Vitamin B1, also known as thiamine, is a really important nutrient. It helps your body turn the food you eat into energy for your cells. It’s also super involved with your nervous system, kind of like protecting the coating around your nerves from getting damaged. What’s tricky is that less than 1% of the thiamine in your body is stored in your blood. This means regular blood tests usually won’t tell you if you’re low on Vitamin B1, which is why doctors often miss it. So, it’s good to know the signs yourself.
The Sneaky Signs Your Body Needs More Vitamin B1
It’s easy to overlook a Vitamin B1 shortage because the signs can be pretty common and sometimes a bit strange. Here are some things to watch out for:
Key Takeaways
- Nerve Pain: If you feel tingling, burning, or shooting pain in your toes or feet, it could be a sign. When you don’t have enough B1, the protective coating around your longest nerves can get damaged, sending pain signals to your brain. High blood sugar or pre-diabetes can also cause this.
- Constant Yawning: Are you yawning a lot throughout the day, even after a good night’s sleep? Or do you just feel tired and worn out for no clear reason? Your cells might not be making enough energy because they need more Vitamin B1. Eating foods rich in B1, like sunflower seeds, mussels, pork, or garlic, can help boost your energy.
- Anxiety and Stress: If you’re often stressed, tense, and can’t stop overthinking, your nervous system might be stuck in a “fight or flight” mode. This state uses up a lot of your Vitamin B1. It can also lead to bigger problems like ongoing anxiety, trouble sleeping, panic attacks, or nightmares, which can eventually lead to feeling down. If you have these issues for a long time, you probably need more Vitamin B1 and magnesium to help calm your stress response and relax.
- Fast Heartbeat: Since Vitamin B1 helps create energy in your cells, it plays a big part in how your heart beats and how you breathe. Without enough B1, your heart might beat faster because it has to work harder to make energy for your body. This can sometimes happen if you drink too much caffeine from energy drinks, coffee, or soda.
- Swelling and Poor Circulation: Your body uses B1 to protect the inner lining of your arteries from damage. If you don’t have enough B1, your blood vessels become more open to damage from sugar in your blood. This can cause swelling and fluid buildup, especially in your feet and ankles. Drinking alcohol or eating too many refined carbs often causes this.
- Acid Reflux: Vitamin B1 helps the small muscle above your stomach relax and close properly after you eat. Without enough B1, this valve might stay open, letting acid go up into your food pipe. This causes a burning feeling, irritation, and sometimes a lump sensation in your throat.
- White or Blue Nails: If your fingernails turn completely white or blue, it means there isn’t enough oxygen in your blood. This is serious and could be from anemia, liver problems, or heart failure. But a Vitamin B1 shortage might also be partly causing the protein in your nails to look white or blue.
- Wide Walking Pattern: If you have a more serious Vitamin B1 shortage, you might lose coordination and have muscle weakness in your legs. This makes people walk with their legs wider apart, taking shorter steps and slightly dragging their feet. This happens because the nerve coating, called myelin, has broken down, and the nerves are starting to die.
- Poor Navigation: Parts of your brain, like the hippocampus and cerebellum, need a lot of Vitamin B1 to work right. Without enough B1, these brain parts can shrink, causing problems with finding your way around, knowing directions, and understanding where you are in time and space. For example, you might rely more on a GPS. Early studies are also showing a link between low Vitamin B1 and Alzheimer’s disease.
- Hyperactivity: Both kids and adults can become hyperactive without enough Vitamin B1. This can lead to conditions like ADHD, OCD, Tourette’s, and general irritability where you can’t sit still. B1 is needed to help calm the brain and nervous system by controlling how energy flows through your nerve cells.
- Over or Under Sweating: People low in Vitamin B1 might sweat too much or not at all. This is because B1 is involved with the autonomic nervous system, which helps your body adjust to different temperatures. Without enough B1, your body struggles to adapt, causing problems with sweating.
- Restless Legs: If you feel a strong urge to move your legs at night, with an annoying crawling feeling, or you just can’t sit or lie still because of a deep irritation in your body, you likely have low Vitamin B1. This causes overexcited nerves. Drinking alcohol, certain medicines, or sugar can lower your Vitamin B1 and cause this.
One more thing to mention is diabetes. People with diabetes are almost certainly low in Vitamin B1 because their bodies use up B1 to handle high blood sugar. People with diabetes should regularly take a good quality natural B1 supplement, like allithiamine or benfotiamine, along with a natural B complex from nutritional yeast. These can help lower the risk of nerve damage and tissue death from high blood sugar.
Why Blood Tests Don’t Always Tell The Whole Story
As I mentioned, less than 1% of the Vitamin B1 in your body is stored in your blood. So, a simple blood test usually won’t tell you if you have enough. The levels can also change day to day depending on how much sugar, alcohol, or medicines you’ve taken. That’s why it’s really important to pay attention to the signs your body gives you and understand what might be causing the shortage.
What Can Cause a Vitamin B1 Shortage?
Vitamin B1 is super important for helping your cells turn food into energy for your heart, nerves, and muscles. Because of this, you need to get at least 1.1 milligrams of it from your food every day. However, certain things can really use up your Vitamin B1, making your needs go way up. For example:
- Alcoholic drinks quickly use up your Vitamin B1 and stop your body from taking it in from your small intestine.
- If you eat too many carbs or sugary foods, they quickly turn into blood sugar, which uses up your stored B1 to turn them into energy.
- Caffeine and tannins found in coffee, tea, soda, or energy drinks can overstimulate your nerves, which uses up more B1 to help calm them down.
- Long-term stress can cause a B1 shortage because of the increase in adrenaline or cortisol.
- Foods high in sulfites, like wine, gravies, or dried fruits, can harm the good bacteria in your gut that usually make some B1.
- Finally, certain medicines like antacids, antibiotics, birth control, and diabetes medicines can also use up Vitamin B1.
How to Get Your Vitamin B1 Levels Up
If you’re experiencing some of these signs, here’s how you can boost your Vitamin B1 levels:
- Start eating at least three tablespoons of unfortified nutritional yeast every day. This is hands down one of the best natural sources of Vitamin B1 and the B complex. You can mix it with yogurt, sprinkle it into stews, stir-fries, or sauces.
- You can also get good amounts of Vitamin B1 from foods like sunflower seeds, organic pork, wild salmon, garlic, asparagus, squash, and mussels.
- You could take a daily supplement called Allithiamine, which has 50 milligrams of Vitamin B1 in a fat-soluble form. This is actually the most stable natural form of Vitamin B1, taken from garlic and other similar plants.
- If you have nerve or neurological problems, take 300 milligrams of Benfotiamine twice a day. This is a man-made but fat-soluble version of B1 that’s five times better absorbed and can get deep into nerve tissue to help fix existing damage.
- I also suggest cutting out alcoholic drinks and refined sugary foods, which are using up your B1 stores.
- Switch your rice. White rice has its B1 removed during processing. When you eat it, it can also use up your stored B1. So, swap it for a healthier option like cauliflower rice. Sometimes, you could have a small serving of wild rice instead.
- Your gut bacteria can also make Vitamin B1 for you. To help boost your good gut bacteria, eat foods rich in lactobacillus and saccharomyces, such as sauerkraut, kefir, kimchi, miso, tempeh, pickles, and lots of fiber from vegetables, seeds, nuts, and berries.
Supplements to Be Careful With
Always check the ingredients on supplements. I suggest avoiding thiamine mononitrate or thiamine hydrochloride for long-term use. It’s hard to know how these man-made forms were made, and they can sometimes have bad stuff like ammonia or acetone, which are used in the making process. I’d stick with nutritional yeast, allithiamine, or benfotiamine for the best results.