Could a thiamine deficiency be what’s causing your anxiety?
The answer is YES.
In today’s article we’re going to take a look at why thiamine a.k.a vitamin B1 is so awesome and how it can help to relieve stress and anxiety.
Let’s do it!
KEY TAKEAWAYS
1. Thiamine supplementation can be REALLY effective for reducing anxiety levels (and improving stress resilience).
2. Always start low and slow, begin with no more than 10-20 mg thiamine HCL per day and increase dose if needed.
3. Make sure to take thiamine with all the other B-vitamins + adequate magnesium. The B-vitamins work together as a group and you can create imbalances by taking high doses of isolated nutrients.
- What Is Thiamine?
- 7 Scientific Studies On Thiamine Fighting Anxiety
- How Thiamine Helps You Produce Energy
- How a Thiamine Deficiency Causes Anxiety And Depression
- When You Don’t Get Enough Vitamin B1 (Beri-Beri)
- What Are The Causes of Thiamine Deficiency?
- Thiamine – An Effective Treatment for Anxiety & Depression?
- How Much Thiamine Should You Take For Anxiety?
What Is Thiamine?
Thiamine, also known as vitamin B1, is this molecule right here:

Thiamine was actually the first vitamin to be discovered way back in the late 19th century… hence the name B1.
“Right so what’s it good for?!”
Glad you asked!
Thiamine is one of the eight essential B vitamins. Your body doesn’t make it which means you have to get it through foods.
Sometimes it’s referred to as the “anti-stress vitamin”.
And it’s for a good reason!
Thiamine has many important functions in the body which help us deal with the stress of everyday life:
• Vitamin B1 plays a critically important role in energy metabolism. Without thiamine you will not be able to produce any energy a.k.a ATP (ATP being the energy currency of the cells), and without energy your body is not going to work. Quite literally!
• You need it for proper nervous system function so that impulses can be transmitted from one neuron to another. Thiamine is also needed for synthesis of brain chemicals such as acetylcholine (acetylcholine being an essential part of the parasympathetic or ‘rest-and-digest‘ nervous system).
• Thiamine acts as a co-factor for the enzyme transketolase in the pentose phosphate pathway which supports biosynthesis of steroids & nucleic acids, glutathione status a.k.a the master anti-oxidant in the body, maintanence of nerve sheaths, and more.
7 Scientific Studies On Thiamine Fighting Anxiety

Here are a few studies I dug up showing how thiamine can give you relief from anxiety:
1. This study done on 9 older patients with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) found that they all had low blood thiamine levels.
Daily injections of 100 mg thiamine improved anxiety and overall well-being, improved appetite and reduced fatigue…
Furthermore, after treatment with thiamine ALL patients could go off their anxiolytics and beta-blockers.
Which is pretty awesome!
2. In this double-blinded placebo controlled study, 120 young females took either placebo (i.e a sugar pill) or 50 mg thiamine per day for 2 months.
After these 2 months the group that got the vitamin B1 treatment reported feeling “clearheaded, composed, energetic and having a generally better mood”, even when vitamin B1 status was already adequate.
3. Several other double-blinded studies show that improving thiamine status is associated with improved mood in humans.
4. 80 Irish women with thiamine insufficiency were assigned either to 10 mg thiamine per day or placebo. Compared to placebo, the women supplementing vitamin B1 saw an increase in appetite and bodyweight, improved sleep, improved well-being and decrease in fatigue.
5. This double-blinded RCT study showed that using thiamine together with a standard depression treatment alleviated depression faster!
6. Giving rats thiamine enhances cellular respiration, decreases oxidative stress and increases testosterone. In other words, vitamin B1 has potent anti-inflammatory effects which helps restore levels of protective steroids in the body.
7. Another study done on mice rats where administration of thiamine showed antidepressant/anti-stress effects!
So…
…how does thiamine actually help reduce anxiety?
The main thing that we’re going to look at is vitamin B1’s critical role in energy production, and how a thiamine deficiency may give rise to unpleasant symptoms like anxiety and panic attacks.
And I promise I won’t make this into a boring biochemistry lesson!
How Thiamine Helps You Produce Energy

Your body needs energy for everything it does.
The foods you eat (proteins, fats and carbohydrates) is where you get this energy from!
Food is converted by your mitochondria into a chemical form of energy that the cells can use – this high-energy molecule is called adenosine triphosphate (ATP).

You can think of energy production in the mitochondria as a complex machine with lots of different cogs (enzymatic reactions), and these enzymatic reactions are dependent upon vitamins and minerals.
Vitamin B1 is one such vitamin!
Vitamin B1 = The Spark Needed For Energy Production
Thiamine is a very important cog in the mitochondrial ATP production factory.
Put simply:
Thiamine turns energy production either ON or OFF.

You can think of thiamine as being the spark needed to ignite the fuel (food) you eat.
When there is no spark to ignite the fuel (food) → no flame/combustion in your engines (mitochondria) → no energy.
This is how a thiamine deficiency can really mess with cellular respiration and ATP production. Doesn’t matter how much fuel you “put into the car”, so to speak, if there’s no thiamine to burn the fuel.
When thiamine is low, everything downstream also stops working and you end up with a reduction in energy production and ↓ATP.

Vitamin B1 – Why You Need it to Burn Glucose (Carbohydrates)!

Remember the pyruvate dehydrogenase (PDH) enzyme we talked about?
Ok… maybe not.
No worries!
All the carbohydrates you eat (glucose and fructose in the form of fruits, rice, bread, honey, etc, etc) has to be shuttled through this pyruvate dehydrogenase enzyme.
When the PDH enzyme isn’t working efficiently due to a lack of vitamin B1 this can “bottleneck” carbohydrate metabolism, where glucose takes another metabolic path and ends up as lactate/lactic acid instead.
This is a bad thing for a number of reasons which we won’t get into now.
But I’ll just mention that for anxious individuals this is particularly bad seeing as patients with panic attacks are more sensitive to lactate and it can easily trigger a panic attack.
How a Thiamine Deficiency Causes Anxiety And Depression

As you now know, thiamine is essential for energy metabolism!
Not having enough of this nutrient leads to a thiamine deficient state with low levels of cellular energy (ATP) → a biological energy deficit which can cause a wide variety of health issues.
Yup, that includes anxiety and depression too!
You see:
What I’ve come to learn is that, at its core, anxiety is a (mal)adaptive disease caused by chronic stress.
*Stress = any event that demands a physical or mental response from the body.
When your body is exposed to any stressor (e.g emotional stress and trauma, undereating, overexercising, infections, disease, and so on), energetic resources are used up to deal that stress, for example by pumping out cortisol and adrenaline from the adrenal glands.
Like you would do here:

Chronic stress is what gets us into problem.
When stress (energy demand) is much greater than resources to deal with stress (available energy) for extended periods of time, you’ll eventually run into a chronic energy deficit.

Inescapable, chronic stress depletes your body of your ‘adaptive energy’ or stress buffer…
…and your body is forced to reduce ATP production to conserve energetic resources which makes you more susceptible to unpleasant symptoms like anxiety and depression.
This would be the exhaustion stage of Hans Selye’s general adaptation syndrome where you literally have ZERO resources left to cope with stress.

Thiamine to the rescue!
Thiamine is really one of the most basic anti-stress factors – it allows you to generate the energy needed to meet the demands of everyday stressors and challenges.
So it’s not all that surprising that a thiamine deficiency makes you more vulnerable to all sorts of diseases.
When You Don’t Get Enough Vitamin B1 (Beri-Beri)

Prolonged, severe thiamine deficiency can lead to a condition called beriberi.
Beriberi translates to: “I can’t, I can’t.“
Which is a very fitting name indeed seeing as you literally can’t do anything in a thiamine (energy) deficient state.
It’s like trying to run a car without gasoline in the tank!
A thiamine deficiency affects every single cell, organ and tissue in the body and hence the clinical signs and symptoms vary quite a bit.
Depending on which system in the body is affected, beriberi is typically categorized into:
- Dry beriberi – energetic deficiency in brain and nervous system with neurological symptoms such as neuropathy, impaired reflexes, tingling/numb sensations, difficult walking, pain, brain fog/confusion, loss of muscle function (extreme cases of dry beriberi is called Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome).
- Wet beriberi – energetic deficiency in cardiovascular system with symptoms such as heart failure with ensuing edema/fluid retention.
- Gastrointestinal beriberi – affecting digestive tract with gastroparesis, nausesa, vomiting and abdominal pain.
Beriberi can also be systemic where you have a mix of all of the aforementioned symptoms.
This disease is typically seen with chronic alcoholism, fasting/starvation and severe malnutrition, malabsorption issues, etc. Here are some of the most common causes of thiamine deficiency:
Developing full-blown beriberi is not so common in Western countries where food supply is ample…
…although it does happen occassionally.
For example:
Here’s one case where just 1 night of heavy drinking was enough to cause a severe case of gastrointestinal beriberi/wernicke’s encephalopathy which only resolved upon 1,000 mg thiamine given intravenously.
A State of Thiamine Insufficiency A.k.a “Not Quite Enough”?
A more common condition is thiamine insufficiency.
Not quite fullblown beriberi…
…but somewhere on the spectrum of “sub-optimal thiamine status”.
Meaning:
You may suffer from the symptoms of early thiamine deficiency even if you’re not clinically diagnosed with beriberi. Blood tests for vitamin B1 (plasma/RBC transketolase) do not necessarily need to be low either.
Dr. Derrick Lonsdale is a paediatrician that has successfully treated many so-called “medical mysteries” with high dose thiamine.
He has written many insightful articles on how thiamine insufficiency from “high-calorie malnutrition” can cause all sorts of vague/strange symptoms not typically recognized as a result of thiamine deficiency.
Here are just a few of them:
- Mood swings
- Frequent infections
- Weight loss/poor appetite
- Chronic fatigue
- Brain fog
- Neurological issues similar to dry beriberi
- Digestive issues e.g constipation, low stomach acid and SIBO
- Various forms of autonomic dysfunction, POTS
- Hormonal issues, thyroid problems
- Low metabolism, cold hands and feet
In my estimation, anxiety is one such manifestation of “not enough thiamine” which we’ll explore more in just a second.
What Are The Causes of Thiamine Deficiency?

When discussing the causes of thiamine deficiency, there are 2 main culprits:
- Poor diet and malnourishment – which cuts off the thiamine supply.
- Stress and inflammation – which means increased demands for thiamine.
Let’s look at each of these:
1. How a Poor Diet (Malnourishment) Can Lead to Beri-Beri

Who is this guy?
It’s Admiral Takaki!
Around 1880 is when the Japanese naval physician Admiral Takaki proved that thiamine deficiency was a nutritional disease (and not an infectious disease), and that you could treat this condition with a diet rich in thiamine.
At the time beriberi was a serious problem for the Japanese fleet with lots of the seamen getting seriously ill or dying.
Takai observed that the ordinary crewmen eating mainly white rice got ill, but not the naval officers eating a more nutritionally sound diet of meat and vegetables.
And so he conducted an experiment where he switched the low thiamine all-rice diet to a more varied high thiamine diet including wheat, vegetables, milk and meat.
As a result of this intervention the disease was completely eliminated from the fleet!
High Calorie Malnutrition → Thiamine Deficiency

High calorie malnutrition = eating tons of calories from foods that are lacking in essential nutrients.
An example is the Standard American Diet (SAD) with way too much processed foods, refined sugar and fats and seed oils – and not nearly enough nutritious whole foods.
This way of eating WILL cause thiamine starvation.
You see:
1. As I mentioned before, burning carbohydrates requires vitamin B1.
…meanwhile:
2. Processed junk foods have been stripped of most nutrients, including vitamin B1.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see the problem here!
This is how a high calorie/thiamine ratio, over a long enough period, will inevitably lead to depletion of thiamine stores in the body.
And as mentioned, if your diet contains lots of booze this will further speed up the rate of depletion.
As a side note, this is one of the reasons why I think some people report doing much better on a keto/low-carb diet. It’s not that all carbohydrates are bad – it’s that reducing “empty carbohydrate calories” can spare thiamine needs and make you feel better.
2. How Stress & Inflammation Can Deplete Vitamin B1 Stores

Being mindful about not eating too much processed junk food, and making an effort to eat a more healthy and nutrient-dense diet, are certainly good ideas!
However it does not guarantee protection from gradual thiamine insufficiency sneaking up on you.
Here’s why:
Stress and inflammation deplete thiamine stores and/or inactivates thiamine-dependent enzymes.
So while getting the daily 1 mg RDA from food sources may be adequate to stave off acute beriberi…
Here are just few things in our environment that can empty your thiamine stores:
- Overexercising
- Medications causing damage to mitochondria and infections
- Environmental toxins e.g tetrafluoroethylene (a.k.a the stuff coating your cookware)
- Inflammatory factors produced by our own immune cells
- Heavy metals e.g arsenic
- Mycotoxins
- Products of lipid peroxidation (from polyunsaturated fats).
Add on top of that a stressful life without adequate time for rest and relaxation, a junk food diet, drinking buckets of coffee or tea with polyphenols that block thiamine absorption, alcohol, lactation/pregnancy or physical activity which increase requirements…
…well you’re on your way beriberi land (where you don’t want to be, trust me!)
Fortunately, by administring thiamine you can reverse the symptoms of early beriberi!
Thiamine – An Effective Treatment for Anxiety & Depression?
Let’s briefly recap:
- Stress, inflammation and poor nutrition ↓lowers thiamine levels in the body.
- Thiamine deficiency → low ATP levels → reduced stress resilience and symptoms such as anxiety, panic, worrying, agitation, irritability, restlessness, feeling on edge all the time, physical and mental exhaustion, OCD, depression, ruminating thoughts, dread and despair... I think you get the point.
- This state in itself is obviously very stressful, causing inflammation and oxidative stress, and thus will further accelerate vitamin B1 depletion – a truly vicious circle!
At this point you’re probably wondering…
…can supplementing extra thiamine help improve your anxiety?
Absolutely, yes it can.
In my estimation many cases of chronic anxiety, panic attacks, depression and similar issues can be traced back to a “simple” deficiency of thiamine and/or magnesium (or other factors needed for energy production like thyroid hormones).
Again:
Vitamin B1 works to restore energy production in cells – switching the body from a catabolic to an anabolic state, increasing stress resilience and ability to “deal with shit”.
During his practicing years Dr. Lonsdale treated many, many patients with vitamin B1.
Here’s his observation with giving thiamine to anxious and depressed patients:
This has been my experience as well.
Since supplementing with thiamine (and magnesium) I notice I am much more calmer throughout the day, I rarely get anxious ever and OCD tendencies has also reduced significantly!
More Awesome Vitamin B1 Things
As I mentioned before, thiamine helps to lower lactate levels which is a good thing seeing as lactate can trigger panic attacks in susceptible individuals!
Thiamine, being a potent stimulator of oxidative metabolism, also results in higher CO2 levels which has a nice calming effect and oxygenate the brain through the “Bohr effect”.
How Much Thiamine Should You Take For Anxiety?
Using high doses of thiamine (100-1000x daily recommended intake) restores energy production by stimulating the activity of the thiamine-dependent enzymes.
By taking these large doses of thiamine you can reverse the damage done by a hostile environment (toxins, stress etc) and reactivate these “broken enzymes” again.
Used this way, thiamine works more as a medicine in the body and has some truly awesome healing properties.
Here’s how I would go about it:
1. Start With 10-20 mg Thiamine HCL Per Day
Buy some plain 100% thiamine hydrochloride (HCL).
Always start with a SMALL amount, maybe 10-20 mg, and see how you feel.
Here is a clean, no fillers, no additives, thiamine HCL product (Amazon).
Though any 100% thiamine HCL supplement will work just as well!
In a severe state of thiamine deficiency you can benefit from much larger doses. An Italian doctor called Antonio Costantini treated neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s with high-dose thiamine therapy, using up to 1800 mg thiamine per day.
There is really no risk for toxicity since vitamin B1 is water-soluble and you will pee out any excess.
*Another option is Thiamine Tetrahydrofurfuryl disulfide which is a more bioavailable form of thiamine. I recommend Thiamax (Amazon.)

2. Get a Good Quality B-Complex
Vitamin B1 works in synergy together with all of the other essential B vitamins.
For that reason, if you plan on taking high doses of thiamine for longer periods of time, I’d recommend pairing it together with a high quality B-complex so that you are not missing out on any of the other cofactors required for ATP production.
Ideally you would want a clean B-complex without unnecessary fillers – here’s a good quality, broad spectrum B-complex.
(If you want it is perfectly fine to just take the B-complex on its own – unless you need super high doses of thiamine for some reason.)
*Make sure to avoid vitamin B6 in the form of pyridoxine HCL, instead opt for the active form pyridoxal 5′-phosphate (P5P). Same goes for folate; avoid folic acid and opt for 5-MTHF or folinic acid. See the product linked above for a good, balanced B-complex.
3. Get Your Magnesium!
Make sure to eat lots of magnesium-rich foods and/or take a magnesium supplement!
A good starting point would be about 200-400 mg extra magnesium daily, either from magnesium bicarbonate, -taurate or -oxide.
Here is a good magnesium taurate supplement (Amazon).
Why is magnesium so important?
Magnesium is required for thiamine to become activated in the body; it acts as a cofactor both for converting thiamine to its active form thiamine pyrophosphate, as well as in the enzyme pyruvate dehydrogenase.
Thus a magnesium deficiency can mimic a thiamine deficiency, which is why it’s super important to load up on magnesium.
…And I Think That Is Enough For Today
I really think vitamin B1 can be a game changer for some individuals struggling with anxiety.
Again it’s not a magic pill…
…and anxiety can be caused by many other factors as explained in this article.
But if you haven’t tried thiamine yet I would definitely recommend giving it a go. I think the combo of thiamine with carbohydrate and salt can be very effective for lowering stress hormones and reducing anxiety!
Let me know what your experience has been with using thiamine below in the comments 🙂
And definitely share this article with people who might need it!
How do you take Thiamax in small doses?
Hi Jennifer!
What I usually do is empty one capsule (100 mg) onto a plate, split it into smaller piles (depending on how much I want to take) and mix with water/juice/food. It’s a bit messy but it works alright lol. Hope that was helpful!
Thank you! Do you know how I can get in touch with a doctor that could meet with my 19 year old daughter online to assess what supplements she needs to take in order to start Thiamax?
The only doctor I know that has experience with using allithiamine/TTFD clinically to treat patients is Dr Lonsdale… unfortunately he’s retired. I know he sometimes responds to comments over at hormonesmatter.com so perhaps you could contact him there and see what he recommends. Otherwise I would try to get in touch with Elliot at eonutrition.co.uk – he is a nutritional therapist that has lots of experience with thiamine supplementation (he’s the one who created Thiamax!).
In my experience regular thiamine HCL can also be very effective and has fewer potential side effects than the allithiamine form.
Hi i been taking 20 mg b1 hcl works better than any ssri i have been taken anxiety fear 90% gone thanks
Thanks for sharing Mohammed – awesome to hear that plain ol’ thiamine worked even BETTER than SSRIs. 🙂
This was an excellent article. I’ve been taking thiamine for a couple weeks now. At first it went well, and one of my long-standing symptoms went away. But then I started having some side-effects (increased anxiety, heart palpitations). I’ve adjusted the dose several times, but now can only tolerate like 10 or 20 mg every other day. I’m worried my stomach symptoms are going to come back. I’ve been taking magnesium and potassium and the other b-vitamins, but maybe I need to up the dose of those things. I’m also trying nutritional yeast, to see if I can keep my symptoms at bay with diet alone.
Thanks Jason, I’m glad you found it helpful!
So without more detailed information on your specific symptoms, diet, supplements, etc, it’s difficult for me to say why thiamine is now all of a sudden causing these side effects. Having that said, there are a couple of things that may be worth investigating:
a) Check your supplements for any nasty excipients/fillers/binders (such as silicon dioxide) that could be irritating your gut. Ideally you’d make sure any supplement you take has only the active ingredients and ZERO fillers.
b) Even supplements with no fillers and 100% clean ingredient lists can cause negative reactions due to impurities and/or allergic reactions. Sometimes it’s a good idea to stop ALL supplements and see how you feel, then carefully adding back 1 thing at a time and being watchful for any symptoms.
c) It’s possible you have repleted your body with thiamine and there’s no need for the high doses anymore. Nutritional yeast could be an option for covering your B1 needs through diet!
d) You mentioned your stomach symptoms improved with thiamine supplementation, which is great! However there could also be other issues (besides thiamine deficiency) that needs fixing. I’ve written an article on gut health if you want to check it out here: http://shutupmind.com/heal-your-gut-and-heal-your-anxiety/
Hey, that might be the nutritional yeast though. MSG is generated by yeast now by all but one manufacturer and nutritional yeast almost always have either actual MSG added or free glutamate acids which works much the same way but are a bit less staple.
Also magnesium oxide is basically useless, especially for people with thiamine deficiency since the low stomach acid is an added abstacle for breaking the oxide bond. Also Oxides are not good for us.
Hey Simon, thanks for the heads-up! That would help explain why some people have bad reactions to nutritional yeast. Could also be an allergic reaction to the yeast itself, similar to how manufactured citric acid – a product of Aspergillus niger (black mold) fermentation – contains impurities that can cause some serious inflammatory/allergic reactions: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6097542/. Always best to get your nutrients from real food – if you can!
Hi
I was very excited to know about that finally I could rest anxiety and panic. But then the comment by jason has put all the excitement in jeopardy. Wonder would it be worthwhile to start a supplement or would it exacerbate the anxiety/panic/depression nexus??
Hey Wasey!
I’m not a doctor so this is not medical advice – but if an individual had all the symptoms you described and suspected a long-standing thiamine deficiency – I would recommend them to start with small amounts of thiamine HCL (10-30 mg) taken with food and see how they feel. If they feel better then that’s a clue it’s working for them. Besides fixing micronutrient deficiencies e.g vitamin B1, I’d also focus on eating a good diet (avoiding allergenic foods/gut irritation, getting adequate nutrition from digestible foods), getting 8 hours of good sleep every night, getting sunlight, and finding ways to de-stress on a daily basis, for example exercise or meditation.
I hope that was helpful!
Hi Jason,
I’m super excited to find your article and just ordered Thiamax. Can you suggest a general titration schedule? If I start at 10-20mg per day, at what pace and by what amount should I increase in order to get to the recommended dose of 100mg per day?
Thanks!!
Hi Elaine,
The comment section is a little confusing but it’s me (Alex) who wrote the article 😛 But to answer your question, I think the best approach is to go low and slow, increasing the dose over weeks and carefully monitoring for any negative reactions (and in that case backing off again). You could try 10-20 mg for 1-2 weeks, 50 mg for another 1-2 weeks, and then 100 mg. Also make sure to get in all the necessary co-factors: a methylated B-complex, magnesium, and adequate potassium from food.
I know some individuals don’t really tolerate high doses of allithiamine that well and I wouldn’t recommend doing anything that makes you feel worse. So you’ll kind of have to go by how you feel. Another option is using plain Thiamine HCL (in doses of around 300 mg) which in my experience can also work quite well!
Hope that was helpful 🙂
I was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder 10 years ago. I just took a detailed blood work test. I am severely low in b1 & magnesium. Makes SO MUCH SENSE! I am taking b vitamins now & a lot more magnesium. :)))) I feel so much better already.
Hey Andrea, I’m glad to hear you are feeling a lot better. 🙂
And yup it does make a lot of sense! Thiamine and magnesium are powerful anti-stress nutrients and supplementing with these can make a BIG difference if you have been deficient. I’d also recommend eating a good, nutrient-dense diet to get all the other essential nutrients that the body needs.
Nice one andrea same thi g happen to me i was on ssri snri they did nowt for anxiety now am taking b1 and magnesium i feel better anxiety gone 90%
The link for the b complex is broken but I went on that website and I found the b complex and in the description box it says the following. It says it has pretty much everything that you mentioned and I was wondering if this one pill would suffice and then add a magnesium pill. Would this work you think?
ThiActive B complex contains a full spectrum of B vitamins in their active forms, including methylated folate and vitamin B12.
Also included are two highly bioavailable vitamin B1 derivatives, thiamine tetrahydrofurfuryl disulfide (TTFD) and benfotiamine.
Hi Crystal – thanks for letting me know about the broken link, I’ll get that fixed.
And to answer your question, yes, I think that the ThiActive B complex would work quite well! It’s got all the B vitamins in the right forms AND in the right ratios. I have used some of Objective Nutrients products and they offer really high quality supplements. Let me know if you have any other question 🙂
Really interesting read. My daughter has Crohn’s disease and has had fatigue for the last 18 months. She has had a test for B1 levels, but no results back as yet. I have recently heard about a high thiamine treatment for people with ME/CFS and know of at least 6 other children with Crohns/Colitis and fatigue that have been prescribed a high thiamine treatment which has shown good signs of improvement. It would make a lot of sense as my daughter also suffers from anxiety, panic attacks, OCD, difficulty sleeping, fatigue. I’ve contacted her Gastro Consultant about it and I’m hoping to hear back soon. If not, this is something I will try with her anyway.
Hi Debbie, thanks for your comment!
Yes, there definitely seems to be a link between thiamine deficiency, IBD and fatigue. Thiamine is rapidly depleted during chronic inflammatory conditions such as Crohn’s disease, and in this paper (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23379830/) high dose thiamine treatment, 600 – 1500 mg per day, completely alleviated fatigue in 12 patients with Ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease. Here is another similar paper (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33210299/) where high-dose oral thiamine again showed a beneficial effect on chronic fatigue in IBD. Good idea to discuss this with her doctor, otherwise thiamine is a pretty benign substance with really no side effects. For me personally, thiamine has done wonders for my CFS symptoms. I hope your daughter gets well soon!
Cheers, Alex
Thank you so much for replying and sorry I’ve only just seen this. Unfortunately we saw my daughter’s consultant yesterday and they didn’t seem interested in prescribing B1 although they said for me to source myself which I’ll be doing. She’s due to have an iron infusion and is also on B12 and high dose vit d as she is currently in a crohn’s flare and has dipped in these vitamins more so. Her B1 was tested and she is slightly below range.
Hi, Alex!
Thanks so much for your engaging, and comprehensive article on Thiamin(e?).
I just tried my first dose of Thiamax yesterday, and later on I noticed an immense sense of calm…a totally new feeling for me…but oh, so wonderful!
I don’t know if my old brain injury is causing some of my issues, but at least I am beginning to feel better, now.
My question is a strange one…about doesage. Have you ever heard of anyone who has to take miniscule doses of any supplement or medication (even food!), or they have big negative reactions to it?
My case in point…with the Thiamax, I opened the capsule, and literally just touched one end of the capsule to my tongue…so it was a miniscule amount…but I still experienced major benefits.
I also find that even with these extremely small doses, the accumulation of the product, becomes too much, after several days.
Pretty crazy, huh? Any thoughts, please?
As background, I believe I might have gastroparesis and/or SIBO….plus brain injury symptoms.
Thanks so much for listening, Alex.
Losha.