Thiamine...anyone been told to supplement?

[KookyCat]

I have a well established and medical community flumoxing problem with the B vitamins. This has been going on since I was in my early teens, my biggest issue is B12 but I also have thiamine (B1) issues that raise their head every now and then. Anyway I had my regular vitamin deficiency test and B1 popped up again. On mentioning this to my uncle who is T1 and lives in the US, he told me he'd been advised to supplement all B vitamins particularly B1 because we diabolical lot are often deficient, and it's been implicated heavily in diabetes related cardiovascular disease, vascular disorders including retinopathy and cataract, neuropathy and kidney disorders. I did a bit of googling and sure enough there are quite a lot of scholarly articles on that very subject. I'm going to harass consultant with this in a few weeks because given I have an issue in that area I'd like to know what the advice is, but just wondered if anyone has been advised to increase dietary intake of thiamine?

At diagnosis I was dangerously low in thiamine and had to take thiamine on prescription for quite a while but beyond that nobody mentioned it's connection to diabetic complications. Slightly freaked out by this potential connection given my ability to shed B vitamins!

 

[mikeyB]

It's worth getting thiamine (vitamin B1) checked because deficiency does seem to be commoner in folk with diabetes. That said, you'd soon know if you were very deficient, because you would develop the neurological disease Beri Beri, which is a disease of starvation, producing a staggering, wobbly gait. Milder deficiency can cause weight loss, irritability and confusion. If you don't have any of these symptoms, you probably aren't badly deficient, but nobody is quite sure at what level of deficiency the cardiovascular effects occur.

It's quite difficult to get deficient if you have a normal healthy diet. Seeds are very rich in thiamine, so whole meal bread, green veg, particularly brassicas, oranges and potatoes. Pork is rich in thiamine, as is Liver. Marmite has tons.

As a footnote, my thiamine levels were checked as part of the screening for my motor neuropathy, so that gives you an idea of the sort of symptoms you get in severe deficiency.

 

[mikeyB]

I should add that KookyCat is quite right to characterise levels as "dangerously low" because severe thiamine deficiency can kill you