Vitamin B1 - Vitamins

Vitamin B ₁

Vitamin B ₁ (thiamine), is a water-soluble nutrient important for growth, digestion, and normal functioning of the nervous system, muscles, and heart. Vitamin B ₁ keeps mucous membranes healthy and replaces deficiency caused by alcoholism, cirrhosis, overactive thyroid, infection, breastfeeding, absorption diseases, pregnancy, prolonged diarrhea, and burns.

Natural sources of vitamin B ₁ include brewer's yeast, rice, bran, brown rice, wheat germ and whole-grained products, oatmeal, beef kidney and liver, dried beans (garbanzo, navy, and kidney), salmon, soy beans, and sunflower seeds.

People deficient in vitamin B ₁ commonly experience a loss of appetite, weakness and lassitude, nervous irritability, insomnia, weight loss, muscle aches and pains, mental depression, and constipation. Alcoholics are usually deficient in most of the B vitamins, including B ₁ .

Vitamin B ₁ has been used to treat certain types of depression associated with alcoholism. One study conducted in New Zealand concluded that alcoholics, who exhibit many of the symptoms of beriberi (including fatigue, diarrhea, weight loss, and paralysis), also may benefit from vitamin B ₁ supplements containing at least 200 mg of thiamine. The study concluded that thiamine is a therapeutic agent that “is literally lifesaving in a significant proportion of patients,” according to J. Cade's report in the February 1986 Australian-New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry .