A Simple Answer to a Big Mystery

Are you worn out all the time, dealing with nerve pain, a racing heart, brain fog, anxiety, swelling—or just a body too tired to keep up, even if you want it to? Maybe you’re a tired athlete, a wiped-out mom or dad, or facing bigger worries like heart disease, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, or even cancer. Doctors might call it chronic fatigue, neuropathy, diabetes, depression—or something else—and give you medicine to handle it. But what if what’s really wrong is something you’re missing: vitamin B1, also called thiamine?

Beriberi is a disease from not getting enough thiamine. It was figured out over 100 years ago and seemed to go away with better food. But it’s still here, broken into lots of today’s symptoms and usually treated with drugs instead of the nutrient that could fix it. This isn’t the only time this happens—think of osteoporosis covering up low vitamin D, managed with drugs instead of the missing nutrient. 

A Historical Perspective: The Rice Revelation

Beriberi’s story goes back hundreds of years to Asia, where people started eating polished white rice with its thiamine-rich husk taken off. The name “beriberi” comes from Sinhalese, meaning “weakness doubled” or “I cannot, I cannot,” because it left people so weak they couldn’t move. By the 1800s, it was a killer. Japanese navy records from 1878-1881 show 35% of sailors got sick every year, and over 27,000 soldiers died during the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) because they wouldn’t change their diet. In 1884, Dr. Takaki Kanehiro, a Japanese naval surgeon, prescribed a diet with barley, meat, and vegetables instead of just rice—and saw sailors recover. 

Then, in 1897, Dutch doctor Christiaan Eijkman showed that chickens fed polished rice got beriberi-like problems, fixed by rice bran. That earned him a Nobel Prize in 1929. Thiamine, named “vitamin B1” by 1912, was the answer. 

Back then, beriberi was easy to spot—swollen legs, weak muscles, failing hearts. Now, it’s trickier, showing up in all kinds of ways we don’t usually link to one nutrient. Knowing this history gives us hope: if we understand what’s missing, we can fix it.

Diabetes and Weight Gain: A Thiamine Link

Diabetes is everywhere—our blood’s full of sugar, but we’re still tired. Why? Thiamine might be the piece we’re missing. It helps turn sugar into 36 ATP, the energy our cells need. Without enough B1, we only get 2 ATP from fermentation—a 94% drop. Sugar builds up, we feel wiped out, and historically, beriberi meant losing weight from starvation. But today, that unused sugar might turn into fat, making us gain weight while staying tired. Diabetes medicines lower sugar, but without thiamine, we’re still low on energy.

Why Thiamine Is Hard to Come By Today

Processed Diets: Thiamine is found in whole foods—pork, brown rice, sunflower seeds—but refining removes up to 90% of it in things like white bread, pasta, and sugary snacks. Even fortified foods fall short.

High-Carb Demands: Eating lots of carbs—like chips, sodas, pastries—uses up thiamine quickly, and we’re not keeping up with the loss.

Stress Impact: Life’s stressful—work, screens, nonstop pressure. Stress consumes thiamine faster than we can replace it.

Toxins: Pesticides, metals, mold, and alcohol sap thiamine reserves. 

Diabetes makes it worse with high sugar adding extra strain.

We’re stuck with too little thiamine and too many things draining it.

Benfotiamine: A Japanese Innovation

Regular thiamine dissolves in water, isn’t absorbed well, and leaves the body quickly. Early supplements were a step forward, but limited. In the 1950s, Japanese researchers, like Dr. Fujiwara Mineji at Takeda Pharmaceutical Company, developed benfotiamine—a fat-soluble form of B1. It gets into cells more effectively, stays active longer, and raises thiamine levels up to five times higher than standard supplements. This advance offers a significant way to tackle deficiency.

A Medical Crossroads: Symptoms vs. Sources

For swollen legs, doctors might give diuretics; for nerve pain, maybe gabapentin; for diabetes, insulin or pills. These can help, but if thiamine’s what’s missing, they’re just treating the signs, not the cause. It’s like anemia—many types exist, such as iron-deficiency or B12-deficiency anemia, and doctors might prescribe iron when B12 is the underlying need—or osteoporosis, where drugs are used before checking vitamin D levels. A hundred years ago, beriberi got better fast with rice bran or thiamine shots. Today, we lean on medicine first, and nutrients like B1 often come later, if they’re considered at all—Wernicke’s, a severe thiamine deficiency, sometimes gets B1 only after other treatments. Exploring the root cause could transform how we approach these conditions.

Steps to Reclaim Your Health: Exploring Thiamine

You can start figuring this out yourself—here’s how:

Assess Your Symptoms: Look at the list. Lots of matches? Thiamine could be it.

Evaluate Your Context: Stressed out, eating carbs, around toxins? That raises the odds.

Consider a Trial: Try benfotiamine—100-300 mg a day to start (talk to a doctor if you’re not sure). It’s easy to find, safe, and works well.

Support with Diet: Add pork, brown rice, sunflower seeds, oats—though diet alone may not meet the full need.

Seek Clarity: Ask for a thiamine blood test, though feeling better might tell you more.

What Might You Notice?

For Diabetes: More energy, less tiredness, maybe better sugar use—thiamine helps process it.

For Exhaustion: A boost, less of that heavy feeling—athletes and parents might move easier.

For Swelling: Reduced leg swelling and improved circulation.

For Circulation: Warmer hands and feet, less tingling as nerves perk up.

For Anxiety and Low Oxygen: When cells don’t get oxygen from low B1, it’s like choking inside—your body panics with anxiety. Benfotiamine might calm that by helping oxygen work right.

For Enlarged Heart: Less strain on the heart, easing its size and workload—thiamine supports heart muscle function.

For Chest Pain: Reduced discomfort as blood flow and heart efficiency improve. Arterial blockage must also be considered and treated. 

For Alzheimer’s/Dementia Symptoms: Clearer thinking, better memory—studies show B1 can slow cognitive decline.

For Tremors: Less involuntary shaking (tremors), as nerve health strengthens—seen in Parkinson’s research.

Cancer and Oxygen: Thiamine’s Metabolic Role

Thiamine is critical for keeping cells healthy and disease-free, especially when it comes to energy and cancer. The Warburg effect, named after Otto Warburg, shows that cancer cells prefer fermentation—turning sugar into energy without oxygen—over the normal oxygen-based process healthy cells use. Thiamine, as a coenzyme in the Krebs cycle, drives that oxygen-based pathway, producing 36 ATP per sugar molecule for efficient energy. Without enough B1, cells fall back to fermentation, making just 2 ATP and leaving behind lactic acid—a metabolic waste product. This waste builds up, creating toxicity that stresses the body and may fuel unhealthy cell changes. Healthy cells need thiamine to stay energized and clean; a shortage shifts the balance toward inefficiency and harm, hinting at why B1 matters so much for preventing disease.

Thiamine’s Broader Reach

Thiamine goes further. For Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, high doses—600-1500 mg daily—have cut tremors and memory loss in studies. For worn-out athletes or parents, a body that resists daily effort shows the same energy and oxygen trouble. Thiamine could be a cornerstone, clearing obstacles from heart, brain, and everyday vitality.

Beyond Genetics: The Power of Deficiency and Toxicity

Genes matter, but they’re often just showing years of missing nutrients or toxins piling up. Beriberi—and maybe diabetes—proves a nutrient gap can look like a big, tough disease. Fix what’s really wrong, and you can heal.