetal thiamine deficiency which results in microcephaly and other sorts of brain damage. The questions that remain include:

  1. By what mechanisms specifically is thiamine deficiency produced?
  2. What are the risks for maternal thiamine deficiency in other regions?

One of the most direct routes to thiamine deficiency during pregnancy is hyperemesis gravidarum, excessive vomiting. Case studies abound where it is often not recognized until the mother is in critical condition. It is considered a rare complication, but is it? Unless and until those questions are answered more fully and physicians recognize maternal thiamine deficiency as a potential problem, women and children will continue to be at risk for what are entirely preventable complications of pregnancy.

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.

Yes, I would like to support Hormones Matter. 

Image credit: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

This article was first published on June 16, 2016. 

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An Over Medicated and Chronically Ill Millennial

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Frequent Infections, Antibiotics, and Asthma

As I’ve reflected on my current health challenges, I’ve come to the realization that I need to head back in time to my earliest years. Like many kids born in the early 90s, I was the first to receive a slew of vaccinations that were previously never given to children. I suffered from frequent “earaches” that led to multiple courses of antibiotics before kindergarten, and by the time I reached middle school, I was taking yearly courses of antibiotics for all sorts of things: colds, sinus infections, acne. It was around this time that I was also diagnosed with exercise induced asthma. I remember almost passing out in a lacrosse practice in 7th grade, and before I knew it, I was put on Advair (daily inhaled steroid) and was hitting the albuterol 2 or 3 times before a workout. My allergies also raged during this time.

Anxiety and Doctor Prescribed Benzodiazepine

I started getting increasingly anxious in early high school. I remember getting what I now know are symptoms of a panic attack in late middle school. Though part of this was due to the fact that I was hiding my sexuality (and hiding it well), I also realize that I had been slamming my adolescent body with drugs, vaccinations and the standard high sugar American diet for 14 years at that point.

My anxiety caused sleeping issues and I was placed on Ambien when I was 16. When I was withdrawn from that, the anxiety got worse (I know now it was Ambien withdrawal), and I was finally sent over to a psychiatrist. After listening to my description of panic attacks, she placed me on Klonopin, one of the most potent benzodiazepines on the market that should never be used for more than a few weeks. She told me to take up to four a day (an insane dose) and that like a diabetic, I needed GABA enhancement, and I would have to take these for the rest of my life.

At 17, I was buzzing on a benzodiazepine every day. I remember that it actually felt quite good and erased all worry. But then I began to experience one of the most terrifying side effects of long-term benzodiazepine dependence: I was getting dementia! I couldn’t remember things for tests or quizzes no matter how hard I studied. When I brought this up to the psychiatrist, she assured me that a little amnesia was a common benzodiazepine side effect, but that the benefits outweighed this. Essentially, giving a teenager dementia outweighed him having anxiety.

Benzodiazepine Withdrawal and Repeat Concussions

When I decided I needed to come off the benzodiazepine after taking it for a year, her instructions were to taper over one week and then jump. Now, this was 2010, and the internet was alive and well at that point. Upon doing just a little bit of research, I knew this woman was insane. All recommendations were that benzodiazepines needed to be tapered over the course of many weeks if not many months. I found a benzo support group online that became my lifeline for the next 4 months as I gradually weaned myself off the drug with the support of my parents and a new primary care doctor. Throughout this time, the one drug that I actually credit with saving me is marijuana. Without it, I’m not sure I would have done as well as I did getting off the drugs and then staying off of them.

I went right off to college that fall, which in retrospect was a miracle. I struggled a lot that first year. I was experiencing post acute withdrawal syndrome (PAWS) from the benzodiazepine and almost flunked out. I gradually improved but was still dependent on nightly marijuana to go to bed. In 2014, I finally stopped smoking weed and was 100% drug free.

That summer, I ended up getting my first concussion, though I suspect I had many others growing up as I played soccer and lacrosse. As if one wasn’t bad enough, I somehow ended up getting another the next summer in 2015 when I was at the beach and hit my head on a car door. I was later told by a neurologist that once you have a concussion, it becomes significantly easier to get a second, and then a third, and so on.

I had long suffered minor symptoms from benzodiazepine withdrawal that never went away, like tinnitus in my ears, an inability to take GABA drugs without reactivating withdrawal symptoms, and other neurologic symptoms that always made me feel “different.” The concussions added to this complex situation and I would have what I can only describe as seizures during times of stress or intense workout. It felt like my brain had electric current running through it.

Around this time, I also received the first injection for the Gardasil vaccine. I never followed up with the rest of them because of how off I felt that the first few days after getting it. Only recently have I learned about the severe damage that Gardasil can cause.

By 2016, I had been doing a paleo/plant-based diet and felt generally well, but the symptoms from both benzo withdrawal and my concussions persisted. In 2017, I started using CBD oil, and I found that it relieved a lot of the symptoms. It calmed my brain down significantly. I also began using Truvada (HIV medication) during this time as PreP. The one issue that never went away throughout all of this was my anxiety and panic. I was prone to situational panic attacks that felt like my fight/flight system was in total chaos.

A Complete Crash with Tinidazole

Despite feeling okay in 2018 and most of 2019, my whole world was turned upside down again in the fall of 2019. I contracted some sort of stomach bug that wasn’t going away, and my doctor placed me on a drug called Tinidazole, the sister drug of Metronidazole (Flagyl). I haven’t felt the same since that day.

The symptoms came on almost immediately. Dizziness, depression, increased anxiety, neuropathy in my hands and arms. I became convinced that I had ALS because my hands weren’t working right. It was also unlike me to ever assume something as terrible as a fatal diagnosis, but my brain was in total disarray.

Two weeks after taking the Tinidazole, I had to go back on antibiotics for wisdom teeth removal. Immediately after the surgery, I went into one of the most horrendous panic attacks of my life, in part because I had been injected with novocaine about 20 times. I had to be wheeled out of the doctor’s office because the panic had been so bad. Looking back now, there is a similar case study in Thiamine Deficiency Disease, Dysautonomia, and High Calorie Malnutrition.

Things only got worse. By the end of the penicillin, my body was in a total spiral. I began having daily panic attacks that I can’t even describe. My body temperature was low, my fight/flight system was in disarray, I was depressed, I couldn’t think clearly. There were nights when I wouldn’t sleep at all and be in total fight or flight mode. I now know that I was going through Tinidazole toxicity that had gradually gotten worse over a few weeks. Combined with the penicillin, it was a recipe for disaster.

The strangest symptom that has come out of this experience is hypoglycemia. My blood sugar is tanking to dangerously low levels during the day unless I am extremely diligent about eating. There have been a few times that I have almost blacked out. This isn’t a common symptom of Metronidazole/Tinidazole toxicity, but I don’t know where else it could have come from.

Where I Am Now

I’ve improved a bit, but I’m still having symptoms like dizziness, hypoglycemia, altered mental state, neuropathy and a total dysfunction of my fight/flight system.

Looking back at my long and complicated history, I’ve discovered a few things in my research:

  • Early and frequent antibiotic use is linked to anxiety and depression
  • I ate A LOT of sugar throughout my life and my thiamine stores were probably always being hit hard and my mitochondria have probably been fighting this battle my life
  • The benzodiazepine and Ambien have caused deep alterations to my nervous system/GABA receptors that became less noticeable with time but will never fully heal
  • Concussions cause a cascade of effects that damage mitochondria function and lead to other semi-permanent neurological issues
  • Truvada (PreP) also harms mitochondria
  • Tinidazole plummets your thiamine

Thiamine Deficiency and Problems With Paradox

I’d like to start Dr. Lonsdale’s protocol for high-dose thiamine, but I encounter painfully difficult paradox symptoms. I have tried to start with a low dose (less than 10 mg) twice now, and always end up having to stop because it gets so bad. The “heart attack” and “seizure” symptoms are simply too frightening and I’m not sure what’s actually going on in both my brain and heart. I’d like to find a functional doctor that could possibly work with me to measure what’s going on when I take thiamine.

I’m also in the process of working with doctors to run tests on my hypoglycemia issues.

The only other thing I’ve considered is a fecal transplant. Since I’ve been on so many antibiotics, I’m convinced that some of my issues may stem from altered gut microbiota.

Lots of people see improvement from Metronidazole/Tinidazole toxicity over the course of 6-12 months. But unless I can take action, I suspect my thiamine issue will remain.

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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A 55-Year-Old Quadriplegic Man’s Quest for GI Health

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Lifelong GI Issues

Ever since I was a child, I suffered from a variety of gastrointestinal issues (GI), many, I now know were diet related. These symptoms included: gas, bloating, indigestion, food sensitivities, chronic fatigue symptoms, undigested food particles in the stool, pinworms, candida overgrowth and other pathogens. This is in addition to being chronically underweight and suffering from poor sleep because of GI symptoms. I also had thin skin and slow healing, weak bones, joints, and tendons. My GI issues were a glaring problem through my 20s and 30s but became worse at the age of 38 after I got my mercury fillings removed.

When I was 42 years old, all these issues came to a head and were magnified exponentially when I crashed my mountain bike and broke my neck in multiple places. The injury, the surgeries, the feeding tube, and the endless list of medications pushed my body to its limits. While I survived, I am paralyzed from the chest down with minimal use of my arms. Over the years, I have tried multiple protocols, but have only recently begun to unwind these symptoms with the help of dietary changes (carnivore diet and oxalate clearing) and the use thiamine. This is my story.

Raised on Processed Foods

I was born on May 7, 1964, the third of three children. As was common at the time, my mother smoked during pregnancy, had multiple mercury fillings put in just before she started having babies and ate and fed us a diet that consisted mostly of highly sweetened and processed foods. Things like Captain Crunch, powdered milk, margarine and Wonder Bread were staples at our house. Even with all of these processed foods in my diet, I was underweight my entire life. I had a difficult time gaining weight and putting on muscle or developing strength. I was given antibiotics here and there throughout childhood, and remarkably, when I was three years old there was one month where I had bronchitis three times, each with its own course of antibiotics. I also used to get pinworms for a certain phase of my childhood.

Problems with My Bones, Joints, and Tendons

Despite all of this, I was active in sports from junior high onward. I played basketball from junior high on and ran cross country the last two years of high school. Early on though, I had problems with my joints, bones, and tendons. My junior year, I developed shin splints running cross country and in my senior year of high school, I began having knee problems, which a gym teacher diagnosed as chondromalacia. My knobby tibial tuberosities suggested a probable Osgood-Schlatter’s syndrome, although I did not experience the knee pain that most have with this condition. My back went out on me for the first time at the age of 23, and for a long time, it went out every winter. After college, I tried getting back into running and experienced Morton’s neuroma and I had to give it up.

Changing My Diet, But Maybe Not For the Better

In my early 20s, I started experimenting with diet in hopes of feeling better. For some reason I got it in my head that pursuing a vegetarian diet was a noble thing to do. I joined a food co-op and started making a lot of whole grains and beans and whole-grain bread and nut butters and lots of vegetables that I had never eaten before. I was not fully vegetarian and I ate meat occasionally. It seems like it was during this time things continued to get worse. I was weak, easily fatigued, had joint problems and brain fog and lost a significant amount of weight. I should note, that since high school, I had very stinky flatulence. Within a year or two of this diet, I figured out that eating dairy was giving me back acne and so I eliminated dairy from my diet as well. This new dairy free diet improved that aspect of my health, even if the rest of my health continued to decline. I was becoming so unhealthy, there were a few times that ejaculation caused my back to go out. By the time, I was 26, I had almost no desire to masturbate. Given my GI distress, I underwent a stool test via the Great Smokies Lab (now called Genova Diagnostics). It showed that my microbiome was a mess. I had two amoebas, two pathogenic bacteria, high levels of candida, and very low levels of good bacteria.

At 29, I lived for five months at Kripalu, a wellness center in Western Massachusetts. They served a vegetarian diet and I really got into the live food thing. I consumed lots of sprouts and fermented drinks. I’m 5’10 inches tall and I probably got down to about 120 pounds. I convinced myself it was my body going through a cleansing process 🙂 For the next two years, I remained fully vegetarian, mostly vegan.

At 31, a health practitioner convinced me to start eating meat again and I put on 10 pounds in one month. From that point on, I was eating meat and keeping my simple sugars really low but still eating rice and other grains like quinoa and buckwheat.

At 35, I picked up a bug in Mexico and had diarrhea, which I managed for about eight months. After three rounds of antibiotics, I finally had more normal stools, but always with a certain amount of undigested food and usually loose.

In the autumn of 2001, I had my five mercury fillings removed by a dentist who I thought was doing it safely. However, I cannot honestly remember if I had an alternate air source over my nose. In the early winter of 2002, my back went out on me, the worst it ever had. Normally, it would take a week or two to be back to normal but this time it went on for months and months. In the autumn of 2002, I developed chronic diarrhea again. Things started really falling apart the following winter of 2003 and I seriously thought I might be checking out of this life. At some point during that winter I found out about the specific carbohydrate diet and give that a try. I met a woman who was also following the specific carbohydrate diet and told me about Andy Cutler‘s work with mercury chelation. I immediately started working directly with Andy in May 2003. It was really tough going at first because I could only tolerate 100 mg of powdered magnesium without having more bowel dysfunction.

Sometime during the summer of 2003, I decided to see what would happen if I only ate meat and winter squash. Within a day or two, I had an almost normal stool. I realized that I didn’t have some kind of untreatable pathogen but that my already bad food sensitivities had gotten profoundly worse. Andy got me to do a plasma cysteine test with great Smokies laboratories. He explained to me that with many of his clients he was seeing that the Mercury messed up the enzyme that breaks down cysteine. He told me that my plasma cysteine level was the highest he had ever seen. Another confirmation that I probably was dealing with chronic mercury poisoning. Meat and winter squash, avocado, olive oil, coconut butter, zucchini and salt were my diet for many years after that. Even though, somethings improved, others did not and I was always limping along but not thriving. I spent three years following Andy Cutler‘s protocol for mercury chelation. It seemed to help stabilize things but it wasn’t a big turnaround I was praying for.

Over the course of decades, I saw dozens of practitioners and spent a lot of money on supplements and various protocols and healing modalities in an attempt to heal my gut and correct, what seems like lifelong GI dysfunction, much to no avail.

A Broken Neck

In August 2012, I crashed on my mountain bike and broke my neck. I fractured C3 through C7, vertebral bodies of C4 and C5 were crushed and the spinal cord was severed at C5. I had five level cervical fusion with plates in the front end rods in the back. It was a huge medical intervention with lots of medications and I almost died several times. For the first two months, I had a feeding tube and was fed some kind of horrible, powdered, grain-based crap. After two months, I passed the swallowing test and was allowed to start eating my previous diet. After four months in the hospital, I came home with lots of medications, a completely stressed out body and mind and not very sure if I wanted to continue living. Since then I’ve had many sleepless nights and so much discomfort.

After the injury, I developed severely low blood pressure and I continue to take meds for vasoconstriction. My blood pressure tanks periodically, but especially when eating. At one of the hospitals, I had practitioners tell me that they had never seen anybody drop their blood pressure so much when eating. So now I pre-medicate before eating. I wouldn’t go anywhere without my blood pressure cuff for at least a year.

In addition to the GI issues and problems with blood pressure since the injury, over the last six years my muscles have gradually become increasingly fibrous. It feels like they are becoming a mix of fiber and plastic. It’s so horrible that at times I don’t know how I can even manage to stay sane inside my body.

Trying to Recover

About a year after I got out of the hospital, I did a three-day round of chelation with alpha lipoic acid and DMSA. The following two weeks, I had four or five times that an incredibly foul smelling bio-film came out of my bottom. All of a sudden, I started getting high blood pressure and I had to reduce my medications by 30%. I didn’t make the connection until a year later when I learned that chelation compounds can dismantle biofilms. I chelated again two months later and I had the same experience; lots of horrible smelling biofilm came out and then another need to decrease my low blood pressure medications.

Bladder infections are quite common in people with indwelling catheter‘s. After so many times of being diagnosed with bladder infections and taking antibiotics, I was desperate and tried doing three days of a lot of unsweetened cranberry juice. That threw my poor gut into absolute chaos, the likes of which I never experienced before. I tried managing it with grapefruit seed extract and some other things to no avail.

Still desperate to relieve the never-ending gastrointestinal distress, I found and tried a parasite protocol put together for autistic children. The protocol begins by building up a dosage of chlorine dioxide. I had an incredibly hard time building on my dosage, as the detox symptoms were horrific. About two months into taking chlorine dioxide, I woke up one morning about 4 AM thinking I was close to death. I had extreme anxiety, ADD and severe discomfort. When I did my bowel program that morning, I had chunk of biofilm come out, and within less than an hour, I felt really good in my body with a clear mind. Over the next four or five months, I continued the protocol and struggled greatly with the detox symptoms, which limited me from hitting things as hard as many people are able to. Eventually, I got depleted from doing enemas and had to stop that protocol. For the next 2 1/2 years or so, I continued to take chlorine dioxide on a daily basis. If I stopped I got massive brain fog, exhaustion and felt extremely cold all the time.

More Broken Bones

Two years ago, I developed three fractures in my right knee just from riding my functional electronic stimulation bicycle. That is how bad my osteoporosis had become. Luckily, I found a fantastic magnesium product called Remag, a liquid pico-ionic magnesium solution, which is so incredibly absorbable that even at 1200 mg per day I showed no signs of laxative effect, but I did show signs of powerful detoxification. I started sweating, profusely at times, for about six weeks before it stopped. Previously, any powdered magnesium above 100 mg would give me a loose stools. It took about 4 to 6 months of not riding my bike before I was able to start riding again.

One and a half years ago, I had a cone beam scan of my mouth and discovered I had five abscesses. Four were at the sites of my wisdom teeth extractions and the fifth was under my front six lower teeth. Six months later, I was in Utah seeing a biological dentist for a remediation of those infection sites. I was really hoping this work would really help improve my intestinal health. It seems like my mood has improved since then, but overall, I can’t really say I saw any improvements in my digestion and my pathogen load.

I picked up some kind of oral pathogen from my partner, which creates a black staining of my teeth. The chlorine dioxide kept this at bay, and now since I have stopped the chlorine dioxide this past year the black staining has progressed and is quite disgusting to see. The dentist in Utah took a blood sample from one of the extraction sites and performed live microscopy. It definitely was not a pretty sight. Large strands of pancaked and aggregated red blood cell, and in one of the samples, there were many black sea urchin looking creatures that the dentist said he had never seen before. He was suspecting is some kind of mold. Perhaps that is the black staining on my teeth?

Ongoing Dysbiosis

Last winter, I started working with somebody from the company Systemic Formulas which makes a large selection of uniquely formulated supplements. I implemented one of their parasite protocols and over time was able to get off the chlorine dioxide. I also implemented some of their detoxification protocols and only had marginal results. Since that time last spring, I’ve had to continue with at least one of their products and colloidal silver to keep the dysbiosis in my intestines in check.

Just over a year ago, I purchased an ozone generator for rectal insufflations. It seems to help reduce symptoms but even with very consistent use, it does not seem to have created long-term improvements. About a year ago, I also purchased a pulsed electromagnetic field, PEMF, device that similarly seems to help with symptoms but has not created long-term improvements.

I was really convinced Ozone could help so I found a doctor who has the equipment for major autohemotherapy in which blood is extracted, ozone is added and the IV is reinserted. I definitely had some die-off symptoms, but did not seem to have any long-term benefit.

Beginning to Heal With the Carnivore Diet

In mid-August 2019, I began eating a carnivore diet. After about two months, I started putting on some weight, the first time in many years. I haven’t had the big changes many people do after almost 6 months, but I have a lot of healing to do.

I have an obvious oxalate problem. This is demonstrated by oxalate crystals coming out of my eyelids, my skin and in my urine, which I can easily see because of clear tubing that goes to my urine drainage bag.

Finding Thiamine: Another Missing Piece

November 2019, I listened to some videos by Elliot Overton from the UK. He did an interview with Dr. Chandler Marrs and recommended her book that she co-wrote with Dr. Lonsdale. That interview and the book have inspired me to work with Elliot and begin raising my dosage of thiamine. Initially, I noticed some improvements in muscle function and reduction of this feeling of tiny pieces of sharp plastic embedded in my muscles. When I got myself up to about 300 mg of Allithiamine, I started having some paradox symptoms possibly. For several weeks my muscles became a lot tighter and spastic, I had quite a few nearly sleepless nights and I started sweating profusely similar to when I started taking the magnesium. I had some diarrhea but that could have been from eating grain flour on a steak at a restaurant without realizing it. It could also be from being on the carnivore diet and stopping milk thistle herb and vitamin C in an effort to reduce oxalates.

At the date of this writing on March 4, 2020 I am taking 800 mg per day Allithiamine. I am wondering if I am one of the people who are so thiamine deficient that I might need to increase my dose over 1 g before I see a difference. I have been taking 8 grams of vitamin C for about one year and when I found Sally K Norton‘s video on oxalates I dropped vitamin C, milk thistle, and collagen. It was sometime around then that I started getting looser stools and almost diarrhea at times. It wasn’t until I started talking with Elliot that we started thinking I’m might be one of the people who has trouble with diarrhea with Carnivore but the vitamin C and the milk thistle was keeping it in check. I have added 4 g of vitamin C back and the milk thistle for several weeks until my stools firmed up again. I also lowered the amount of magnesium I was taking.

Although the GI symptoms are the major driving force for experimenting with allithiamine, and reading the book Thiamine Deficiency Disease, Dysautonomia and High Calorie Malnutrition, I am very curious about neurological symptoms. I would say I am very strongly stuck in sympathetic mode with a tendency towards anxiety. Perhaps, it was thiamine deficiency all along. My dietary choices over the years would certainly support that possibility.

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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Recovering From Medically Induced Chronic Illness

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Recovering from chronic illness

Unexplained or Medically Induced Chronic Illness?

“Unexplained.”  That’s what doctors say about 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.

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.

Yes, I would like to support Hormones Matter. 

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Dementia and Thiamine Deficiency

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dementia thiamine

In this post I will try to indicate how you might detect cognitive changes in a loved one and how you might help defer the onset of severe neurological disease. Every person developing dementia goes through mild cognitive impairment first. A given symptom might be short-term memory loss, difficulty in finding a particular word or forgetting well-known procedures. We expect such changes in people in their nineties, but if they develop in the fifties, you can suspect that this is the beginning of dementia that is a disease, not normal aging.

What Do We Know About Dementia?

A study published in 2017 reviewed the observational studies examining associations between non-genetic factors and dementia. A total of 76 unique associations were examined, of which seven presented convincing evidence. They found an association with use of benzodiazepines (common drugs for mental disease), depression at any age, late-life depression and infrequency of social contacts for all types of dementia. Late-life depression and type  2 diabetes were associated with onset of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Emotional stress causes brain function that consumes energy.

A review assessed the effect of the drug metformin (used in the treatment of type 2 diabetes) on the risk, progression and severity of AD and other forms of dementia, as well as any measures of cognitive performance or impairment. A case of encephalopathy (brain disease) occurred in a patient receiving metformin who was in end-stage diabetic renal failure. The drug was withheld and signs and symptoms quickly resolved. The authors hypothesized that metformin induced thiamine deficiency (TD), based only on their use of brain imaging that has a characteristic pattern caused by TD. Although metformin has become a drug of choice for the treatment of type 2 diabetes, some patients may not receive it “owing to the risk of lactic acidosis (increased concentration of lactic acid in blood or urine)”, a significant finding in critically ill patients who often respond to thiamine administration . Diabetic patients taking metformin may be predisposed to thiamine deficiency that  is common in diabetes anyway . There is epidemiological evidence linking type 2 diabetes and its related conditions (obesity, insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome) to AD and it has recently been proposed that AD can be considered as “type 3 diabetes” because of disturbed glucose metabolism in that disease .

Mental Versus Physical Disease

It is probably absurd to separate the body from the brain. As has been said on this website many times, the body is composed of between 70 and 100 trillion cells, all of which have individual responsibility. I have used the analogy of a symphony orchestra where the brain is the conductor and the body organs are like banks of instruments that have to work together. The cells in each organ can be compared to the instrumentalists. They all know what to do but must work together “to play the symphony of health” under “the baton” of the “brain conductor”. Hence, for example, the immune system is an extremely complex union of mental and physical, requiring the brain, the nervous system and a variety of cells that carry out function. Assuming that the genetically determined genome”blueprint” is perfect (without mistakes in the DNA) all the cellular machinery requires is energy and that comes from an enormously complex list of nutrients.

Resulting from a great deal of personal experience and the genius of Hans Selye, I have concluded, like him, that energy metabolism is the focal point of health and disease. Selye developed the idea of what he called the “diseases of adaptation”. He coined the phrase the “General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS) in which he described the processes by which an animal adapts to physical and mental impositions of stressors. A stressor is any form of threat encountered  by us on a day-to-day basis. It may be mental (a divorce) or physical (infection, trauma). He concluded that energy was required to drive the GAS (the ability of the brain/body orchestra to face the stress and adapt to it). One of  Selye’s students was able to support this idea by producing the GAS in an experimentally induced thiamine deficient animal. The remarkable thing about this work was that in Selye’s time, little was known about energy metabolism. Today, the biochemistry is well outlined, if not complete, and thiamine stands out as a vitally important component. In continuing the analogy of the orchestra, I have nominated it as “the leader” (the chief violinist in an orchestra).

The Demands of an Active Brain

By far and away the best example of an energy defect in human disease is that of thiamine deficiency beriberi. Because energy deficiency is the underlying cause, it can imitate virtually any collection of symptoms that are regarded as those of a specific disease in the present medical model. Also, because it has many “psychological” symptoms, a long morbidity (continuation of symptoms) and a low mortality, it is dismissed as trivial. Since the brain and heart are the most energy consuming organs, it would be an obvious conclusion that a well endowed functional brain (genius) might be more at nutritional  risk than someone less well endowed. I turned to the medical histories of three historical characters, all of whom were acknowledged geniuses. Their health problems have been debated without any conclusions. It was their similarity that appeared to me to be so striking.

Charles Darwin

His medical history is discussed online. Apparently he suffered repeatedly throughout life, suggesting “genetic risk”. His symptoms included chest pain, heart palpitations, stomach upsets, headaches, malaise, vertigo, dizziness, muscle spasms, tremors, vomiting, cramps, bloating and fatigue, all described in beriberi. He was treated by a Dr. James Gully, whose therapy included “a strict diet” that was reported to give Darwin “improvement in his symptoms”. In September 1849 his symptoms increased, apparently “during the excitement of a British Association for the Advancement of Science”. Excitement is a brain perception whose function elevates the brain from a resting state and requires increased energy to adapt. Between the ages of 56 and 57 symptoms were reportedly continuous and the text described “copious and very pallid urine”. Cellular energy is dependent on an efficient consumption of oxygen (oxidation) and the yellow pigment that gives urine its characteristic color is known as urochrome, an oxidation product of hemoglobin. It suggests that the pallid urine may well have been an indicator of decreased oxidative function. Perhaps we can hypothesize that the exacerbation of symptoms related to virtually any form of stress may well have been from a combination of dietary deficiency and genetic risk.

Mozart

The medical history of this genius is less clear online than that of Darwin. He suffered poor health throughout life, again suggesting genetic risk. Between 1789 and 1790, the symptoms described were weakness, headaches, fainting and hyperactivity and he reportedly had many falls. A left temporal fracture was described in his skull, examined after his death, suggesting a fall injury. Also, it was reported that “drinking was a well-known weakness of Mozart”. The association of alcohol with thiamine deficiency is well documented. It produces functional changes  in the automatic brain controls of the autonomic  nervous system  that might not necessarily result in loss of intellectual function, at least in the early stages.

Beethoven

His medical history is also less clear but apart from his well known deafness, the text reported repeated diarrhea, abdominal pain, migraine, rheumatism, nosebleeds and he died in delirium at the age of 56.

Of course, I am well aware of the multiple theories to explain the medical problems of these three geniuses. My point is that the workload exercises the brain and its function requires energy. It seems reasonable to suggest that the brain of a genius requires more energy than one less well endowed. Furthermore the passion that goes into the work often makes diet a secondary issue that is frequently neglected by such individuals. In the case of Mozart, the depletion of thiamine by alcohol would also have a deleterious effect on energy metabolism.

Neurodegenerative Disease and Thiamine

We know that thiamine metabolism is involved in the pathology of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. This has been shown in many papers published in the medical literature. An Italian doctor by the name of Costantini has published a number of manuscripts using high-dose thiamine in no less than seven different disease conditions, most of which are described as neurodegenerative diseases. Obviously, this is extremely offensive to the present medical model that believes each disease has a separate cause demanding specific treatment for each. If we look at the biochemistry of the human body, think of its complexity, its extraordinary dependence on a combination of genetic integrity, nutrition and lifestyle, it becomes easier to understand how a single molecule (thiamine) can be so vital. It stands at the gateway of the biochemical machinery that synthesizes energy in the form of ATP.

What is Energy?

Let us take a very simple analogy, that of rolling a stone up a hill. The point is that energy is consumed by overcoming the force of gravity trying to keep the stone at the bottom of the hill. We are imbuing it with what Newton called “potential energy”. When it gets to the top of the hill a simple push can cause it to roll down the hill and this would be referred to as “kinetic” energy. Although the principles in the human body are exactly the same, the mechanism is widely different. An electric force rolls electrons up an electronic gradient that converts ADP to ATP (the top of the electronic hill). ATP is a chemical that stores energy and is sometimes called “the energy currency”. Natural food contains all the ingredients that provide us with fuel. But it also contains vitamins and essential minerals that enable our cells to turn the calorie bearing part of the food into chemical energy. The chemical energy has to be transduced to electrical energy, so the body can be defined as an electrochemical “machine”.

Dr. Marrs and I have long been concerned that concentration on many artificial foods, particularly those concerned with sugar in all its different forms, results in manifestations of disease that are being constantly overlooked and misdiagnosed. We have hypothesized that the symptoms experienced in the early stages of this kind of malnutrition are multitudinous and do not fit into our categories of so-called organic disease. Often attributed to psychosomatic causes, and the prevailing inability to recognize its true underlying mechanisms, has led to frequent doctor shopping by people that have genuine disability. They go from specialist to specialist, all of whom have resolutely decided that vitamin deficiency in America is a thing of the past.

What can you do?

First of all, recognize that dietary mayhem, particularly in children, is common. This results in loss of cellular energy that has its main relevance in the energy consuming brain. Chronic fatigue is perhaps the commonest symptom, but heart palpitations, headache, cold and heat intolerance and other functional symptoms may occur. The peculiarity of behavior observed in someone is because of distorted brain function that can vary enormously in the way it is expressed. I would suggest that if a loved one in his fifties begins to show the signs of aging discussed above, the first thing to do is remove sugar from the diet. Books have been written directing us toward a healthy diet but our pleasure loving brains have become addicted to sweet taste since the earliest beginnings of life. Therefore, because nobody objects to taking pills for their health, appropriate supplements can restore the balance between calories and vitamins. The most under appreciated vitamin (thiamine) may actually be the most important of all of them. However, if we look at the history of the treatment of beriberi, it took huge doses of vitamin B1 (thiamine) for months to restore health. A dose of 100 mg of thiamine hydrochloride, together with a similar dose of magnesium and a multivitamin might be better than all the pharmaceuticals in creation. There is abundant evidence to suggest that neglect of these functional symptoms may gradually lead to biochemical changes that are irreversible and we then call it a neurodegenerative disease.

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Reconsidering Sepsis

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Sepsis is a life-threatening condition that arises when the body’s response to infection causes injury to its own tissues and organs. Common signs and symptoms include fever, increased heart rate, increased breathing rate, and confusion (note confusion). What few people realize is that brain function is really in control of the situation. Notice that fever, increased heart rate and breathing, as well as confusion, all reflect brain activity. Some readers familiar with this website will recognize the analogy that I have repeated many times concerning our survival as individuals and as a species. I have likened the human body to an orchestra in which the brain acts as the conductor. The organs can be likened to banks of different instruments within an orchestra. The instrumentalists all know what to do but have to be kept together by the conductor. The cells within each organ are like instrumentalists. They all know what to do in their various special functions but have to be coordinated. When this coordination fails, chaos reigns.

Important parts of the brain, each known as the limbic system and brainstem, together act very much like a computer. They receive messages from the body organs and from the environment and have to make a decision as to how the whole individual must adapt to a given situation. Such a situation might be defined as “stress”. Messages go from this part of the brain to the organs through a nervous system known as autonomic (automatic) and by messengers released from glands that are known as hormones. Unlike the analogy of an orchestra, the organs send messages back to the brain through the automatic system. The limbic system and brainstem also communicate with the upper part of the brain known as the cortex. This part of the brain controls the so-called voluntary nervous system that provides us with willpower. It also provides what might be called “advice and consent” to the automatic brain and can modify the ensuing action.

The Autonomic Nervous System

As many people know, the autonomic nervous system has two different special actions and is divided into a “sympathetic” and a “parasympathetic” branch. Let us be clear about how these branches cooperate by taking a simple fictitious example. As a caveman, you are confronted by a wild animal that you know to be dangerous. After the perception of danger, there will be an instantaneous reflex action delivered via the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system. You will experience fear or anxiety; you will start to sweat; your heart will race; your breathing rate will increase. You are being prepared for “fight-or-flight” and it is a pure reflex that can govern your subsequent action. It is not a thought process. However, it can be modified by the thinking brain and whether you fight or flee from the scene is influenced by personality. When the action that might be stated as “the adaptation to stress” is completed, the sympathetic branch is withdrawn and the parasympathetic takes over. It preserves an atmosphere of calm throughout the body, enabling housekeeping actions to occur. Eating, sleeping, healthy sexual activity and bowel function are examples. I refer to it as the “rest and be thankful” system. The parasympathetic branch is automatically stimulated as the danger is overcome and the sympathetic is withdrawn.

Understanding Oxidation

In my capacity as a writer on this website, I constantly find that very few people seem to know what is meant by oxidation and indeed they have a very vague view concerning energy. Perhaps it is because we tend to think of energy consumption in terms of purely physical activity. Few people seem to have any idea that the brain consumes energy faster than the body or even that the brain uses energy at all. Energy is simply defined as a force that is capable of producing work. It is invisible and can only be depicted from its results.

When we write a letter, the thinking process and the muscles that move the arm and fingers all consume energy. The human body is kept warm because it produces heat energy. We are all familiar with the fact that any machine that consumes fuel, such as an automobile, burns the fuel to produce energy.  Energy has to be captured to perform desired work in the body, just the same as in a car, for example. Oxidation is another word for burning fuel because the very act of burning is the combination of the fuel with oxygen. Now perhaps we can consider the possibility of “defective oxidation”. Even mild oxidation deficiency will stimulate the fight-or-flight sympathetic reflex, because it signals danger, giving rise to a common symptom called “panic disorder” (repeated fight-or- flight reflexes).

Defective Oxidation and Sepsis: A Story of Three Outcomes

You may think that this is a strange way of addressing the subject of sepsis. The first thing that we have to recognize is that sepsis represents a complex reaction to an attack. The attack can be a serious injury, the invasion of bacteria, viruses or other hostile organisms. A battle follows between the attacking event and the defensive mechanisms of the body organized by the brain. A successful defense would mean that complete recovery occurs. The battle may be short and acute or very prolonged and sometimes leading to death. It is the prolonged war that we refer to as sepsis. The outcome depends upon the wellness of the organism as a whole but the organization by the brain is critical.

  • The defense wins: every human body is equipped with enormously complicated machinery known as the immune system, whose functions are dependent on fitness. Fitness is dependent on efficient oxidation from the resultant supply of energy. Bed rest ensures that all the excess energy is focused on healing. The automatic brain is in command and its efficiency depends on a healthy genetic profile and nutrition. Modern medicine pays an almost exclusive attention to the nature of the attack by “killing the enemy” the bacteria, virus, or cancer cell. This paradigm gave rise to the antibiotic era.
  • The attack wins: This may depend on the severity of the injury, the virulence of the attacking organism or the weakness of the defensive system. The result is death.
  • Stalemate: the attacking agent and the defensive system are locked in a struggle, giving rise to chronic disease.

A New Way to Think About Sepsis

Although we must keep paying attention to “killing the enemy”, it must be done safely and without doing harm, as advised by Hippocrates. The new paradigm focuses on assisting the defensive system. There is only one way of doing this and that is by the skillful use of nutrients. Drugs, with the exception of antibiotics, only address symptoms and do nothing for the underlying cause of disease. Sepsis results from inefficient oxidation, particularly in the brain. Without going into the abstruse details we can say that too little oxidation is as bad as too much and it is too much that is associated with sepsis.

To use a simple analogy, sepsis is rather like a fire that has got out of control. For example, if we try to set a fire in an open grate and it expires spontaneously, there is no heat energy to warm the house. On the other hand, if it takes off and becomes too vigorous, it can throw sparks onto a carpet and set the house on fire. To prevent this, we can place a fire guard in front of the fire. This is a simple exposure of the philosophical concept “everything in moderation”. It matters little whether the attack on the body is a severe injury, an infection or some form of prolonged mental stress, the energy for the defensive mechanism must be kept under control. Presently the only defensive assistance is provided by the use of antibiotics, because bacterial infection is the commonest cause of an attack and the reason that we refer to it as sepsis. All of us are now aware that antibiotics are giving rise to their own complications. The only treatment for an injury is rest or appropriate surgery. Healing from an injury requires energy because it is an active process.

Can We Prevent Sepsis?

Frankly, the only way to think of this is strengthening the defense. Obviously, the virulence of infection or the seriousness of injury might be great enough to overwhelm a perfect defense system. However, my experience in practice is that few people are truly “fit” in the sense that I have expressed here. It enabled me to perceive that recurrent episodes of febrile lymphadenopathy (sore throat with fever and swollen glands) in two six-year-old children were caused by thiamine deficiency induced by sweet indulgence. In each child, the brain was experiencing inefficient oxidation. This makes the brain irritable, causing it to initiate a complex defensive reaction under the false impression that its owner was being attacked by a microorganism.

I have already stated that the brain must be in command of the defense. Notice that sepsis is associated with confusion. This indicates that the brain is ineffectively energized to meet the demand and is the center of an ineffective defense. The fuel for the brain is glucose and its combination with oxygen (oxidation) is brought about with the assistance of important chemicals known as oxidants. Gasoline is ignited by a spark plug. Glucose is “ignited” by thiamine. The ensuing oxidation must be kept under control and fireguards known as antioxidants have to be provided. Oxidants and antioxidants (vitamins) come from naturally occurring food. Without providing the scientific details, thiamine is both an oxidant and an antioxidant. Vitamin C is an antioxidant and hydrocortisone is well known by most people as a defense against virtually any form of stress.

The Newest Treatment for Sepsis

It is now possible to understand why thiamine deficiency is such an important consideration in critically ill patients. Thiamine deficiency can develop in patients secondary to inadequate nutrition, alcohol use, or any form of acute metabolic stress. Patients with sepsis are frequently thiamine deficient. Patients undergoing surgical procedures can also develop thiamine deficiency, giving rise to complications such as heart failure, delirium, neuropathy, gastrointestinal dysfunction and unexplained lactic acidosis. The global burden of sepsis is estimated as 15 to 19 million cases annually, with a mortality rate approaching 60% in low-income countries.

The outcome and clinical course of 47 consecutive sepsis patients treated with intravenous vitamin C, hydrocortisone, and thiamine during a seven-month period, were compared with 47 patients who received the present standard therapy. The hospital mortality in the treatment group was 8.5% (4 of 47) compared with 40.4% (19 of 47) in the standard treatment control group. Because this is published material, you would think that this treatment would be immediately taken up in every hospital emergency room. However, until the use of nutrients in the treatment of disease enters the collective psyche of the medical profession, it is unlikely that it will be generally accepted.

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.

Yes, I would like to support Hormones Matter.

Image credit: Pixabay/Parentingupstream/CC0.

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