Posted on 08/07/2007 6:10:11 PM PDT by blam
Diabetes damage linked to vitamin B1 shortage
Last Updated: 1:43am BST 08/08/2007
Diabetics have three-quarters less vitamin B1 in their blood than healthy people, research has shown.
A study by the University of Warwick has linked this shortfall, which occurs in sufferers with both type one and two of the disease, to damage to the kidneys, retina and nerves in the arms and legs that are all common symptoms of the disease.
Prof Paul Thornalley, from the university, said that vitamin supplements could be taken by all diabetics and would work alongside conventional glucose controls.
The study is published in Diabetologia, the diabetes journal. A LACK of vitamin B1 has been linked to vascular disease in diabetes sufferers.
Researchers at the University of Warwick found that diabetics - both type one and type two sufferers - had three quarters less thiamine (vitamin B1) in their blood than healthy people.
In what could be a major finding for treatment of diabetes-related vascular conditions, the experts found the shortage was linked to damage to the kidneys, retina and nerves in the arms and legs - common in diabetics. Prof Paul Thornalley, lead researcher, said a vitamin B1 supplement could be taken by all diabetics and would work alongside conventional glucose controls.
He said: "This is a particularly important study because thiamine has been found to prevent vascular problems in previous research.'' The study - published in diabetes journal Diabetologia - compared 26 type 1 and 48 type 2 diabetics with 20 healthy patients.
It found thiamine concentration in blood plasma was decreased 76 per cent in type 1 sufferers and 75 per cent in type 2 patients.
Wow, thank you for the info. I’ll start taking it right away. I never take vitamins, but I will now.
Vitamin B1 or Thiamin is found in a variety of animal and plant food. Important sources are vegetables, wholegrain products, pluses and nuts. The best animal source is pork meat. Other sources are also milk, cheese, peas, fresh and dried fruit, eggs. Thiamin has a number of important functions: It works with other B-group vitamins to help break down and release energy from the food we eat and it helps keep nerves and muscle tissue healthy.
Ping.
My diet now consists of more fruits and vegatables, (in smaller portions), and my daily pill intake includes an over the counter multivitamin. I take 7 pills in the morning, 3 at 6:OOPM and three at bedtime, (which includes two aspirin!)
pluses? What are those?
BUMP
Thanks for posting this. I was just diagnosed as being prediabetic, despite being very slender and fit. Scared me half to death, because there isn’t much I can do to improve my diet or lose weight. A coworker just died of diabetes a few months ago and she too was slender, fit, and disciplined about eating.
My question also. Must be a typo.
Beans, beans, the magical fruit - the more you eat, the more you toot, the more you toot, the better your feel so have some beans for every meal!
I’m busy at the moment trying to find out if seal meat is a good source of vitamin b1. Since seals have 25 times more iron(compounds) in their tissues than the average mammal, B1 ought to be in there. Reindeer tissue is 3 times higher too.
I caught this curse seven years ago (dad was, my aunt was) and have found the number one benefit is exercise. A swim of a half hour walk can improve control dramatically.
Another form of Thiamine is Benfotiamine
Every morning I take my dogs for a two- to three-mile walk/run in a nearby nature preserve. After work I hike out half a mile to catch my horse, hike half a mile back in, ride for an hour (which is both aerobic and strength-building), then walk her around to cool her out. Late at night I take the dogs for another walk of roughly two miles. (They’re thin, too.) I also do weight training, do major home-improvement projects, cut the grass, and garden. Tell me when or how I should get more exercise or lose more weight.
A site in Finland that with a little bit of work enables you to find ALL the nutritional content of everything in everything.
They think a lot about food. 's cold up there!
Pork edges out reindeer meet on B1, by about 2% or so. Not to worry. On the other hand raw iron content in reindeer is 10 times higher than that in lean ham.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiamine
Thiamine is essential in forming thiamine pyrophosphate (TPP), a coenzyme used in the “oxidation” of glucose to pyruvate. Pyruvate is then broken down by the Kreb’s cycle or the “oxidative-phosphorylation” pathway if you will by the energy packets called “mitochondria.” The deficiency of thiamine could reflect TPP being broken down driving excess glucose into the oxidative pathway. Otherwise, glucose is just metabolized by simple glycolysis [which is anaerobic] (does not need oxygen) and yields far less energy.
In other words, this could reflect not simply a deficiency of thiamine which is plentiful in the routine diet as documented here, but its depletion as the body “tries” to rid itself of “excess glucose” that would get stored as fat. The authors have no evidence of which is at play here.
I still think the problem is more likely to involve problems with insulin receptors or their modification but I am not a sugar biochemist.
Małecka SA, Poprawski K, Bilski B. II Kliniki Kardiologii Katedry Kardiologii w Poznaniu.
Usefulness and application of vitamin B1 (thiamine) and it's derivatives (benfotiamine, sulfotiamine) in some environmental diseases like congestive heart failure and diabetes is described. Possibility of its use in geriatry and in pain-associated diseases is also analysed. Concise description of the role of thiamine in the human organism, its content in some food products and results of this vitamin deficiency are also presented.
PMID: 17017487 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
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