thiamine deficiency Archives - Page 9 of 14

Talking About Thiamine

Published on April 4, 2022

17242 views

Thiamine Deficiency Disease - Episode_163

Do you suffer from a chronic, treatment-refractory illness that no physician or medical treatment seems to be able to fix? Are you constantly fatigued, have weak or painful muscles, or have coordination difficulties? Do you have brain fog, memory, or language processing issues? How about GI symptoms like IBS, gastroparesis, SIBO, or other dysmotility or dysbiotic syndromes? If any of these things ring true, you might have a problem with thiamine.

Thiamine (vitamin B1) is critical for the metabolism of food into cellular energy or ATP. Without sufficient thiamine, cellular energy wanes, and with it, the capacity to maintain the energy to function declines. Chronic, unrelenting fatigue is a common characteristic of insufficient thiamine. At its root, fatigue is the physical manifestation of poor energy metabolism.

Why is this nutrient such a problem? Two reasons. First, it is the gatekeeper to energy metabolism and so if it is low, everything downstream gums up and does not work well. Second, modern diets, medicines, and other chemical exposures contain numerous anti-thiamine factors that derail thiamine absorption and metabolism. This pushes many people into states of chronic deficiency, one that is simple to correct if identified. Unfortunately, however, patients can go years before the deficiency is recognized.

Last week, I had the great pleasure of speaking with Scott Scott Forsgren, FDN-P, the BetterHealthGuy, about the myriad of ways thiamine deficiency expresses itself in modern illness. If you or someone you know might be deficient in thiamine, have a listen.

Thiamine Deficiency Disease – Video Link

For Audio Only

To find other listening platforms, view show notes, and review the transcript, visit https://betterhealthguy.com/episode163

And if you would like a more in-depth look at this issue: Thiamine Deficiency Disease, Dysautonomia, and High Calorie Malnutrition.

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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, and like it, please help support it. Contribute now.

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Why Do We Use Nasal Oxygen?

by Derrick Lonsdale MD, FACN, CNS

Published on March 10, 2022

11881 views

I live in a retirement home and I see many residents who are receiving nasal oxygen, so I am going to try here to address the reason. They may have been diagnosed with either heart disease or lung disease and they have probably been observed clinically to be “short of breath”. Of course, I do not know the specific reason for a given individual receiving this treatment, but does the average patient understand why he or she has to tolerate this inconvenience? I strongly suspect that they have merely been told that they need oxygen administration without explaining the underlying reason. Generally speaking, most people take for granted that they are alive and have little interest in why or how, unless their health becomes threatened. Obviously, when nasty things start to occur, they ask a physician why it is happening to them and the physician tries to diagnose the affliction. It usually winds up by the patient being told that it is disease A or B and a superficial description of the disease is provided. Each disease is regarded as having a specific treatment and a specific cure that is usually being sought by a drug company. The most up-to-date drug is offered. Unfortunately, with the exception of bacterial infection, most drugs only treat the symptoms and do not address the underlying cause. Modern research focuses almost exclusively on genetics and for the most part little consideration is given to prevention other than making a diagnosis of early disease. So why are these people receiving nasal oxygen?

Why Do We Need Oxygen?

Of course, we all understand that our environment must supply us with oxygen, water and food, without any of which we die. Although I have written about oxygen utilization in many posts on this website, it bears repetition because of what I want to say about nasal oxygen administration as described above. First of all, it must be stated that the main three gases in air are nitrogen, oxygen and inert gases. Seventy-eight percent of air is made up of nitrogen, 21% is oxygen, just under 1% is argon and the remaining part is made up of other gases such as carbon dioxide and water vapor. In other words, our oxygen intake is dosed. Too much oxygen is as lethal as none at all, illustrating the wisdom that was propounded in ancient China called Yin and Yang, not too much and not too little. The thing that always amazes me is the concise nature of the natural world and how we should fit into it. The more I get to know about the human body the more I realize how little we know. However, we do know what we do with oxygen. It is called oxidation.

Understanding Oxidation

It is surprising to me that many people appear not to understand that when a fuel burns, it is because the fuel is combining with oxygen. The result is the production of energy in the form of heat, the simple physics that we learned in school. The word oxidation is defined as “cause to combine with oxygen”. But consider that a piece of newspaper will not burst into flame by itself. It has to be ignited. If we use a match, the heat generated from striking it on a rough surface is enough to make it burst into flame and that energy in the form of the flame is transferred to the newspaper. What we are looking at is simply the transfer of energy from one action to another. Even striking the match requires the energy of the individual who performs it. But there is another factor that comes into play here. The newspaper will produce what we call ash, representing the fact that the newspaper has not been completely consumed (oxidized). I am providing these simple principles to explain now that this is exactly what happens in the body. The principles are identical: the mechanisms are different.

Cellular Oxidation

Starting with first principles, as we breathe, our lungs are taking in air and extracting oxygen from it. The oxygen is transferred into the bloodstream and picked up by combining with hemoglobin that coats red cells. This represents a transport system and the oxygen has to be delivered to each of the 70 to 100 trillion cells. This in itself is an amazing representation of the blood circulation. The deoxygenated blood is transferred to the venous circulation and transported back to be re-oxygenated. It is now that the process of oxidation takes place in the cells that have received the oxygen. To put it as simply as possible, glucose, the primary fuel, combines with oxygen to yield energy that drives the function of the cell in which the oxidation takes place. Just like the analogy of the newspaper, the combination of glucose with oxygen has to be “ignited”. Thiamine and other vitamins and minerals are the equivalent of a match. Carbon dioxide and water are the equivalent of ash from the newspaper. They have to be got rid of and so they are expired in the breath. Gasoline in a car engine has to be ignited so the explosion in a cylinder might be referred to as oxidation. The smoke in the exhaust pipe is the “ash”.

Nasal Oxygen and Hypoxia

It is my experience is that the use of nasal oxygen, although completely correct in itself, seems to be associated with ignorance of the fact that the sufferer is probably lacking the vitamins and minerals that enable the oxygen to be utilized in the body. Indeed, the lack of vitamins and minerals may be the main issue in the underlying cause of the disease, a fact that is flatly denied by the vast majority of physicians. The word for lack of oxygen in medical literature is hypoxia. The effects of thiamine deficiency, because it causes exactly the same symptoms, is referred to as pseudo-hypoxia (false lack of oxygen). In reality, the symptoms of the patient are caused by lack of oxidation, resulting in lack of cellular energy and consequently, their loss of function. Using the above analogy, it would be like holding a piece of newspaper and expecting it to burst into flame spontaneously. The most recent medical literature is full of manuscripts reporting the relationship of thiamine deficiency with chronic disease, even cancer, and various forms of traumatic surgery. It is not sufficiently recognized that the widespread ingestion of empty carbohydrate calories easily induces inefficient oxidation. This is but another reason why Dr. Marrs and I have written our book “Thiamine Deficiency Disease, Dysautonomia and High Calorie Malnutrition“, available at Amazon books. ‘

Conclusion

Why do so many individuals require nasal oxygen? With the present thought process, the patient is considered to have a condition that would benefit from its administration, perhaps heart or lung disease, operating on the present disease model. Physicians are not really thinking in terms of oxidative metabolism as the underlying mechanism. The point that we are trying to make here is that no amount of extraneously supplied oxygen will be effective unless the vitamins and minerals are present in sufficient quantity for the oxygen to be used in the creation of energy. Oxidation requires the presence of glucose, oxygen and the requisite vitamins and minerals and deficiency of any one of the three will be responsible for the symptoms.

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This article was published originally on April 5, 2018.

The Appalling State of American Health

by Derrick Lonsdale MD, FACN, CNS

Published on March 1, 2022

7384 views

Mental Illness As Brain Energy Deficiency

The February 3 issue of Time magazine had an entry entitled “When Every Day is a Mental Health Day”. The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association reportedly found that in people between the ages of 24 and 39 in 2020, depression is the fastest-growing health condition. Fainting attacks, known as syncope, reportedly occur in 15-39% of the general population when they suddenly stand up from a chair.

It was also reported from Kaiser Permanente that “depression is a leading cause of illness among young people and anxiety is on the rise. Suicide ranks third as a cause of death for 15 to 19 year olds”. It is interesting that a picture of a young woman is shown whose anxiety level is described as medium-high. Her favorite pick-me-ups are described as “hugs, candy, conversation”. This is the cryptic message that invokes the methods which she uses to calm herself in the face of stress. Yes indeed, it is true that candy is often used as a kind of solace for the misfortune of stress.

I will show that far from helping an individual to adapt to stress, candy is often the underlying cause of the depression and anxiety that represents maladaptation to the stresses of daily life.

Stress: Anything That Demands a Physical or Mental Response

I turn to the work of Hans Selye who proposed that human diseases were the “diseases of adaptation”. Hans Selye was a Hungarian medical student. He was in a class where the professor was bringing patients into the classroom to describe the disease that was diagnosed in each of these individuals. Selye was not listening to the professor. He was engaged in looking at the facial expressions of each of the patients as they were brought in. He came to the conclusion that the facial expression was similar from patient to patient, irrespective of the disease that was being described, that they were all suffering from the stress of the disease, irrespective of its diagnostic category. He immigrated to Canada and set up an institution in Montréal to study the effects of stress. Of course, he was unable to study this in humans so he inflicted physical trauma to rats by the thousand and did laboratory studies to show the effects. He found that the laboratory showed changes in the blood that were similar to those found in human beings afflicted with chronic illness. He formulated his findings under the heading of “the General Adaptation Syndrome” and labeled human disease as “the diseases of adaptation”. The remarkable conclusion was that the resistance to whatever was responsible for causing the disease (stress) required huge amounts of energy in the brain for the process of adaptation. I am suggesting that the vulnerability of the American population is because so many people are unable to adapt to the everyday incidents encountered in just living.

This of course makes a world of sense because infections, trauma and prolonged mental pressures such as ugly divorce or business assignments (stress) are known to initiate disease and sometimes even death. At the time of Selye little was known about the way that the body manufactures the energy derived from food so his conclusion was the mark of genius. He actually did recognize his own genius and firmly believed that he would be the central figure in 21^st century medicine. I believe that he could have been right but his work has been largely ignored for at least two reasons. The cruelty to animals got him into trouble with the antivivisection league and the pharmaceutical industry captured the field.

Energy and Illness

We now know a great deal about the way this energy is produced and consumed in the body to produce function. The conclusions of Selye now make perfect sense in analyzing the cause of human disease. The only change that I would make would be to call human diseases “the diseases of maladaptation” because Selye pointed out that succumbing to stress was nothing more than the failure of energy production in adapting to whatever form of stress was being imposed. In order to understand this, you have to remember that infection, trauma, and problems involving mental work all come under the dominant heading of stress and that they all demand consumption of mental energy in the solution by adaptation.

Thus, we can begin to see that disease, irrespective of diagnosis, is nothing more than a combination of genetic risk coupled with a failure to meet the energy demands required. The initiation can be represented by the integrative action of one or more of three interlocking circles labelled Genetics/ Sress/Nutrition. There is now evidence that most genetically determined disease, including cancer, does not usually produce disease on its own. For example, diabetes is genetically determined but does not develop until middle age and often following a “stress event” such as an infection, trauma or a prolonged and nasty divorce. We have to recognize that the body’s ability to manufacture sufficient energy to meet whatever stress is imposed comes from the quality of the food. A relatively new science is called epigenetics and is the study of how our genes can be affected by nutrition and lifestyle.

I know that I am repeating myself (for emphasis) when I write that the ability to adapt to any form of physical or mental stress depends on brain/body energy and that if bad news, injury, infection or a nasty divorce, has to be faced in the modern world, Selye would point to the need for brain energy in meeting and adapting to that stress. Of course, if we are healthy, the adaptation is automatic and we don’t even think about it. In short, we adapt. That has given rise to the idea of “good, and bad, stress”. However, if a person becomes sick at such a time we are most unlikely to think of it as mild to moderate brain energy deficiency. Without this, the brain “complains by initiating symptoms”. In other words, individuals developing mental disease have biochemical deviations in their ability to adapt. Depression and anxiety are merely examples of the way in which the brain shows energy failure, the result of simply being alive. Note that depression and anxiety are perfectly normal as we adapt to the appropriate stimulus. They are abnormal when they exist chronically for no apparent reason or stimulus. The underlying mechanism has been exaggerated and is a reflection of abnormal brain function.

The January 2020 issue of National Geographic magazine states that “stress plays a major role in many illnesses that kill us. It also drives unhealthy eating, poor sleep, alcohol and drug misuse, and other bad habits. Modern medicine really sucks (their word) at preventing chronic disease”. In the same issue, “food allergies have become so widespread that many schools restrict what kind of lunch kids can bring from home for fear of setting off a classmate’s allergic reaction. Oddly enough, allergy is a brain sensitivity, resulting in abnormal organ action, so it is in reality brain related. For example, a woman who was known to be allergic to rose pollen enters a room where there is a bowl of roses. She succumbs to an attack of asthma that requires hospitalization, only to find later that the roses were artificial. The point is that the asthma could be initiated by more than one sensory input.

In the United States 5.6 million children suffer from food allergies. This translates to two or three in every classroom”. I will illustrate the unifying concept of energy deficiency by discussing a number of diagnoses in which the medical literature supports it.

Energy and Brain Autonomic Function: Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s Diseases

The classic prototype for dysautonomia is beriberi, the vitamin B1 deficiency disease. Although this is not by any means the only cause of energy deficiency in the brain, it acts as a model for clinical expression. To put it as simply as possible, it represents an unbalanced ratio between calories ingested and the density of the micronutrients contained in the food source that catalyze the complex mechanisms of energy production. For example and contrast, the diet in Okinawa, Japan, that boasts a high concentration of centenarians, is nutritionally dense, meaning that it contains the vitamins and essential minerals that enable the calories to be burned (oxidized). It is also calorically poor, while in the US it is the reverse and where chronic disease is common. It has been shown in animal studies that a calorie poor diet correlates with the prolongation of youthful activity and even life itself.

In this presentation, I will try to show that brain energy deficiency is the major cause of disease. Because the controls of the autonomic nervous system in the lower part of the brain are quickly affected by energy deficiency, (the commonest cause in America is TD) it is not surprising that dysautonomia is common and occurs as part of other diagnostic categories. What I mean by that is that many diseases have been described in the medical literature associated with dysautonomia. For example, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases are in a group of conditions that have a causative relationship. Both are associated with dysautonomia.

Megadose thiamine treatment has been reported to be successful in Parkinson’s disease.This information comes from a physician in Italy and it amply supports the concept that this chronic disease is caused by brain energy deficiency. The importance of the word megadose means that thiamine is not simply replacing a dietary vitamin deficiency. It is being used as a drug. The multiple actions of thiamine are all known to be essential in energy synthesis. If two diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s have a common cause, you might well be asking how is it that they are different in character? I think that this is an extremely important point. The disease in the brain depends on the distribution of the deficiency and hence the function of the affected cells. There is always symptom overlap in the two diseases. Variations in the presentation of disease can be extraordinarily variable.

Panic Disorder, Autonomic Dysregulation, and Energy

Supposedly psychological in nature, it is really a sympathetically initiated fight-or-flight reflex, originating because of brain oxygen, or oxidation, deficiency. The association between panic disorder and cardiovascular disease has been extensively studied. Some of these studies have shown anxiety disorder co-existing with or increasing the risk of heart disease. Heart disease almost always occurs in vitamin B1 deficiency beriberi, because the heart functions continuously throughout life and requires a continuous supply of energy. But heart disease occasionally does not occur, depending on the severity and the cellular distribution of the deficiency.

Recent interest has focused on whether some modern heart disease is caused by energy deficiency. What is confusing to people is that tachycardia (accelerated heart), occurring for no specific reason, is caused by an erratic signal from the brain via the autonomic nervous system. If the heart muscle is also deficient, the autonomic signal may result (for example) in atrial fibrillation. The treatment would therefore be energy stimulus in both brain and heart. This is why beriberi, the disease that is the well accepted result of vitamin B1 deficiency, causes defective function in the controls of the autonomic nervous system and the heart as the commonest result of this disease.

It also raises eyebrows when I say that beriberi is common in America, but is unfortunately not recognized by physicians whose overall philosophy is that “any sort of vitamin deficiency simply never occurs in America because of vitamin enrichment of foods by the food industry”. The trouble with that philosophy is that the extraordinary ingestion of empty calories in this population overwhelms the vitamin dependent machinery that oxidizes the calories. The best analogy that I can offer is a choked car engine. The input of gasoline must match the capacity of the spark plug to initiate gasoline ignition.

Overall, results suggest that rates of epilepsy are elevated among individuals with panic disorder and that panic attacks are elevated among individuals with epilepsy. An article reviewing the causes of epilepsy includes recent reports on the effects of inefficient cellular use of oxygen as a causative factor. Hyperventilation (over breathing) occurred in 25% of a group of patients with a relatively common form of dysautonomia (POTS) associated with fainting attacks. The authors hypothesized that the hyperventilation in this condition arises because of brain hypoxia.

This is supported by the fact that people prone to panic disorder are known to develop one of their attacks when situated on the top of a mountain. One of my patients was an elderly lady who indulged in square dancing once every two weeks. Invariably she would develop a feverish illness lasting several days after returning home. Without going into the complex details I was able to conclude that her energy requirement was increased by the physical effort required for square dancing. Because her energy synthesis mechanism was depleted from thiamine deficiency, these episodes of fever were exactly similar to the condition called mountain sickness. With megadose thiamine she was able to continue her square dancing without suffering these repeated illnesses. This patient’s problem could not have been addressed by the orthodox assumption that each episode of illness was due to an infection; Because of a rigid concept that these recurrent episodes were only the result of an infection, we tend to forget that the “illness” is really an exhibition of the complex mechanisms of defense organized by the brain. Lacking in a full complement of energy, its organizational capacity is depleted.

Many examples of manuscripts appearing in the medical literature describe the presence of multiple diseases occurring in a single patient. We suggest that this stretches credibility because we cannot predict the incidence of one disease in a person, let alone the incidence of two or three at the same time. Rather we should be seeking a single causative factor to explain all the symptoms. In the reports of multiple conditions occurring in one individual, one of them is invariably described as dysautonomia, strongly suggesting that the cause in common is brain energy deficiency affecting the controlling mechanisms.

Energy Deficiency and Health Across Generations

Mental illness, including depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder, accounts for a significant proportion of global disability and poses a substantial social, economic and health burden. Treatment is presently dominated by pharmacotherapy that averts less than half of the disease burden and is purely treatment of symptoms. In the January 2020 issue of the National Geographic under the heading of “A World of Pain”, a case is described of a pregnancy in which the patient called Karen “begins bleeding profusely so is taken to the operating room, where doctors perform a hysterectomy. After the operation, she suffers multiple organ failure and has a cardiac arrest from which she does not recover. Karen dies of pre-eclampsia”. This is a high blood pressure disorder that is unfortunately all too common in pregnancy. I recently learned from a book written by an American Ob/Gyn specialist that this kind of tragedy could be completely prevented by the initiation of a megadose of thiamine routinely given daily during the pregnancy. It is indeed stunning to claim that pregnancy complications are all manifestations of beriberi and that this cheap and simple ingestion can prevent all pregnancy complications, a fact that most people would find hard to believe.

But this also makes sense. The food that the mother ingests must be able to provide the energy, not only for herself but for the rapidly growing infant that she has to support. It is no surprise to me that dietary indiscretion by the mother, such as the use of alcohol and the lunacy of smoking, provides a legacy to her yet unborn child that adds to the burden of child development both before and after birth. It is now well known that sudden death syndrome in infants can be a legacy of the pregnancy. Breast milk thiamine deficiency has long been known to be responsible for sudden death in a breast fed infant and breast fed infants are associated with a higher risk of autism in our modern world.

What about other nutrient deficiencies as a cause of disease? People suffering from depression, schizophrenia and dementia often have measurably lower levels of serum folate compared to people not experiencing psychiatric disorder. Even the use of methyl folate, an important part of the chemistry of folate, as a stand-alone monotherapy has been observed to exert antidepressant properties. Earlier in this presentation, I mentioned that sugar was the cause of anxiety, not a treatment for it. The fact is that the processing of sugar is extremely complex and can initiate energy deficiency in the brain. Obviously, energy deficiency represents a threat to the organism and so there is an automatic initiation of the sympathetic nervous system that results in the fight-or-flight reflex. In other words, under these circumstances the initiation of this reflex is because the sugar has caused thiamine deficient pseudo-hypoxia. The obvious safety measure, automatically governed by the brain, is to alert the organism to the perceived danger, however that interpretation or brain misinterpretation might arise.

Brain Energy Deficiency and Violence

There is a link between mental illness and firearm violence, reported to be a significant and preventable public health crisis. Hypoxia and hypercapnia (too much carbon dioxide in the blood from inadequate breathing) excite the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system. Excitation of this system generates the fight-or-flight reflex that is associated with aggression. Pseudohypoxia (imitates true hypoxia) is caused in the brain by thiamine deficiency. Therefore, there should be a serious look at the diet history of gun violence perpetrators.

Early Diet and Behavior

Many years ago, when I was in practice as a pediatrician, I saw many children who were brought because of emotional disease such as hyperactivity, learning disability, unusual temper tantrums and sleep problems. The current and false explanation for this was poor parenting, but on discussion with the parents I found that in almost every case the parenting was perfectly healthy. The diet of these children was appalling, however, very high in empty calories, particularly as those from sweets and I began to keep records of the dietary mayhem that was so common. In many cases I measured the intake of carbonated beverages in gallons per week. When I instructed the parents concerning an appropriate diet for their children, the emotional symptoms disappeared. This was so impressive and the children’s response to drugs so unpredictable, I decided to practice what has become known as Alternative Complementary Medicine. Please note that complementary is spelled with an ‘e’ not an ‘i’ and it indicates that it strives to take the best of orthodox medicine and complement it with the use of nutrients that represent the elements essential to energy metabolism. The two physician organizations that have developed are the American College of Advancement in Medicine (ACAM) and the International College of Integrative Medicine (ICIM).

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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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Photo by karatara: https://www.pexels.com/photo/male-statue-decor-931317/.

This article was published originally on February 24, 2020.

Severe Gut Dysbiosis, MCAS, and Oral Lichen Planus

by Russ

Published on December 29, 2021

17339 views

I have severe gut dysbiosis, and suffer from frequent urination, sensitive bladder, and functional dyspepsia. Testing shows that I have system-wide bacterial and fungal overgrowth, oral lichen planus, mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), histamine intolerance and severe food sensitivities. I also have problems with my feet. They are very dry, tend to swell up, and there are weird itchy red sores that may be related to athletes foot or to something else.

Over the last two decades my diet has become increasingly restricted and I now am only able to tolerate white sushi rice and lean animal meats. Whenever I stray from that diet, I get severe mouth/throat/upper gut inflammation. As a result, I am severely deficient in a number of vitamins, which I have to inject, as I cannot tolerate them orally. I must restore diversity to my gut, clear the infections and expand my diet so I can get nutrients, but given the reactions I have to most foods, I do not know how.

Early History of Poor Diet

As a kid I ate a lot of sweets and didn’t have the best diet. I took a normal amount of antibiotics as a kid but had a lot of strep throat and colds. In 1997, I had the chicken pox at age 23. It was a mild case. I became more health conscious in my mid 20s and after I got campylobacter food poisoning in 1998, from food purchased from the fast food restaurant Wendy’s. I was treated with ciprofloxacin and made a full recovery. After that, I completely stopped eating fast food. I would say my diet was pretty balanced up until 2002 when I got sick. I should note, I was first exposed to black mold in 2000 and again in 2015.

The Long Decline

In 2002, I was on a 6 month course of Levaquin for a prostate infection I didn’t even have. Shortly after, I contracted giardia on a kayak trip. I developed post-infectious gastritis and severe lactose intolerance. In 2004, I had mercury exposure from dental work and developed the early stages of histamine intolerance. I then developed gluten intolerance in 2006 and IBS symptoms with constipation.

Nevertheless, I was stable for a number of years and in 2007, I contracted Lyme, Bartonella, Babesis and Mycoplasma. I tested very high for mycoplasma as well as other infections like Epstein Barr Virus. From there, I then went on to develop frequent urination, sensitive bladder, and functional dyspepsia. I developed oral lichen planus in 2008.

In 2011, I was prescribed Xifaxan, a drug used to treat IBS with diarrhea or traveler’s diarrhea, and it gave me chronic bloating, which I have had ever since. I had walking pneumonia a few times (mycoplasma) and possibly whooping cough in 2012.

In 2015, I had the flu and was under a lot of stress and had a major autoimmune flare up. I developed geographic tongue and the lichen planus got worse, as did my histamine intolerance. I was exposed to black mold and aspergillus during this period as well. My digestive symptoms got worse.

Increasingly Restricted Diet

In 2018, I took a high dose of probiotics that I had been taking for years and doing well on and it triggered some kind of major mast cell reaction in my upper gut. I have had reflux and gastritis-like symptoms ever since. My MCAS got worse and since 2018 I have been losing the ability to eat more and more foods without a reaction. Last year I tried low dose naltrexone and I had a severe autoimmune reaction to it. I have become even more hypersensitive to environmental triggers like pollution and pollen.

Right now I am 40lbs underweight and survive on white sushi rice and lean animal meats every single day. If I try to eat any plant based food, I get severe mouth/throat/upper gut inflammation. I also believe I have hydrogen sulfide SIBO. In September, I did a nasal culture which showed large amounts of coagulase positive staphylococci. My throat culture showed large amounts of streptococcus A and pseudomonas. My gut also tested positive for actinomyces.

Multiple Vitamin Deficiencies

For years my Vitamin D was suboptimal and recently tested and its 19 ng/mL. I had been giving myself weekly vitamin D injections, as I can’t tolerate any supplements, but I have recently stopped because they caused some new symptoms including: headache, dizziness, off balance, visual disturbances and loss of appetite. I am still dealing with issues a few weeks after stopping the injections. I read this can be a common side effect when people do not respond well to cholecalciferol. My plan is to purchase a special UV light for vitamin D and will try to raise my levels naturally. This is an ongoing theme. Whenever I make a little progress, I always seem to get a setback in some form, which makes this very frustrating. I also inject B complex and B12 which seems to really help with my reactions. I am very nutrient deficient especially in fat soluble vitamins and vitamin C. Currently, I rub these vitamins on my skin and also use nasal resveratrol.

I must treat this severe dysbiosis somehow and am leaning towards antibiotics since I can’t tolerate probiotics or herbal formulas. I need to be extremely careful and have to come up with a really good protocol. I need to micro-dose and make sure I use the right antibiotic or combination of antibiotics. I also don’t want to flare up my gut or make my problems worse. If anyone can help me I would be grateful. I must restore diversity to my gut, clear the infections and expand my diet so I can get nutrients. Thank you.

Update

As of December 2021 I have not made the least bit of progress towards recovering my health. I went for Lyme treatment at the New York Center for Innovative Medicine this Summer and was extremely optimistic and hopeful that this would cure me. A close friend of mine went there and got her life back. Sadly, I am now 5 months post treatment and don’t feel even a tiny bit better in fact many of my old symptoms have resurfaced.

A year ago, I had black mold exposure which caused vestibular trauma and also gave me a visual processing disorder. So I now have to deal with visual and balance issues on top of debilitating daily gastrointestinal symptoms. For 18 months, I have been eating white rice, poultry breast, egg yolks and cod and my esophagus and stomach will flare up if I consume even a tiny piece of any vegetable. I have severe depression, anxiety, and am living in fear every day of my life. I spent $60,000 on medical expenses in 2021 and have absolutely nothing to show for it.

I am going to a special gastroenterology clinic in Ohio in March and will probably get an endoscopy. I am afraid this test will make me worse but I just have no options. I still think I have some kind of stealth infection or parasite in my gut that is causing all these issues. If anyone has recommendations for me I would be grateful.

Every single day I am losing more and more hope and am not sure how much longer I will survive. I am having my will drawn up because I just don’t see a future for myself. On top of this my stepfather was just diagnosed with stomach cancer and is going through chemotherapy now and the whole family is stressed out and this is taking a toll on me emotionally. Thanks for listening.

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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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This story was first published on February 4, 2021. It was updated on December 29, 2021.

Pancreatic Divisum with Gastroparesis and Bowel Dysmotility Requiring TPN

by Ann-Marie Williams

Published on December 2, 2021

9857 views

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 3^rd 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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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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Modern Thiamine Deficiency: A New Review Article

by Chandler Marrs, PhD

Published on September 29, 2021

11832 views

We are pleased to announce the publication of a new review article exploring thiamine deficiency in food secure countries. As we have written on many occasions, including an entire book on the topic, the expression of thiamine deficiency in the western world is different than in countries with food insecurity. In the US especially, where the predominant diet is comprised largely of processed, but thiamine fortified foods, thiamine deficiency emerges not from the classically defined, starvation-based malnutrition, but from a sort of high calorie malnutrition. Here, calories are plentiful, and by current RDA standards, so too is thiamine, but somehow broad swaths of the population still develop deficiency. In the article we argue that it is not the absence of thiamine but rather regular exposure to anti-thiamine factors in the diet and environment that precipitate deficiency. It is a different starting point, a different chemistry, and ultimately, a different symptomology. The article is called: Hiding in Plain Sight: Modern Thiamine Deficiency. Enjoy.

From the abstract:

Thiamine or vitamin B1 is an essential, water-soluble vitamin required for mitochondrial energetics—the production of adenosine triphosphate (ATP). It is a critical and rate-limiting cofactor to multiple enzymes involved in this process, including those at the entry points and at critical junctures for the glucose, fatty acid, and amino acid pathways. It has a very short half-life, limited storage capacity, and is susceptible to degradation and depletion by a number of products that epitomize modern life, including environmental and pharmaceutical chemicals. The RDA for thiamine is 1.1–1.2 mg for adult females and males, respectively. With an average diet, even a poor one, it is not difficult to meet that daily requirement, and yet, measurable thiamine deficiency has been observed across multiple patient populations with incidence rates ranging from 20% to over 90% depending upon the study. This suggests that the RDA requirement may be insufficient to meet the demands of modern living. Inasmuch as thiamine deficiency syndromes pose great risk of chronic morbidity, and if left untreated, mortality, a more comprehensive understanding thiamine chemistry, relative to energy production, modern living, and disease, may prove useful.

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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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Image by Hands off my tags! Michael Gaida from Pixabay

Severe Postpartum Anxiety, Suicidality, and Polypharmacy

by HF

Published on July 5, 2021

7530 views

Early Health History

I was vaccinated as a kid. I got ear infections, stomach bugs, and I had mononucleosis. I ate a pretty good diet for half of my childhood. My mom always made sure to have meat and vegetables at dinner. I had the flu in high school once, and once in college. In high school, I was very active in the marching band and I was a twirler. I was always a healthy weight and ate reasonably. I believe that I had the flu shot and meningitis shot in college.

In high school, I could take or leave any kind of food or sweets. However, in my second year of college, I crossed over the imaginary line of addiction with food. I began to binge eat, especially sweets. I noticed I was overeating but I couldn’t control it. Eventually, I found help in 12-step programs for my food addiction. I gained weight here and there over a few different times during college. However, since then, I’ve always been able to maintain a healthy weight by not bringing home my binge foods.

A Healthy Pregnancy but a Difficult Postpartum: No Sleep, Anxiety, Suicidality, and a Whole Bunch of Medications

In November 2020, I had my baby.

I took high dose vitamin C throughout my pregnancy and had a very healthy pregnancy and birth. It was supposed to be at the birth center, but that fell through when I tested positive for COVID. I forgot to pack my vitamin C when I went to the hospital, which I think may have affected me. At the hospital, I only got 4 hours of sleep over two days. On the third day, we came home. I got another two hours of sleep, but I became suicidal due to lack of sleep. So I had to go to the mental hospital on my baby’s third day of life.

I was put on Zoloft and Ativan and trazadone in the hospital. I came home from the hospital and things were okay. I had to get a medication adjustment by switching to Seroquel.

Due to my significant other not allowing me to make medical decisions for my baby, I went into fight or flight mode and I became suicidal again on December 7. I had to go back to the mental hospital for about two weeks. None of the anxiety medicine (Buspar, hydroxyzine, and maybe another one) I was taking away resolved the fight or flight. The anxiety was so bad that I could feel my insides shaking from head to toe. I couldn’t sleep at all for days. The only way I was able to sleep was when they finally prescribed me the extended release version of Seroquel. During both hospital stays, I did have a UTI and was treated with antibiotics. I don’t know which antibiotics I was given at the hospital. In February of this year, I had another UTI and was given Macrobid 100mg.

Crushing Fight or Flight Anxiety

When I came home from the hospital, my fight or flight anxiety was still so bad that I couldn’t even change the baby’s diaper. When I got some Xanax, I was finally able to get stuff done and function. My anxiety finally calmed down to where I could function without Xanax, however, I still had anxiety pretty bad.

On January 8, 2021, I started eating an all whole foods diet, nothing processed, no sugar, flour wheat, dairy, or high fat.

When I eat, I getting very foggy, despite eating a whole food diet. After posting in the orthomolecular group on Facebook, some people pointed out histamine intolerance (HI). So I’ve come to learn that I have HI and probably salicylate and oxalate intolerances too. I’m assuming this because the fogginess after I eat is bad. Also, after meeting with a nutritionist, she pointed out that my prolonged anxiety probably affected how I digest food, hence now causing me to have all these food intolerances. I have found research, a Harvard study, that prolonged fight or flight can cause HI/ digestion issues and actually cause digestion to stop. I have been unsuccessful with a low HI diet due to lack of freezer space/ stress of freezing/defrosting.

I’m also jaundiced. I can’t gain weight and my eye twitches every so often. I’m 5’7” and about 109/110 pounds. It is very scary how thin I am. You can see my sternum and my spine, despite eating three whole food meals a day that are weighed and measured, plus whole food snacks throughout the day.

I went to a natural chiropractor and he told me I was still in fight or flight, which didn’t surprise me because my anxiety was still bad, even though I could function. The anxiety is in my shoulders and is a constant throughout my day. It’s not like the head to toe fight or flight anxiety I had, but it is still bad. It caused me to have these intolerances that I’ve never had in my life. So I’ve officially been in fight or flight mode for over 6 months.

A few months ago, I tried taking Niacinamide for the anxiety. I took about 1500-2000mg a day for about 2-3 weeks but I didn’t notice any difference, so I stopped taking it since it was increasing my metabolism.

I have started a very low dose of thiamine HCL (1 mg- if that) but I noticed it is causing me to be foggy just like when I eat. This is very concerning to me because if I plan to titrate up, that means I’m going to be experiencing fogginess to a very great extent and pretty much all day. I do have magnesium and a B complex vitamin, and plan to supplement with potassium as well. I also magnesium lysinate. I’ve been drinking coconut water for potassium, however, I’ve slacked off because it was causing worse mind fogginess. I have magnesium malate in powder form, but I need to get an encapsulation system. I started the b-complex vitamin today. I have potassium chloride in powder form to supplement with if I don’t use the coconut water. I believe I’m taking about 12 mg of thiamine a day. I also take Nutrigold’s fish oil, and a prenatal vitamin.

My doctor allowed me to wean off Zoloft a few months ago. I’m currently taking Seroquel and Seroquel ER.

Will the thiamine control the anxiety once I’m able to take it in high doses and rid my food intolerance? My anxiety is situational and unfortunately, the situations aren’t going to change, so I’m curious if you think it will help me. Due to my body being in fight or flight mode and not rest and digest mode, I’m not sure the high dose thiamine will help, since my body isn’t absorbing any nutrients and I can’t keep weight on.

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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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An Open Letter Regarding Thiamine and COVID

by Robert Olney

Published on March 31, 2021

9414 views

Prior to the US election, in October of 2020, I found that the Biden campaign was interested in emailing me. I decided to try and get this letter setting out my concerns about COVID to Mr. Biden. I have no idea if he saw it or not. It is being published here as an open letter to whomever might consider implementing thiamine therapy in the prevention and treatment of COVID and other disease processes. It has been edited to fit the format of the website.

Dear Mr. Biden,

Greetings from Canberra Australia. I am writing to you because I believe I have something important to say about the pandemic, but find myself in somewhat of a dilemma. It may sound hard to believe but I think you may be the only person who can help.

I want to begin by telling you about Dr. Derrick Lonsdale. He is 96 years old, born in 1924. He began his medical career in England in 1948 and after emigrating to the U.S. spent 20 years practicing as a pediatrician at the Cleveland Clinic, which you visited recently. After leaving there he practiced privately, retiring at the age of 88 in 2013. He has written over 100 published papers. To this day he writes articles and helps people with their health problems through a website called Hormones Matter run by his colleague Dr. Chandler Marrs.

As a result of his experiences at Cleveland Clinic, Dr. Lonsdale became particularly interested in the subject of thiamine deficiency. As you may know, in the same way that vitamin C deficiency is linked to the disease scurvy and vitamin D deficiency is associated with rickets, thiamine, or vitamin B1, deficiency is responsible for the wasting disease beriberi. The common understanding is that this is a disease of the past and of a third world beset by malnutrition, which has been eliminated in the West by fortifying processed food such as flour with thiamine. As such it has seemingly passed out of the collective memory of modern medicine. Dr. Lonsdale on the other hand made the biochemical study of thiamine deficiency his life’s work.

Understanding Thiamine in the Context of Mitochondria

Each of the trillions of cells that make up the body contain mitochondria – self-contained electrochemical machines which take in fuel and oxygen supplied by the blood and use them to generate an electric charge – effectively a battery. This charge is used to supply energy in a chemical form usable by the cell to allow it to function. The other end-products are water and carbon dioxide – this is respiration at the cellular level. The process involves a series of chemical reactions, each reaction requiring the presence of an enzyme specific to that reaction, provided by the mitochondrion. Each enzyme also requires one or more cofactors to be present for the associated reaction to proceed efficiently. These enzyme cofactors are supplied via the blood and are none other than the vitamins and minerals we are all familiar with, particularly the B vitamins – thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, folic acid, B12 and others, and minerals like magnesium, zinc, copper, manganese and iron. If anything interferes with this chemical “symphony”, such as a deficiency of one or more of these cofactors, energy production will be impaired and the cell will not be able to function as it should.

Thiamine has been found to have a particularly important role to play. It acts as a cofactor in five of these enzyme moderated reactions, one of which occurs right at the beginning of the whole process, converting the supplied fuel (glucose) into a form usable in subsequent steps. In one of Dr. Lonsdale’s analogies, thiamine is like the spark plugs in an internal combustion engine (the mitochondrion), igniting the fuel/air mixture, turning the released energy into, in this case, mechanical rather than chemical energy, which is used to propel the car (the cell) forward. If the spark plugs are not working properly (if thiamine is deficient), the car will run poorly, if at all.

It is not hard to see the implications of this. At the level of a human being, thiamine deficiency results in beriberi (meaning “weakness”, or “I can’t”). The cells of the body are unable to provide the energy the body needs to function. If the deficiency is not corrected death may follow. At the cellular level, if a virus or bacterium attacks, or if certain cells start to misbehave, the body has cellular defenses to deal with the situation. But if the cells lack energy, these defenses are likely to fail and the body will be overwhelmed. Drs. Lonsdale and Marrs concern themselves with ensuring the mitochondria are in the best shape possible, identifying anything which affects their performance, such as drugs and other chemicals which might cause deficiencies, or genetic defects, and trying to correct such problems generally by means of nutrition, thus maximizing the body’s natural defenses.

This is where the trouble begins. According to Dr. Lonsdale, ever since Louis Pasteur’s discoveries about microorganisms, the paradigm under which medicine has operated is “kill the enemy”, in other words find ways to kill the bacteria and viruses and wayward cells which threaten us with disease, generally using drugs. The idea of helping to strengthen the natural defenses of the body is dismissed out of hand, on the assumption that the issue of nutrient deficiency belongs to the distant past. As the future commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the United States, if one of your military heads came to you and said that you only need offensive weapons and there is no need to worry about the state of your defensive capability, I’m sure that you would send them on their way. Yet that accurately depicts current medical practice. Dr. Lonsdale has for many years tried to persuade his colleagues that thiamine deficiency in particular is a very real problem of the present and the future, particularly in Western societies, for reasons I will go into, and that much of the disease we see is in fact due to it. For his trouble, he has been resolutely ignored, deemed irrelevant and consigned to history by all but a few. All, that is, except perhaps for the many people he has helped. As he tells it, every time he cured someone orthodox medicine had declared incurable, it was put down to “spontaneous remission”.

How I Found Thiamine

I became interested in this subject because of what happened to my elderly mother, now 90. Early in 2019 she came down with a nasty virus. Prior to that she’d had some health problems but was in pretty good shape overall. She recovered but never really got over it. Her longstanding breathing problems became worse. She started to have digestion problems and was back in hospital a few months later with pancreatitis. Back home, every morning after breakfast she had to sit for a few hours because she felt too weak to do anything. On one occasion she had an attack of vertigo, fell and couldn’t get up again. She was seeing several doctors and they were examining her and doing blood tests and trying different drugs on her but I felt they weren’t really helping her much. I resolved to try and work out what was going on. It wasn’t long before I came across Dr. Lonsdale and the subject of thiamine deficiency. What I learnt was that an event that was stressful to the body such as an infection could trigger a state of thiamine deficiency, and that the elderly were particularly vulnerable. I began to think that this was what happened to my mother.

I also had one or two health issues. In 2010, I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer and had it removed. I had occasional heart palpitation episodes, and remembered hearing that the answer for this was vitamin B1. I also have restless legs syndrome. As a result of this new interest in health, I learned about low-carb diets. Around March 2020 I started on a “healthy keto and intermittent fasting” diet and started taking thiamine regularly, along with magnesium, another essential cofactor which is needed for thiamine to work, and encouraged my mother, and my family, to take it. Purely coincidentally, this was also when the COVID crisis was ramping up.

As I learned more, I began to suspect that there was a connection between thiamine deficiency and COVID and that taking thiamine and magnesium might be protective against it. By this time the world was in lockdown, and I thought this would defeat the virus, so there was no need to say anything. By mid-August it was clear that things were spiraling out of control. Around this time, I realized that Drs. Lonsdale and Marrs were very well aware of what was happening and had done what they could to make it known to the world, but it had fallen on deaf ears. I decided I had to try and do something. Having had very little to do with social media, I started using Twitter to try and tell as many people and organizations as I could about the connection between COVID and thiamine deficiency, and have continued doing so to the present, learning more in the process. Everything I have learnt has only strengthened my conviction. Like them, I have had absolutely no response from anyone in a position to be able to do anything and as far as I can tell I have had absolutely no impact and am not going to. I don’t feel like I can just leave it, so that is why I have now turned to you.

Thiamine and Dysautonomia

In 2017, Drs. Lonsdale and Marrs published a book entitled “Thiamine Deficiency Disease, Dysautonomia, and High Calorie Malnutrition”, which more or less represents Dr. Lonsdale’s life’s work. The premise of the book is that thiamine deficiency, beriberi, affects the autonomic nervous system, leading to dysautonomia. The autonomic nervous system controls all of the functions that the body carries out automatically without conscious thought, such as breathing, cardiac function, digestion, sleeping, reacting to stimuli and so on. Basically, this system goes out of whack, resulting in all sorts of strange and seemingly unrelated symptoms particularly affecting the brain, heart, nervous system and digestion. “High calorie malnutrition”, the end result of the typical western diet, is largely responsible.

Beriberi is normally associated with just straight malnutrition or lack of food, and conjures up images of emaciated people. Using the above term Drs. Lonsdale and Marrs are making the point that a diet high in “empty” calories, especially from sugar, but low in micronutrients, predisposes one to the disease, because the available thiamine required to process the fuel is overwhelmed by the amount of fuel being supplied. In terms of the car analogy, the engine is flooded. So the obese could have beriberi. Anyone else nutritionally challenged, such as diabetics, could have it. Basically anyone, young or not, whether they look ill or not, could have it if their nutritional status is compromised. Dr. Lonsdale has for many years been trying to warn us that the Western world is primed for an epidemic of beriberi, waiting for something to come along that would trigger it.

Thiamine, COVID, and an Epidemic of Beriberi

About two weeks after I began tweeting about thiamine, I learned about COVID long-haulers for the first time. These are the people who get over the initial infection, only to find that they continue to have problems for many months afterwards. By now there are perhaps hundreds of thousands in this category. Having learned about the many and varied symptoms of dysautonomia associated with thiamine deficiency, I was stunned to realize that the symptoms of long-haulers, described in an endless succession of media reports as the bizarre and mysterious symptoms of COVID, are exactly the same as those of mild thiamine deficiency. Despite my numerous efforts to point this out, such reports continue to appear to this day. Of course when I checked back with what Dr. Marrs had been saying on Twitter, I found she was already pointing all this out months earlier.

To me the implications of this are enormous. It suggests that the world has completely misunderstood the nature of the pandemic and as a result of this wrong understanding the wrong decisions are being made. While undoubtedly highly contagious, I believe COVID is not the highly novel, pathogenic and virulent virus we are led to believe. Rather it is similar to, but somewhat more severe than, what we have experienced previously, the effect of which has been to unleash an epidemic of, not the version we know from history, but a modern-day equivalent form of beriberi, attributable to our generally poor nutritional status and any other environmental contributors to poor mitochondrial function.

As one example of the decisions being made, one could consider what has been happening in intensive care units around the world. Perhaps the most characteristic aspect of COVID is loss of pulmonary function, known as Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS). While I am no expert, it seems an assumption being made is that to overcome this just requires an increased supply of oxygen by means of a ventilator. Earlier I described respiration as it takes place at the cellular level. In terms of normal combustion everyone knows one needs three things: fuel, oxygen, and a source of ignition. It’s the same at the cellular level – it’s not enough to have glucose and oxygen, you need thiamine to act as the spark plug, followed by the chain of reactions that take place inside the mitochondrion. Perhaps thiamine deficiency, and therefore failure to initiate this reaction chain, rather than lack of oxygen, is what’s really going on. While I could find numerous general references to the use of thiamine in clinical care, when I looked at ICU protocols specifically for COVID promulgated by organizations such as WHO and CDC and in Australia, I did not find any reference to using thiamine.

There are other observations one can make. One of the seemingly mysterious features of the pandemic is that many people who get infected are completely asymptomatic. I interpret this as meaning these people have good nutritional status, and mitochondria that are working efficiently, and their cellular defenses are consequently able to deal with the virus. Also, people with a lower socioeconomic background seem to be more severely affected. This is understandable as they might only have access to cheaper, less nutritious food and are therefore more likely to be in a state of incipient thiamine deficiency when they encounter the virus. And of course, as Boris Johnson learned and as many doctors are starting to understand, a poor diet, despite access to plenty of food, leading to obesity, makes one vulnerable, the answer being to improve the diet, which doctor Lonsdale tells us should be a low carbohydrate, “real food” diet, which even now is not what nutrition guidelines recommend.

Consider Thiamine

This brings me to the main purpose of this letter. In the absence of, or in addition to, a vaccine, I believe that an emergency program of mass daily supplementation with thiamine and magnesium, and a longer term aim of improved diet, could help to protect the U.S. and indeed the world population, from the virus. One might put it as a policy goal of ensuring thiamine sufficiency in the general population. This could provide an alternative to the devastating human and economic consequences of the actions currently being taken or contemplated, whether lockdowns, border closures, or so-called “herd immunity” options. I imagine this would be a very large undertaking, more than just education as this would probably result in all existing supplies vanishing, but presumably much less than the expected vaccination program, given that both micronutrients are well-known, cheap and non-toxic. Of course, all this would need to be verified before taking action. If one can measure the level of intracellular thiamine sufficiency or deficiency in the body it should be straightforward to test hypotheses, e.g. that long-haulers are in a state of deficiency, that those who were asymptomatic have a good level of sufficiency, and so on. One difficulty with this is apparently that because of the lack of interest in this subject there is currently almost no laboratory where such measurements can be made.

The Stress of Illness

It was only a couple of weeks ago that I realized Dr. Lonsdale actually made this suggestion himself. In an article published on March 20, 2020 on the Hormones Matter website, entitled “What Can Selye Tell Us About COVID-19? Survival Requires Energy”, he said:

We believe that we have shown evidence that thiamine and magnesium supplementation are inherently necessary in a population in which nutrition is imperfect. … Moreover, if we consider the requisite ‘energy’ required to stave off any illness, might we also consider bolstering the nutrient stores e.g. host defense in at-risk populations, as a way to reduce the risk and severity of the illness? Doing so may help ensure the adequacy of energy in meeting the unseen enemy.

You will recall that this was right at the beginning of the period when deaths started to ramp up in the U.S. One wonders how different things might have been if he had been listened to.

The biggest challenge, however, could lie elsewhere. This pandemic has brought us to an extraordinary place. Suppose that Dr. Lonsdale is right. This gives rise to an incredible dichotomy. On one side there is 96 year old Dr. Lonsdale, who has few resources and at his age may not be in a position to advocate for himself, but who with a vast amount of experience behind him has a simple idea that explains an awful lot, including many diseases which medical orthodoxy cannot explain or treat, which therefore get labelled psychosomatic. He has a proposal which is easily testable, could easily be trialled, is simple and relatively cheap to implement, and could have enormous health and economic benefits. Without going into details, it could potentially lead to generally improved mental health, reduced levels of crime and reduced vulnerability to virtually all forms of disease, including viral threats that we have yet to encounter, with consequently greatly reduced health costs and productivity benefits for all economies. This would usher in a science based health renaissance, the likes of which has never been seen before.

On the other side is the entire medical establishment with its vast resources, having an entrenched position, which is unable to, indeed cannot afford to, so much as entertain the possibility that Dr. Lonsdale could be correct. You also have the pharmaceutical industry pouring billions into drug development and searching for a vaccine. A vaccine may well be found, which might head off this crisis of credibility. Or it may not. Or the virus may mutate regularly, rendering a vaccine next to impossible as with cold viruses. One thing to note is that, if the pandemic at its core is the result of a nutrient deficiency, then no drug or combination of drugs that does not correct the deficiency can possibly overcome it. On top of that, you have the food industry with its vested interests in keeping the world hooked on its cheaply made, highly addictive products based on sugar and processed carbohydrates, which Dr. Lonsdale tells us lies at the core of the problem. The pandemic is forcing us to face the inconvenient truth that this entire edifice may be unsustainable.

I’m sure you can appreciate why I think you may be the only person who might have a chance of getting us from where we are to where we could be. I’m sure you would have people to advise you on health matters. If Dr. Lonsdale is right, and you ask them for advice on this, it seems likely they will just dismiss the entire notion out of hand. If we are to avoid unthinkable levels of human and economic loss, you may have to shake the foundations of the medical establishment to its very core, to get it to accept that we need defense as well as offense in order to successfully do battle with the invisible enemy.

In the end, it may simply be a matter of going back to where it all began – back to Hippocrates, who, as Dr. Lonsdale likes to remind us, said “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”

A Few Final Observations

I hope you get to meet Dr. Lonsdale. I strongly suspect the fact that he is still active at such an advanced age is not an accident. I imagine he has been taking his own advice. I would not be at all surprised to learn that he has lived most of his life without any significant disease. I would very much like to see him get the recognition he deserves before he dies.

If I’m right about thiamine deficiency leading to weakness in the response of cellular defenses, this could have an impact on the effectiveness of any vaccine that may be developed, since it has to piggyback on the existing cellular mechanisms. It may turn out that the underlying problem of thiamine deficiency has to be recognized and addressed even if a vaccine is produced.

I am very much a layman, so am not someone from whom to seek advice. If I hear that you are interested in pursuing this I will let Dr. Marrs know. She would be the best person to contact in the first instance.

Lastly, it seems to me that, if dealt with wisely, this has the potential to demolish the foundations of the incredible tower of disinformation that besets the American people and bring it crashing to the ground, perhaps ushering in a new, sorely lacking respect for science. Exactly how and when that might be brought about I have no idea. I’ll leave that up to you.

Good luck in your new adventure.

Robert Olney

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