Thiamin Supplements: Not For Everyone
Sometimes negative reactions are "paradoxical" and self-resolving, but sometimes they are just unneeded and harmful. Here's how to know which one you're dealing with.
If you want the longevity benefits of stable blood glucose, or the calmness that comes with minimizing pre-menstrual symptoms, or if you just want to prevent wear and tear on your tissues as you age, a boost to your detoxification, and robust utilization of other nutrients like vitamin K and folate, then you need to get enough thiamin. Almost certainly thiamin’s role in carbohydrate metabolism makes it critical for maximal athletic performance in most sports.
Thiamin deficiency in its classical form, beriberi, causes latent mitochondrial dysfunction that becomes apparent upon eating carbohydrate or going out into sunlight, with a rapid pulse, low blood pressure, a much easier than normal activation of the fight-or-flight response, low stomach acidity, loss of sensation and sometimes paralysis in the extremities, poor eyesight, irregular eye movements, and dizziness. So supporting your mitochondria, your nervous system, and your eyesight requires getting enough thiamin.
In fact, some people with genetic impairments in thiamin metabolism or thiamin-dependent enzymes may need as much as 500-2000 milligrams a day, which is vastly higher than both the adult RDA of 1.1 milligrams as well as the higher amount I set in my custom nutrient targets.
On the other hand, while thiamine has no reliably reproducible toxicity syndrome, anecdotally I can say after months of experimentation that almost any degree of thiamin supplementation above my custom target adversely shortens my sleep, and that I know a number of people who have had thiamin worsen their peripheral neuropathy, or debilitating mitochondrial dysfunction.
Dr. Derrick Lonsdale writes in the book he authored with Chandler Marrs, Thiamine Deficiency Disease, Dysautonomia, and High-Calorie Malnutrition that every case he saw of a “paradoxical” reaction to thiamin was self-resolving, with benefit arising after the initial hump of difficulty. My experience from a different and broader context suggests that there are many people who get adverse reactions that do not end until thiamin supplementation is stopped rather than these self-resolving paradoxical reactions.
Excessive thiamine supplementation would not be expected to directly interfere with the absorption of other nutrients, but it could puts stress on four metabolic pathways that either creates an imbalance with other nutrients or worsens a genetic impairment, and it probably generates sulfite within the human body. Sulfite is toxic, accelerates glutamate excitation of and damage to nerves, can degranulate mast cells and cause pseudo-allergies, and the process of generating and detoxifying sulfite puts stress on the requirements for coenzyme Q10, glutathione, molybdenum, and copper. It could also worsen mitochondrial dysfunction by backing up the mitochondrial respiratory chain and inhibiting short-chain fatty acid metabolism.
Thus, it is critical to have a strategy to know when to supplement thiamin, when to continue through difficulty, when to stop and give up, and when to put your focus elsewhere. That is exactly what you will learn in this article.