vitamin deficiency

Hormonal Birth Control Plus Poor Diet Is a Recipe for Disaster

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I am a 29 year old female who began experiencing a decline in my health at 25 years old. This was in 2020. At that point, I had been on hormonal birth control for nearly 10 years. I suspected the birth control was contributing to my ill-health but my doctor disagreed and continued to prescribe different forms to alleviate my symptoms. That did not work and only made things worse. When Depo-Provera was added, I completely crashed and have not recovered, nearly two years later.

When I first began to experience extreme fatigue, abdominal bloating, irritability, restlessness, and massive amounts of hair falling out, I went to my primary care doctor who could find no reason for it on basic bloodwork, except for a low vitamin D level (27mg/mL). They checked CBC, CMP, autoimmune markers, B12, a complete thyroid panel, Lyme titers, mono titers, and iron levels. Since everything was basically normal, my primary care doctor blamed it on my stressful job. At the time, I was working in the emergency room on the night shift. I was not getting the best sleep, and not eating that well either. I was lucky to eat one meal a day and then maybe a snack especially on my busy shifts. On my days off, I was so exhausted that I would eat maybe twice a day. My diet consisted of easy meals like grilled chicken, salads, granola bars, processed cereals, pizza, chicken nuggets, chips, bananas here and there, and overall not a lot of fruits or vegetables.

Enter Depo-Provera

Fast forward to the fall of 2021, after these symptoms persisted, my doctor decided to switch my birth control to the Depo-Provera shot. After taking this shot, havoc was wreaked on my body and brought me down to a level of non-functioning that I never knew existed. Over the next couple months and after taking only one depo shot, I began to experience debilitating symptoms of headaches, fatigue, achy joints/all over body pain that eventually progressed into episodes of heart-racing anytime I would change position. I also experienced shortness of breath, chest pain, difficulty swallowing, a complete loss of appetite, GI issues, brain fog, severely decreased ability to concentrate, severe restless leg syndrome, insomnia, and neurological symptoms so extreme it felt like my brain was “short circuiting” for lack of a better word.

One side of my body would become extremely numb, tingly, and feel weak without any clear deficits. I experienced severe muscle weakness, where it would feel like my body was doing everything it possibly could to keep me upright and breathing. It was so bad, I felt as though I couldn’t even grip my phone and just talking on the phone to family felt like I was dying. I could barely concentrate. I developed severe visual issues, a condition called visual snow syndrome, and still am dealing with it with no improvement. I also developed tinnitus and have a constant high pitched ringing in my ear. I am unable to handle any type of stress, multi-tasking, or any emotional upset without truly feeling like my body is dying from severe neurological symptoms. I became scared to leave the house alone because of these debilitating symptoms. I lost over 30 pounds from feeling so awful and a complete loss of any desire to eat. I would have to force myself to put in fluids or food.

Over the course of many months, I saw multiple neurologists, neuro-ophthalmologist, cardiologist, electrophysiologist, primary care doctor, ENT, TMJ specialist, otologist, binocular vision specialist, rheumatologist, had numerous ER visits, two hospital admissions. I even participated in vestibular/neurological physical therapy over the course of several months. I had multiple head MRIs and CTs of my head and neck, MRIs of my spine, and so much bloodwork looking for autoimmune causes. I had a colonoscopy, a camera down my nose to look at my throat, an audiogram, a sleep study, a tilt table test, an echocardiogram, a stress-echocardiogram, and they even attempted a lumbar puncture on me as well. Conditions such as blood clots, multiple sclerosis, any type of cancer or tumor, etc., were ruled out and the only thing they came up with was a diagnosis of Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS), a suspicion for “some type of migraine variant” and a deficiency in vitamin D and phosphorus on my bloodwork.

Could This Be Thiamine Deficiency?

Fed up and worsening, I paid out of pocket to go to a natural medicine doctor who did heavy metal and mold testing on me along with hormone testing. Nothing really turned up there and so I took it upon myself to order a full vitamin and mineral panel paying over a grand out of pocket. This panel revealed that my serum thiamine was one point away from being flagged as low (8 nmol/L). I then returned to my primary care and two different neurologists to ask if a thiamine deficiency could be the problem or at least part of it, especially after my own research and the known research that birth control depletes many B vitamins. All of the doctors told me that there was no possible way I could have a thiamine deficiency since it is added to so many foods in the United States. They also told me that I could just take a B complex vitamin if I was worried. Even after I told them I was hardly eating because I felt so sick and that when I was eating it was mostly foods like processed toast, frozen chicken nuggets, cans of soup, and other things of that nature, they still dismissed the idea of thiamine deficiency.

May-Thurner Syndrome

On top of all of the debilitating POTS and neurological symptoms, throughout my time on birth control I had complained to my GYN about persistent left sided pelvic pain. It felt like my labia was swollen and at times like something was bulging into my pelvic area. In 2019, I had a CT scan of my abdomen and pelvis done due to some GI symptoms I was having. An incidental finding on it was suspicion for pelvic congestion syndrome (PCS). The report stated that I had very prominent peri-uterine vessels and a dilated left gonadal vein. I took these results to my GYN at the time who clearly stated “PCS is a fake diagnosis and you don’t need to do anything with that.” Since I was young, in my early 20s, I didn’t take it too seriously. Again as time went on, I continued to have the pain and over the years my GYN kept changing my birth control and mentioned endometriosis and small ovarian cysts as possible causes. The birth control would help a little bit for a while but then I would have irregular bleeding and the pain would always come back. It wasn’t until after I took the Depo shot and came off of the hormones that things became worse.

I began to have severe left pelvic pain that persisted for months. I had transvaginal ultrasounds every 6 to 8 weeks to monitor recurring small cysts that they swore were not the cause of my pain. I was tested for PCOS and was negative for that too. It wasn’t until the end of 2022, that I had another transvaginal ultrasound and this one read as having a hydro-salpinx. I had a new GYN at the time who referred me to get an MRI done of my pelvis. This MRI came back as also showing “likely hydro-salpinx” on the left. Since I was having such severe pain, I was referred to a GYN surgeon who said in extremely painful cases it is recommended to take out the tube and it was pretty much nonfunctional when it was as swollen as mine. I elected to proceed with the surgery, as the pain was so extreme. Funny enough, after the surgery when the pathology came back there was no hydro-salpinx and my surgeon said he did not see any endometriosis when he performed the laparoscopy. He said he believed my MRI may have been misread since he did not see any indication of hydro-salpinx during the procedure.

As if that wasn’t enough, after the procedure I had a severe neurological reaction to the scopolamine patch they put on me during the procedure. I had so much testing for this. I was even in the hospital for 5 days with what they thought was “scopolamine patch withdrawal” even though I only had the patch on for 3 days like they told me to wear it.

Fed up and still in pain, I let it go for a few more months thinking it was just “scar tissue” from the surgery or some other easy explanation. It wasn’t until my POTS doctor recommended me to wear an abdominal binder/compression device around my stomach that things worsened so much that I was forced to figure this out. I began having severe left pelvic, hip, and leg pain after wearing this device for only 3 days. I went to the ER because the pain was so bad, but they could only find a small ovarian cyst on my left ovary. They didn’t even consider doing any other work-up. I was then sent to an orthopedic to look at my hip and back to my GYN. Neither could really give an explanation for this pain. Finally enough was enough, I went to a vascular doctor on my own accord to get this PCS, which no one seemed to take seriously, looked at.

At the vascular surgeon’s office, they did a vascular scan of my pelvis and abdomen and were quickly shocked to find that my left iliac vein was almost completely compressed causing my peri-uterine vessels to get almost no blood flow. They diagnosed me with something called May-Thurner Syndrome and said that they usually only see severe cases like mine in women who have had “5 or 6 babies.” I was 28 at the time with one previous ectopic pregnancy many years ago. They quickly scheduled me to get a stent of my left iliac vein placed, as my left leg had begun swelling bigger than my right due to the limited blood flow.

On the day of surgery, my left leg was 2 inches bigger than the right and I was in severe pain. They did a venogram with internal ultrasound and were able to tell me my left iliac vein was 85% compressed. So basically, I was getting no flow through it and hardly any return through that vein up to my heart. They also informed me that the birth control was probably masking the problem but also could have been worsening it when I was on estrogen-containing birth control. They said I was extremely lucky that I did not develop a blood clot, especially when I had taken Beyaz for several years. Now, I am on blood thinners for several months post stent, while waiting to see if this helps with my POTS symptoms at all. So far, I have not seen any improvement except that my leg is no longer swollen.

Still Seeking Answers

I don’t know if thiamine deficiency could be causing my issues, but I have not received any answers other than POTS and my recently discovered May-Thurner Syndrome. I have seen so many doctors and spent so much money with no improvement in my health. This all severely worsened after I took the Depo shot. I have been unable to work for months, was bed bound for a long time, and was completely unable to eat during the worst of my symptoms. Now, I am at least able to move around more than I was and leave the house for doctor appointments, but I am still not working and I am still searching for answers. I would like to feel better and get back to some type of semi-normal life.

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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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Just a Vitamin Deficiency

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Almost daily, I interact with chronically ill people who have longstanding and confirmed vitamin or mineral deficiencies but who, like their physicians, have disregarded these deficiencies as meaningful contributors to their ill health. Indeed, it is often not until they have chased every unicorn diagnosis put forth by every specialist they can afford and have exhausted all other medical means do they consider that those nutrient deficiencies might warrant correction. Sadly, rarely do their doctors agree.

If I am honest, there was a time when I would have done the same. I was raised in the Western medical tradition where real disease was only real if it had a name, responded to a pill, or was caused by some ‘rare’ and ‘entirely-beyond-our-control’ genetic aberration. Nutrient deficiencies, we believed, while real, happened only to others in far off lands where food security was challenged. They did not happen to us in the west where food is plentiful. And, if one did become deficient in a particular vitamin, it was of little or no consequence to health and certainly not responsible for the constellation of symptoms one might experience. It’s just a vitamin deficiency after all.

From this perspective, pills are the real treatment, not vitamins, not minerals and certainly not diet or lifestyle changes. So when I see people with that same mind set, taking multiple drugs to treat what is essentially a nutrient deficiency, I get it. That is how we were brought up. It saddens me though because I know that, like a family member watching an alcoholic spiral, I can do nothing until they hit bottom. I know that nothing I say, no research I provide, or no proof that there is a better way will matter. I know that it is not until their health declines so severely that they consider those nutrient deficiencies, often identified years prior as the symptoms were just beginning to manifest, might warrant attention. Unfortunately, at this point, correcting the damage done by longstanding nutrient starvation and exacerbated by chronic polypharmacy, is incredibly challenging. Unwinding all of the molecular survival mechanism that the body was forced to institute is a tedious and often painful process; one that is difficult to navigate and even more difficult to live through.

Surely, I exaggerate. It’s just a vitamin deficiency, after all. How bad could it be?

Read any of the hundreds of case stories or research articles that we have on this site or read our book about all of the illnesses a deficiency in just one particular vitamin, thiamine, can cause and it will become quite clear that vitamin or mineral deficiencies are nothing to be trifled with. Think about it for a moment, why would we think otherwise? Seriously, what rational person would believe that nutrient deficiencies can be ignored or that the symptoms they evoke could be treated by throwing medications at the problem? Certainly, a particular medication might temper some of the symptoms for a spell, but it will do nothing to resolve the root cause, and because most medications deplete nutrients and damage the mitochondria, it is entirely likely that this approach will make matters worse. But sure, it’s just a vitamin deficiency.

The Body Requires Nutrition

The body requires vitamins and minerals to power the enzyme machinery that performs the functions of life. Every physiological function managed by these enzymes requires one or more vitamins or minerals to operate. When those nutrients are in short supply, the enzymes, and the functions they support, suffer. Bruce Ames, one of the leaders in nutrient research, proposes a triage theory of nutrient management wherein

…a modest deficiency of one of the nutrients/cofactors triggers a built-in rationing mechanism that favors the proteins needed for immediate survival and reproduction (survival proteins) while sacrificing those needed to protect against future damage (longevity proteins). Impairment of the function of longevity proteins results in an insidious acceleration of the risk of diseases associated with aging.

Insidious is the key here. The body is remarkably adaptable and will shift resources around for as long as it can. The problem, while this type of triage keeps everything ‘functioning’ to some degree or another, the damage accrues in the background, slowly and insidiously until everything breaks.

I Was Healthy Until…

“I was healthy until…” is a common refrain from folks who find themselves suddenly in ill-health. Unpeel a few layers and we see that while they were functioning, sometimes at a very high level, they were anything but healthy. Poor diet, regular medication use and other factors contributed to longstanding, albeit frequently unrecognized, nutrient deficiencies. Those nutrient deficiencies then, slowly but surely caused the body to sacrifice long term health for short term survival, until one final stressor catapulted it into crisis. This is the more common scenario. This is what leads to all of those ultra-complicated illnesses that breach every diagnostic designation used in medicine.

When one’s entire physiology is rewired to accommodate the persistent lack of nutrients, over time we get these illnesses that are refractory to any treatment, and sometimes even nutrient repletion itself. That is, individual ‘reacts’ negatively to the very nutrients he/she is deficient in and that are absolutely essential to life. That is what upsets me so much when I watch people downplay or outright ignore these deficiencies. The longer one waits, the worse it will get.

But hey, it’s just a vitamin deficiency.

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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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Thiamine Deficiency and Dependency Syndromes: Case Reports

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I have been studying thiamine metabolism since 1969 when I published the first case of thiamine dependency: Intermittent cerebellar ataxia associated with hyperpyruvic acidemia, hyperalaninemia, and hyperalaninuria. The case involved a 6-year old boy experiencing recurrent  episodes of cerebellar ataxia (a brain disease resulting in complete loss of a sense of balance). These episodes, occurring  intermittently, were naturally self-limiting without any treatment and were triggered by inoculation, mild head trauma, or a simple infection such as  a cold. In other words, his episodes of ataxia were repeatedly initiated by an environmental factor. I have called each of these variable factors  a “stressor”. Our studies showed that one of these stressors would unmask the true underlying latent thiamine dependency, falsely giving the impression that the stressor was the primary cause. This may be the principle of post vaccination disease in some cases. It may also be too easy to explain symptoms arising from trauma or infection as primary cause. These recurrent ataxic episodes were prevented from occurring by giving him mega-doses of a thiamine supplement.

Cerebellar Ataxia of Metabolic Origins?

When ataxia, as in this child,  or other symptoms, occur intermittently, as they did in many other patients whom I would treat across my career, it is difficult to identify the true cause. The studies performed by neurologists, neurosurgeons and others inevitably would be  normal, causing diagnostic confusion. In other patients with less serious symptoms, they are considered to be somehow feigned or of psychological origin. Symptoms that appear and disappear in a seemingly random manner and are not supported by conventional laboratory data are often explained this way. Please be aware that ataxia should never be regarded as psychosomatic. The point is that less serious symptoms that cause deviant behavior may not be recognized as biochemical changes in the brain.

With the present medical model, it is difficult to understand and accept that a stress factor can initiate the symptoms of a metabolically caused disease that has been relatively innocuous or silent until the stress is imposed. Let me give you another example.

Loss of Consciousness, Edema, Joint Pain: Rheumatic Disease or Metabolic Disorder

Since I was working at a multi-specialty clinic I was sitting having lunch with an ear, nose, throat (ENT) surgeon who knew of my interest in sudden death in infants (Treatment of threatened SIDS with megadose thiamine hydrochloride). He had been called to put in a tracheostomy to a middle-aged woman who had suddenly stopped breathing. Unlikely as it sounds, he suggested that I should go and look at the situation unofficially.

In the hierarchy of specialization, a pediatrician is not supposed to know anything about adult conditions, so I was not welcome. Because the internists who were taking care of her were rheumatologists, it was considered to be some kind of rheumatic disease, because of aches and pains in joints and limbs. She had had periods of unconsciousness over many years and her body was profoundly swollen, the hallmark of beriberi. Without going into details I was able to prove that this was indeed beriberi.

When I approached the rheumatologist who was her primary physician, I could not convince her of what appeared to her as too bizarre to contemplate. Notwithstanding, I had the cooperation with the nurses who followed my directions.  When the patient was given injections of thiamine, she recovered consciousness and the gross body edema disappeared.

So fixed in the mind of many physicians is the concept that a vitamin related emergency simply does not occur, it was called “spontaneous remission” by my colleagues and “had nothing to do with vitamin therapy”. When I asked the rheumatologist whether we could conference the patient, she ignored the request. Well, this was not the end of the story.

Resolving One Deficiency Often Unmasks Another

After she started the injections of thiamine, with recovery of the nervous system, she began to develop a progressive anemia. It was considered by the internists to be internal bleeding and a thorough search produced only negative results.  So ingrained is the negative attitude to vitamin therapy, I was even in fear that I might be blamed for causing the anemia. In the meantime, I took a specimen of urine and found a substance in the urine that suggested a deficiency of folic acid. Readers will remember that folic acid is a member of the B group of vitamins, as is thiamine. A blood test proved that she was indeed deficient in folic acid. When this vitamin was given to her, the anemia rapidly disappeared. This, believe it or  not, still did not interest my colleagues.

She was discharged from the hospital, receiving supplements of thiamine and folic acid and her nervous system gradually improved. Some months later she developed a rash of a type that had been reported a few months previously as due to vitamin B12 deficiency. She was given an injection of vitamin B12 and over the next few days suffered slight fever and variable joint pains. These were symptoms with which she was familiar and had been responsible for the diagnosis of rheumatic disease.  This sometimes happens temporarily with vitamin therapy, but often enough that I refer to it as “paradox”, meaning that things seem to be worse before they get better. Note that this paradox is not the same as side effects from a drug. The symptoms that cause a patient to see a doctor are temporarily exacerbated. With our present model the patient concludes that this is side effects from the vitamin(s) being used. I had to learn that paradox was the best sign that improvement would follow with persistence. She then continued on the thiamine, folic acid and vitamin B12.

The Role of Lifestyle and Diet Disease Expression – Oft Ignored Stressors

The fact that this woman was a chronic beer drinker and smoker had been ignored.  They were, if you will, the “stressors” that were the dominant cause, perhaps impacting on genetic risk factors. The relationship between alcohol and thiamine deficiency is well known and so she had induced her own disease. Since there was a profound ignorance concerning vitamin deficiency diseases, the beriberi had been referred to by her internists as “rheumatic” in nature. This is because joint and limb pain, usually not recognized for what the pains represent, are often associated with compromised oxidative metabolism, either in the limb itself or in the brain where the pain is interpreted.

Defective oxidative metabolism caused in this patient’s case by thiamine deficiency, causes exaggerated brain perception. The brain induced a pain that gave the false impression that the disease originated in the joints and other parts of the body. Even if the origin of the pain is truly from a joint or muscle, defective oxidative metabolism in the brain will exaggerate the sense of pain perceived by the patient. Although this “phantom” pain is known as “hyperalgesia”, the mechanism is not well known as being due to compromised oxidation in the pain perception brain centers. Thiamine deficiency was responsible for the hyperalgesia experienced by the case of a patient with eosinophilic esophagitis that was posted recently on this website.

Beyond Thiamine: Multi-Nutrient Deficiencies

What interested me in the woman with beriberi was that folic acid deficiency was not revealed until her metabolism had been accelerated by the pharmacological use of thiamine. The folic acid deficiency then became clinically expressed as her metabolism “woke up”. It had been well known for some time that folic acid produced anemia would have to be treated with both folic acid and vitamin B12.

In the case of folic acid deficient Pernicious Anemia, if vitamin B12 was not given at the same time, the patient would develop a disease known as subacute combined degeneration of the spinal cord. Because I had forgotten this fact, I had neglected to give her vitamin B12 until it was finally expressed clinically in the form of a rash. Associating a skin rash with a vitamin deficiency is certainly not commonly accepted as a possible indicator of an underlying cause by physicians.

Vitamin Deficiency Versus Dependency

Returning to the case of the 6-year old boy discussed above, we learned over time that his health was dependent on high doses of thiamine to function. Believe it or not, this child required 600 mg of thiamine a day in order to prevent his episodes of illness. If he began to notice the beginning of an infection he would double the dose. The recommended daily allowance for thiamine is between one and 1.5 mg a day. Here, and in many other cases, huge doses of the vitamin are required in order to accomplish the physiologic effect. This represents what I call vitamin dependency.

Thiamine and magnesium, like many other vitamins, are known as cofactors to enzymes. An enzyme without its cofactor works inefficiently if it works at all. The “magic” of evolution has “invented” this cooperative action which is in itself under genetic control. In technical terms, the vitamin has to “bond” with the enzyme. If this bonding mechanism is genetically compromised, the concentration of the corresponding cofactor has to be increased enormously by supplementation in order to prevent the inevitable symptoms. You can see that this requires a clinical perspective tied to unusual biochemical knowledge. This is in complete contrast to what is usually regarded as vitamin deficiency, arising from insufficient concentrations in the diet.

What is perhaps not known sufficiently is that prolonged vitamin deficiency appears to affect this bonding mechanism. For example, it has long been known that to cure chronic beriberi, megadoses of thiamine are required for months. I have concluded that the megadoses of thiamine given by supplementation to a patient with long term symptoms arising from unrecognized deficiency appears to re-activate the inefficient enzyme. It is as though the enzyme has to be repeatedly exposed to megadoses of its cofactor to stimulate it and restore its lost function.

This may mean that even if the bonding mechanism is normal in chronic deficiency, enzyme function has simply decayed from lack of stimulation. This may explain why genetically determined dependency and long term dietary deficiency will produce the same clinical effect. The dosing of vitamins, if the clinical effects of deficiency are recognized, is not well understood in traditional western medicine. When insufficient doses are given and the symptoms fail to abate, the practitioner views it as evidence that supplements do not work.

Biochemical Diagnoses are Complex

I want the general public to begin to understand the principles that underlie the complexity of biochemical diagnosis. Perhaps a reader might find that a case like this is a reminder of a loved one whose illness was never understood after seeing many different specialists, all of whom were like the blind men and the elephant. Each was confined to his specialist status but none of them could see the overall big picture.

Reading these cases, you might easily come to the conclusion that they represent a rarity. Chronically unrecognized thiamine deficiency is common. Dependency is  not uncommon. It is not as rare as is presently thought. Believe me, cases like these are surprisingly common and are responsible for a great deal of diagnostic confusion.

Vitamins are essential to consumption of oxygen in all life processes. To go against the principles of diet dictated by Mother Nature is a risk to life and limb that is not worth the derived pleasure. When limb pain is experienced without an obvious trauma, it is difficult to accept that it is because of inefficient use of oxidation in the brain, but that is exactly what we found.

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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Pancreatic Divisum with Gastroparesis and Bowel Dysmotility Requiring TPN

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My health issues began 10 years ago, after a holiday Turkey. I was 29 and had just experienced a relationship break up. At the time I was eating bad food and drinking lots of alcohol. On the last night, we went to a different hotel. After visiting the mud baths, we were starving and ventured to a food vendor outside. This was a mistake. On the second day home, I didn’t feel well and had developed a very bad urinary tract infection. The infection had cleared but then at about two weeks, I developed a weird scratching feeling under my right rib. When the pain worsened, I saw doctor. I said that I had just returned from holiday and so he ran some general blood tests, but found nothing.

The pain continued to worsen and I struggled to eat. It felt like I had gas in my upper intestine and it’s pushing on my vagus nerve and diaphragm so I can’t breathe. Then, due to low acid, nothing can leave my stomach. I was sent for an endoscopy and colonoscopy. These two came back negative. The doctor said I was depressed, as I was now down 8 stone, and that I had IBS.

During this time, I was nauseous and became anxious for no reason. My vision was blurry and I felt like the food I ate wasn’t digesting. I was becoming so ill, that I could not function, so I left my job and returned to my parents’ house. The doctor there put me on Zoloft. Within a few weeks, I slowly managed to eat. Within two months, I was back to normal but would get these massive flares up now and again. I would become nauseous develop severe anxiety for a day, but then it would then pass. I noticed even though I went to the toilet I would never pass gas, but didn’t think much of it.

As I felt better, I stopped Zoloft. Within three months the pain was back, but I could still eat. This time the Zoloft didn’t work. My friend had tramadol and that was the only thing that stopped the pain. So the GP then gave me tramadol.

I was on tramadol for 4 years. I couldn’t drink alcohol, as this made it worse. I continued to have tests and the pain was still bad. I had MRI with secretin that showed pancreatic divisum, a congenital condition where the ducts have not fused but doctor didn’t feel it was the problem. Maybe he was wrong. Pancreatic divisums are associated chronic pancreatitis, which is in turn is associated with gastroparesis and upper bowel dysmotility, both of which I had. I also went to a pain clinic, but nothing worked. I had a gallbladder function test and CT scan, and again, everything was fine. Nothing showed up anywhere.

Gallbladder Removal, Metronidazole, and My Continuing Decline

In 2017, the decision was made to remove my gallbladder. I was told it might not help, but I felt I had no other option and so out it came. I had cholestasis but no stones. The doctor commented that I was constipated all the way round my colon and thought that might be the issue. I was okay for a few weeks and then things turned bad. I can no longer digest fats. Attempting to eat any fat gives me agony. I get cramping in my bowel.

After my gallbladder was removed, I couldn’t eat due to the pain. I decided to see a nutritionist and had a stool test. The test showed Klebsiella, a few other nasties, and candida. I was put on grapefruit seed extract and Uva Ursi. I started passing foul smelling gas and a lot of stool was coming out. I began to improve. I felt hungry again and began eating the rainbow, as they say. I told the nutritionist that I felt better on the grapefruit seed extract and was told begin taking it every day. This was too much and it led to increased bowel cramps and then vomiting. Every time I took the herb, I would get nauseous and vomit. She told me to stop and take probiotics. This too made me feel worse. I now could not tolerate anything. She gave up told me to go to a doctor.

So I went to a doctor and she gave me metronidazole (Flagyl). I took it. It was awful. The anxiety was terrible and the pain was insane. When I finally stopped, I was in agony whenever I ate, so I took some marshmallow root and slippery elm. This seemed to help a lot. For one week, I could eat. By the end of the week though, I was awful and back to not being able to eat or go to the toilet.

I would get electric shocks and jolts in my sleep to sounds and noises. I had intense nausea and pain and could only tolerate liquid sugary drinks. I finally got a referral to a gastrointestinal specialist. She agreed to do gastric emptying study. I have severe gastroparesis to solids and liquids and was given Domperidone. I took some probiotics and stayed on a soup diet. This helped for 4 weeks but then it all fell apart again and I was back to the point of needing a feeding tube.

I had a nasal jejunum (NJ) tube in the intestine in 2018. This made me worse and the pain in my gut was insane. I also had a foggy brain and experienced body jolts. They gave me a lot laxatives. I was left in this state for a year until my weight dropped to 42 kg. At that point, I was put on total parenteral nutrition (TPN), with a central line that sends nutrients directly to the bloodstream. Pancreatic divisum, gastroparesis, nasal jejunal tube

At this point, I did find a functional doctor, who was pretty sure I had SIBO. So just before TPN, we tried Rifaxamin and metronidazole. I only lasted two days. I felt so drugged. I didn’t feel better until I stopped. Then I felt ok for a few days but that was it.

On TPN, I gained some weight but still felt drugged. A few months later, I got a line infection, developed sepsis, and again in April. I also had a fungal infection, and was given high doses of antifungals by IV. I actually felt a bit better on this. I was craving chocolate, crisps. I wasn’t hungry but just wanted crap food.

Unexpected Pregnancy

I went back to my parents. I was with my partner and I was very ill now. After a month, my bloods were all over the place I didn’t feel right. Then in the August 2020, I picked up. I was very tired, but I felt a little happier. Then I started getting a bulge in the bottom of my gut. The doctor sent me to hospital. The next day was a shock. I was pregnant. With twins!

We decided to go ahead as I was already 20 weeks pregnant and this was my only chance of having children. When I hit the 3rd trimester my gut was gurgling. Gas came out and I could taste food but still couldn’t swallow as I would fall in to a coma type sleep.

I had the children by caesarean section. Afterwards, my body was just pouring out orange bile in the toilet. I was in agony. A few days later, I got Covid. I experienced no real symptoms, but my liver enzyme was over 400. Disaster struck again few weeks later when I developed sepsis again, and then again, a few weeks later. Both times I was treated with antibiotics, however the second time I went in to anaphylaxis.

Since pregnancy, my symptoms have worsened with increased anxiety and heart palpitations, especially in the morning. I still cannot eat or drink, as I fall in to my coma sleep. Every night I’m sweating and getting horrendous nightmares.

Treatments and Tests

Below are things I’ve tried and tests I have taken.

Alternative Treatments

  • Acupuncture – I pass out in my coma sleep after, have horrible nightmare and feel terribly anxious.
  • Cognitive behavioral and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy
  • Visceral massage – Calmed me a little but the gas just got stuck and wouldn’t come out.
  • Hypnotherapy
  • Reiki
  • Chinese herbs again pass out asleep

Medications and Supplements

  • I currently take 2 mgs Motegrity but need an enema to get just gas out. But now it’s just passing through as water
  • Magnesium threonate. This helps with the anxiety
  • Ginger
  • Any herbs or supplements and I’m passing out asleep. It’s like my body can’t cope with processing it and shuts down.

Tests

  • Oats – shows high arabinose aspergillus, candida (I have pityriasis versicolor all over my body – a skin yeast infection) and low, B12, B2, B6. Again, I pass out or react with massive anxiety feeling when I take supplements
  • High oxalates
  • Methylation test shows that I slightly over-methylate.
  • B1 checked normal
  • Genova stool test: massive dysbiosis with high Bacteroides, Klebsiella candida, a few other really bad bacteria and hardly any good bacteria

Armin Labs Test

  • Low cd57 – it was 8
  • Coxsackie virus
  • Echo virus
  • Previous Epstein Barr virus not current

As I mentioned, I am on TPN. The ingredients of my nutrient packs are below.

The doctors have run out of ideas and so I am publishing my story here in the hope that someone out there will be able to help. Any suggestions on how to resolve these issues are appreciated. Thank you.

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The Voice of Hippocrates

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The Hippocratic Oath, supposedly sworn to by all physicians when they graduate, is well known to contain the sentence “Thou shalt do no harm”. In spite of this, the “Table of iatrogenic deaths in the United States” (deaths induced inadvertently by a physician or surgeon or by medical treatment or diagnostic procedure) lists 106,000 cases of adverse drug reactions, 98,000 cases of medical error and 37,000 cases of unnecessary procedures. Neither is this the complete table. I came across a September 2018 issue of “Life Extension” that discussed the use of preventive nutrition as an emerging medical methodology. Perhaps the most arresting statement made in this issue concerned the fact that about 250,000 Americans die from sepsis each year and that a recent study has shown that intravenous treatment with vitamin C, hydrocortisone and vitamin B1 reduces sepsis mortality by 87%. A statement like that should make headlines but it is very likely that it will be confined to a few physicians by association, at least for some time. A December 2018 issue of the magazine “Discover” claimed that Alzheimer’s disease is under attack and describes “lifestyle plans that improve brain health”. Our new book, “Thiamine Deficiency Disease, Dysautonomia and High Calorie Malnutrition” presents many case records of patients with symptoms that haunt thousands of doctor offices in the United States. The early recognition of these common symptoms as evidence of nutritional deficiency may well be a key factor in the prevention of much more serious disease.

Perhaps a short case history may help the reader of this website to be aware of the rising importance of a relatively new branch of medicine known as “Alternative Complementary”, sometimes as “Integrative”. The use of these terms indicates that the development of scientific medicine has come a long way, but that it needs an extension. The best developments are in surgery, but the removal of a sick organ as a therapeutic measure surely must be an indication of medical failure. When I was in practice, I was a member of a group of physicians whose medical fraternity was known as the “American College for Advancement in Medicine” (ACAM). Like all innovations, it has had to struggle for survival. Another group of like-minded physicians is known as the “International College of Integrative Medicine” (ICIM). There is no doubt that this branch of medicine is growing. However, in my association with friends, the idea of using nutrients in the treatment of disease is completely foreign to them. They are understandably baffled by telling them that dizziness, heart palpitations, and even fainting attacks could often be relieved by taking a simple vitamin supplement.

Nutrients, Energy, and Health

I will tell the story of an eight-year-old girl who had a lifelong history of extremely severe asthma. She was so allergic that she could not use any form of mattress and in fact she had been sleeping on a plastic lawn chair for years because of this. When I performed a clinical examination, I noticed that her body was covered with “goose bumps”. A reader may or may not be conversant with this phenomenon and it is likely that few would have any knowledge of why this occurs.

To give you an idea of the treatment that I chose, I must provide a simple explanation. At one time, the human body was covered with hair and if an individual was confronted with a dangerous situation he would get a well-known reflex known as the “fight-or-flight”. Each hair grew out of a tiny cavity in the skin known as a hair follicle and a tiny muscle known as erector pili (Latin for hair raiser) would be activated by this reflex, raising each hair to an erect position. It was thought that this mechanism in primitive hominins, (forerunners of the human race) by raising all the body hairs, would make the individual look much more aggressive in the confrontation. Well, most people have very little hair on the body but we have retained both the follicles and the erector pili muscles. “Goose bumps” are caused by follicles standing up on the surface of the skin as a result of the muscle contraction, even without the presence of a hair growing from the follicle. Some people will remember that a frightening situation may be associated with a feeling of hair rising on the back of the neck, another marker of this primitive reflex. Therefore, this child’s asthma was associated with at least part of the fight-or-flight reflex, known to be activated by the nervous system known as autonomic (automatic).

Because of my knowledge concerning nutrients and their reactions, I knew that thiamine deficiency would not only activate this reflex unnecessarily, but that it could produce an imbalance in the autonomic system that could result in bronchial constriction. Since giving a water-soluble vitamin like thiamine in a large dose could do no harm, I thought that it was worth trying. She began 150 mg/day of thiamine hydrochloride, readily available at a health food store. During the next five months she experienced only two mild attacks of asthma and her body weight had increased by 6.4 Kg. When I examined her chest, there was no evidence of wheezing. This remarkable increase in weight was probably because her energy metabolism had accelerated as a result of the introduction of an important factor in its production. She had grown to the normal body weight that she would have had if she had not had energy deficiency. You can perceive that the diversity of clinical expression was explicable from the single entity of thiamin deficiency, not several distinct diseases with separate causes.

The Practice of Medicine

Several factors enter into discussing a treatment that was not only completely safe, but derived from medical school training. It required knowledge concerning energy production and the effect of malnutrition in the nervous control of the body organs. It depended on a simple clinical observation and knowledge of its underlying mechanism.

The “practice” of medicine must surely indicate that the physician’s knowledge is expected to grow with clinical observation and experience. Since the body is a biochemical machine that relies on appropriate fuel for healthy and normal function, knowledge of nutrition is an essential element that has been sorely neglected in the modern world. Physicians have to understand how nutrition is turned into energy and then used for function. The present practice of medicine for the primary physician is almost confined to listening to the pharmaceutical industry in the production of the latest drug. The time allowed for each patient is restricted and it is no wonder that physicians are becoming disenchanted, often retiring earlier than usual. Surely we should be trying to follow the example set by “the father of modern medicine” in 400 BCE.

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Are High Folate and Vitamin B12 Linked to Low Thiamine in Autism and Other Disorders?

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Autism is now classified as an epidemic in the United States. It can only be understood by first recognizing that it is caused by biochemical changes in the brain. There are only two ways in which these changes are brought about. One is genetics. The other is nutrition. The focus of research has been almost exclusively in terms of genetics. Very little has been said about nutrition. A recent epidemiological study found elevated concentrations of folate and vitamin B12 during pregnancy associated with autism. In this post I want to discuss the potential relationship of autism with B vitamins. In order to introduce the subject, I must digress.

High Folate and Vitamin B12 in the Face of Other Vitamin Deficiencies

Many years ago I was confronted by the case of a six-year-old child who had been suffering from an extraordinarily common problem for approximately two years. He would develop a sore throat, fever and swollen glands in the neck. Of course, these episodes had always been treated with antibiotics as infections but there was no valid explanation of why they were repeated. His case had been reviewed at prestigious medical institutions and he had been admitted to a hospital when, during a febrile episode, a gland in the neck was removed for biopsy. The report arrested my attention, because it was described as “a swollen gland whose architecture was otherwise normal”. Another part that arrested my attention was that his diet was appalling, full of sugar, so I had a blood test performed that showed that he was vitamin B1 deficient. But there was another strange association. Folate, a B vitamin and vitamin B12, also a B vitamin, both had very high concentrations in the blood. This had been discovered at the same hospital where the gland had been removed.

The doctor had told the child’s mother about this and accused her of giving the child too many vitamins. She was very perplexed because she denied that she had been giving any vitamins, but they would not believe her. Because of this history, I performed the same tests and both these vitamins were indeed elevated in the blood. Because of the sugar association and the finding of vitamin B1 deficiency, I treated the child with megadoses of thiamine (vitamin B1) and sent him home. To my great surprise, not only did his health improve drastically, his feverish episodes ceased and the repeat of the blood tests showed that the levels of folate and vitamin B12 had fallen into the normal range.

I asked the mother to stop the vitamin B1 which she did reluctantly. Three or four weeks later the child had another episode of swollen glands in the neck with fever. The mother also reported that he had sleep walked and, going downstairs, he had urinated spontaneously. Of course, this implicated a mechanism in the brain. I readmitted him to the hospital and I found that the folate and B12 levels had again shot up. I treated him with thiamine again. The fever and swollen glands remitted and the levels of folate and B 12 dropped again into the normal range. Well, of course, this was a natural experiment that sent me to the library to try to come up with an explanation of the relationship between these three B vitamins. It appears to be an important phenomenon because recently, a paper has been produced in which folate and B 12 have both been found to be increased over the normal range in autism.

The Engines in the Body

First of all, I had to try to explain why there was a very obvious response to the megadose thiamine. One thing that I had learned is that the part of the brain that deals with a defense against stress becomes very irritable when cellular metabolism becomes inefficient. Thiamine deficiency in that part of the brain produces the same action as a mild to moderate lack of oxygen, because both spell “danger”. When a bacterial or viral infection attacks us, we go into a defensive mode. This is, of course, the illness. The fever makes the action of the microorganism less efficient. Swollen glands are created to catch the dead microorganisms as they are washed into the lymphatic system. My hypothetical explanation is that the thiamine deficiency created brain irritability that repeatedly went into a defensive mode under the false impression that the child was being attacked by a microorganism.

The Transmission in the Body

This again is a hypothesis and I must digress again. Let us take a car as an example of a machine. The engine produces energy and that energy is passed through a transmission that enables the car to go into action. Bewildering as it may seem, the human body is a chemical machine and we can only understand how it functions by understanding the chemistry. As I have said many times in this forum, thiamine has the responsibility of producing energy. It is exactly like a spark plug in a car engine. But because the human body is also a machine, it has to have the equivalent of a transmission. To put it simply, energy is produced by thiamine and stored in the form of a chemical substance known as ATP. Without going into the technological details, ATP is consumed by releasing energy used to drive the transmission that enables bodily functions. The transmission is an energy consuming series of chemical changes known as transmethylation. These chemical changes require folic acid and vitamin B12. Because of thiamine deficiency the ability to produce ATP was compromised. This resulted in lack of energy that affected the transmission. Folic acid and vitamin B12 simply collected in the blood because because they were not being used. As soon as thiamine restoration took place, the transmission became more efficient and the folate and B12 were consumed in the action.

What Has This to Do with Autism ?

The present disease model states that each disease has a unique cause that demands a unique treatment. Genetic research has revealed thousands of possible gene mutations involved in the underlying cause of autism and I have no doubt that this produces variations on a common theme, perhaps explaining why each child with autism is unique in his own right. Thiamine deficiency can express itself in many different ways, depending on which part of the brain is affected. If it can express itself in repeated episodes that exactly imitate a throat infection in one individual and autism in another, we surely have to change how we see health and disease. Both thiamine and vitamin D deficiency have been described in the medical literature as a cause of autism. I have concluded that anything that interferes with an efficient use of oxygen in the brain creates symptoms that may well be interpreted as “psychological”. Most gene mutations don’t have an effect on their own. Serious prolonged stress and/or vitamin deficient malnutrition may have to be present for the disease to be expressed.

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Vitamin Therapy Paradox: Getting Worse before Getting Better

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Does modern medicine accept the idea of vitamin therapy? The answer is a resounding no!  It has only been a little over 100 years since vitamins were synthesized. Of course, as everybody knows, all of these chemical substances were found to exist in natural food. They were very much part of the mystery of evolution. Essential to all animal life, they were there for the picking. Later, it was also found that a number of essential minerals were required. Both the vitamins and minerals need to be present in minute doses, covered under the eponym of recommended daily allowance (RDA). All we had to do was to obey the rules set out by Mother Nature. Our ancestors were classified as “hunter gatherers”.  They hunted animals and gathered the bounty of nature. Yes, we were primitive savages and life was not the ideal by any means, but the food contained all that was necessary for life.

An Evolutionary Imperative to Eat Real Food

To ascertain what kind of food is required by an animal, you simply look at the teeth. We have front teeth called incisors for cutting, the pointed teeth called canine for tearing meat and the back teeth molars, used for grinding. Cows and horses are vegetarian and only have molar grinders. Human beings are omnivores (all foods edible) meaning that we are designed to eat meat, fruit and vegetables. Some of the vitamins are recycled through eating other animals. Others are recycled by being returned to the soil and passing into plants. That is why I have said to many people in answering the question as to what diet they should pursue, eat only nature made food and leave the man made food alone. Well, of course, you know that we didn’t do that.

We now have a food industry and it is quite unbelievable, at least to me, to see some of the stuff that passes as food, based solely on taste and appearance. Sometimes I find a person with these typical symptoms who is very careful with diet and does not practice taste hedonism, but because farming practices have changed in modern times, the produce does not have the same kind of non-caloric nutrient content. It may not be coincidental that such persons are almost invariably intelligent and physically and mentally active. It is reasonable to assume that their nutritional demand exceeds supply and they need non-caloric nutrients.

Sugar and the Vitamin Paradox

Now let me turn to the reason that I used “vitamin paradox” in the title. Anyone that wants to follow my reasoning can look back at previous posts on this website. You will find that there is a significant emphasis on the calamity of sugar ingestion and its association with vitamins, particularly thiamine. I am sure that I will look like a broken record to many people, but here is what happens to your health. Although it is obvious that all the vitamins and essential minerals are required, I am taking the example of thiamine because of its close association with the wide consumption of things called “goodies” or “sweets”.

All simple carbohydrate foods are broken down in the body to glucose. Research has shown that overloading the metabolism with sugar overwhelms the capacity of cellular machinery to burn (oxidize) it by producing a relative deficiency of thiamine, the vital catalyst that ignites (oxidizes) glucose to synthesize cellular energy for function. Recently it has been found that thiamine is required for the oxidation of fats, making the doughnut a perfect example of high calorie malnutrition. This is so important in the brain that I simply cannot overstate it.

High Calorie Malnutrition, Oxygen Deprivation and Brain Function

High calorie malnutrition is exactly equivalent to a mild degree of oxygen deprivation, so it is sometimes referred to as pseudo-hypoxia (false oxygen deprivation). If this is induced by poor diet where the pleasure of taste (hedonism) overrides appropriate nutrition, a curious thing happens! The lower part of the brain that deals automatically with your ability to adapt to a hostile environment becomes much more susceptible in its responsiveness.

I will give you one example: panic attacks, so extraordinarily common in our culture, are simply fight-or-flight reflexes that are triggered by pseudo-hypoxia. Messages go out to the body from this part of the brain, falsely initiated as though you were actually being “chased by a tiger”. Such an affected person will begin to experience the following symptoms as examples: palpitations of the heart, unusual sweating, a sense of anxiety or panic, irritable bowel syndrome, manifestations of allergy, emotional lability (emotions out of control) etc.  He or she will go to the doctor who will do a series of tests. If they are all normal, you will then be told that this is “all in your head” (psychosomatic). On the other hand, the doctor might find evidence for “mitral valve prolapse” (MVP), now known to be an early sign of “wear and tear” damage in the heart and the focus becomes “heart disease”(often used to explain heart palpitations) rather than its original cause, associated with nervous system dysfunction. I have seen MVP disappear in people from correcting their nutrition. It is rare for a patient to be asked about diet and rarer still to question the possibility of a vitamin deficiency.

Vitamin Deficiency: The Walking Sick

This kind of health situation may go one for a long time. The patient has symptoms but is not really a sick person. I refer to people like this as the “walking  sick”. Life continues as usual, but medications have failed to relieve the symptoms, or worse yet have introduced side effects. Over time, the loss of metabolic efficiency gradually leads to damage in cellular machinery (e.g MVP) because the energy need to drive daily function is not being met. Thiamine activates the most important enzyme in energy synthesis and, in the early stages of nutritional deprivation, a thiamine plus multivitamin supplement would quickly abolish the symptoms. If neglected and the marginal malnutrition continues, it will be gradually more difficult to repair the damage.

Vitamin Therapy with Chronic Deficiency: Expect a Decline before Improving

Physicians who practice Alternative Medicine have found that it is possible sometimes to retrieve function at this late stage of development by the use of a course of vitamins given intravenously. They have also learned that the symptoms of the patient actually get worse (paradox) in the initial stages of intravenous treatment but begin to get better following an unpredictable period of worsening. Naturally, the patient concludes that the treatment is bad or that it is causing side effects as in the use of pharmaceuticals. That is why I have christened it paradox, meaning that the unexpected happens.

Over the years of administering intravenous vitamin therapy for all kinds of conditions, irrespective of conventional diagnosis, I quickly learned to inform a patient about paradox before instituting treatment. Surprisingly, this paradoxical response usually heralds a good outcome. I do have some ideas about the cause of paradox, but it is so technical that I cannot attempt it here, perhaps in future posts. Intravenous vitamins are tremendously effective in the improvement of most chronic diseases, an effect that is almost impossible to achieve with the standard treatment of drugs as used in modern medicine today.

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The Paradox of Modern Vitamin Deficiency, Disease, and Therapy

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In order to understand why this article is about “paradox”, the concept of vitamin therapy must be appreciated. Hence, the explanation of the title is deferred to the end. Although vitamin deficiency disease is believed by most physicians to be only of historical interest, this is simply not true. When we think of a vitamin deficiency disease, we envision an individual living in a third world country where starvation is common. Such an individual is imagined as being skeletal, whereas an obese person is considered to be well fed with vitamin enriched foods. For this reason, common diseases, some of which are associated with obesity, are rarely, if ever, seen as potentially vitamin deficient.

The Calorie Rich and Nutrient Sparse Modern Diet

Our food is made up of two different components, the caloric and the non-caloric nutrients.  When we ingest high calorie foods (e.g. a doughnut) without even a vestige of non-caloric nutrients, we refer to this as “empty” or “naked” calories.  For our food to be processed into energy that enables the body and brain cells to function, there must be a ratio of the calorie bearing component to that of the non-caloric nutrients.  When we load the calories together with an insufficiency of non-caloric nutrients, we alter this ratio and produce a relative vitamin deficiency.  The trouble with this is that it does not result in the formation of the classic vitamin deficiency diseases as recorded in the medical literature. There is a gradual impairment of function, resulting in many different symptoms. Because modern medicine seeks to make a diagnosis by the use of imaging techniques and laboratory data and because of the physician’s mindset, if the tests used are normal, the possibility of a relative vitamin deficiency is ignored.

The Brain as a Chemical Machine

We have two different nervous systems. One is called “voluntary” that enables us to do things by will-power.  This is initiated and controlled by the upper brain, the part of the brain that thinks. The other system is known as the autonomic nervous system (ANS).  This is initiated and controlled by the lower part of the brain, the limbic system and brainstem.  This system is controlled automatically.  Although it collaborates with the other system, it is not normally under voluntary control. The limbic system and brainstem are highly sensitive to oxygen deficiency, but since the oxygen is useless without the non-caloric nutrients, their absence would produce the same kind of phenomena as oxygen deficiency. Thiamine (vitamin B1) has been found to be of extreme importance as a member of the non-caloric nutrients. The brain, and particularly the limbic system and brainstem, is highly sensitive to its deficiency.

Since the ANS is automatic, we are forced to think of the limbic system and brainstem as a computer.  For example, when it is hot, you start to sweat.  Evaporation of the sweat from the skin produces cooling of the body, representing an adaptive response to environmental hot temperature. When it is cold, you may start to shiver. This produces heat in the muscles and represents an adaptive response to environmental low temperature. If you are confronted by danger, the computer will initiate a fight- or- flight reflex.  This is a potential lifesaving reflex.  It is designed for short term use, consumes a vast amount of energy and prepares you to kill the enemy or flee from the danger.  Any one of these reflexes may be modified by the thinking brain. For example the lower brain, also known as the reptilian system, initiates the urge to copulate.  It is modified by the upper brain to “make love”.  The reptilian system, working by itself, can convert us into savages. There is an obvious problem here because our ancestors were faced with the dangers of short term physical stress associated with survival.  In the modern world the kind of stress that we face is very different for the most part.  We have to contend with traffic, paying bills, business deadlines and pink slips. The energy consumption, however is enormous, continues for a long time and it is hardly surprising that it is associated with fatigue, an early sign of energy depletion. It has been shown in experimental work that thiamine deficiency causes extensive damage to mitochondria, the organelles that are responsible for producing cellular energy.

Autonomic Function

The autonomic nervous system, controlled by the lower brain, uses two different channels of neurological communication with the body. One is known as the sympathetic system and the other is the parasympathetic. There are also a bunch of glands called the endocrine system that deals with the brain-controlled release of hormones.

We can think of the sympathetic branch of the ANS as the action system. It governs the fight-or-flight reflex for personal survival and the relatively primitive copulation mechanisms for the survival of the species. It accelerates the heart to pump more blood through the body.  It opens the bronchial tubes so that the lungs may get more oxygen. It sends more blood to the muscles so that you can run faster and the sensation of fear is a normal part of the reflex. When the danger is over and survival has been accomplished, the sympathetic channel is withdrawn and the parasympathetic goes into action. Now in safety and under its influence, body functions such as sleep and bowel action can take place.  That is why I refer to the parasympathetic as the “rest and be thankful system”.

Dysautonomia, Dysfunctional Oxidation and Disparate Symptoms 

When there is mild to moderate loss of efficiency in oxidation in the limbic system and/or brainstem they become excitable. This is most easily accomplished by ingesting a high calorie diet that is reflected in relative vitamin deficiency.  The sympathetic action system is turned on and this can be thought of as a logical reaction from a design point of view.  For example, if you were sleeping in a room that was gradually filling with carbon dioxide, the gradual loss of efficiency in oxidation would be lifesaving by waking you up and enabling you to exit the room. In the waking state, this normal survival reflex would be abnormal.

High calorie malnutrition, by upsetting the calorie/vitamin ratio, causes the ANS to become dysfunctional. Its normal functions are grossly exaggerated and reflexes go into action without there being any necessity for them. Panic attacks are merely fragmented fight-or-flight reflexes.  A racing heart (tachycardia) may start without obvious cause.  Aches and pains may be initiated for no observable reason. Affected children often complain of aching pain in the legs at night. Unexplained chest and abdominal pain are both common. This is because the sensory system is exaggerated. One can think of it as the body trying to send messages to the brain as a warning system.

Nausea and vomiting are both extremely common and are usually considered to be a gastrointestinal problem rather than something going on in the brain. Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is caused by messages being conveyed through the nervous system of the bowel, increasing peristalsis (the wave-like motion of the intestine) and often leading to breakdown of the bowel itself, resulting in colitis.  Of course, the trouble may be in the organ itself but when all the tests show that “nothing is wrong”, the symptoms are referred to as psychosomatic. The patient is often told that it is “all in your head”.

Emotional instability seems to be more in keeping with psychosomatic disease because emotional reactions are initiated automatically in the limbic system and thiamine deficient people are almost always emotionally unstable. A woman patient had been crying night and day for three weeks for no observable reason. A course of intravenously administered vitamins revealed a normal and highly intelligent person.  Intravenously administered vitamins are often necessary for serious disease because the required concentrations cannot be reached, taking them by mouth only.

The Vitamin Therapy Paradox

The body is basically a chemical machine.  But instead of cogwheels and levers, all the functions are manipulated through enzymes that, in order to function efficiently, require chemicals called “cofactors”. Vitamins are those essential cofactors to the enzymes.  If a person has been mildly to moderately deficient in a given vitamin or vitamins for a long time without the deficiency being recognized, the enzyme that depends on the vitamin for its action appears to become less efficient in that action.  A high concentration of the vitamin is required for a long time in order to induce its functional recovery.

Although the reason is unknown, doctors who use nutritional therapy with vitamins have observed that the symptoms become worse initially.  Because patients expect to improve when a doctor does something to them and because drugs have well-known side effects, it is automatically assumed by the patient that this worsening is a side effect of the vitamins. If the therapy is continued, there is a gradual disappearance of those symptoms and overall improvement in the patient’s well being. Unless the patient is warned of this possibility he or she would be inclined to stop using the treatment, claiming that vitamins have dangerous side effects and never getting the benefit that would accrue from later treatment.  This is the opposite effect that the patient expects. This is the paradox of vitamin therapy. 

If we view dysautonomia as an imbalance in the functions of the ANS and the vitamin therapy as assisting the functional recovery by stimulating energy synthesis, we can view this initial paradoxical as the early return of the stronger arm of the ANS before the weaker arm catches up, thus worsening an existing imbalance. However, this is mere speculation. I did not learn of the “paradox” until I actually started using mega dose vitamins to treat patients.

The Paradox and Thiamine

In this series of posts, we are particularly concerned with energy metabolism and the place that thiamine holds in that vital mechanism.  It is, of course, true that worsening of serious symptoms is a fact that has to be contended with and vitamin therapy should be under the care of a knowledgeable physician. The earlier the symptoms of thiamine deficiency are recognized, the easier it is to abolish them. The longer they are present the more serious will be the problem of paradox and a clinical response will also be much delayed and may be incomplete.

Beriberi and Thiamine Deficiency

I will illustrate from the early history of beriberi when thiamine deficiency was found to be its cause.  Many of the patients had the disease for some time before thiamine was administered, so the danger of paradox was increased. It was found that if the blood sugar was initially normal, the patient recovered quickly. If the blood sugar was high, the recovery was slow.  If the blood sugar was low, the patient seldom recovered.  In the world of today, an abnormal concentration of glucose in the blood would make few doctors, if any, think of thiamine deficiency as a potential cause. It is no accident that diabetes and thiamine metabolism are connected. Education of the doctor and patient are both absolutely essential. I believe that the ghastly effects of Gardasil, and perhaps some other medication reactions covered on Hormones Matter, can only be understood by thinking of the body as a biochemical machine and that the only avenue of escape is through the skilled use of non caloric nutrients.

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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