Alcoholism and Thiamin

One of my favorite and most frequented websites called Doctoryourself.com hosted by Dr. Andrew Saul is a menagerie of knowledge regarding health/wellness, nutritional therapy and alternative health. I find it difficult to keep myself from the site on a daily basis. Dr. Saul's website offers high quality nutritional information from himself, a medical doctor who found himself perplexed by modern medicines way of treating illness and then became more comfortable with treating disease and illness nutritionally, rather than with many of the methods practiced in traditional medicine.

As a 15 year sober alcoholic, I found an article by Dr. Saul regarding nutritional treatment of alcoholism quite compelling, mostly because I found the B complex vitamins to be instrumental in helping me overcome my tendency to drink. Here's Dr. Saul's two cents about the topic in one of his articles on alcoholism.

Malnourishment

One of the points Dr. Saul had made mention of is the fact that because alcohol is a filler, it gives the drinker a false sense of being fed, however, in reality we couldn't be farther from being well nourished. In fact, such a degree of malnourishment can occur in very extreme cases, much like my own sisters, wherein the bones can undergo hairline fractures throughout many parts of the body.

In my sister's case, her entire rib cage had so many of these fractures we thought she had bone cancer. After some testing, we found it was malnourishment due to her drinking and lack of nutrients from eating little to no food many times. The liver and brain become slowly but profoundly damaged as well, as was the case with my sister and hasn't improved to this day.

The constant drinking diminishes nutrient absorption and therefore depletes what little B vitamins may be present in the alcoholic, requiring an increase in the need for nutrients, but if there's active drinking going on, the problem will persist and grow emergent.

B-1 (Thiamine)

In Dr. Saul's alcoholism article, he states that just being deficient in one of the B vitamins called thiamine, is enough to cause things like lack of secretion of hydrochloric acid, your stomachs power fluid to break down food and nutrients so they can then be transported out to the body. Many other dysfunctions of the gastrointestinal system can include things like extreme constipation and anorexia. Dr. Saul states in this article that these occurrences take place due to the fact that the alcohol impedes cellular energy within the GI tract. The result is no energy equals lack of function. Yikes!

Neurological Damage

Not only does B-1 deficiency disrupt good digestive function, it will create all sorts of symptoms neurologically. Some of these include decreased alertness, chronic fatigue, reflex response that is diminished, and in severe cases can cause damage to the myelin sheath, the fatty protection that surrounds each one of our nerves.

Cardiovascular Damage

Damage to the cardiovascular system that includes dilation of the blood vessels, resulting in edema, heart failure, and general cardiovascular weakness are all a reality in this sad scenario as well.

Stay aware of the fact that this is all just from lack of ONE of the B vitamins. Dr. Saul states in his article that the RDA for thiamin at 1-2 milligrams is not "remotely close" to being enough for the alcoholic, and goes on to state that other nutrients, such as C, the entire B complex, lecithin, and the amino acid glutamine are all part of getting this sort of situation under control and in a healthy direction.

http://www.doctoryourself.com/alcoholism.html