Thiamine rich orange juice

Oranges are a treasure trove of nutrients and protective plant compounds, including vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. Orange juice is a healthy source of thiamine. Eight ounces of orange juice contain 0.223 milligram of thiamine, almost 19 percent of the DRI for males 19 and over and 20 percent of the DRI for females in that age group.

Thiamine is one of the B vitamins. Thiamine is naturally present in some foods or added to some food products.

Thiamine is a vital player in energy metabolism, which means it is involved in the growth, development, and function of cells. Thiamine may also play a role in supporting cognition and nervous system health. 

Thiamine is sometimes called the “anti-stress” vitamin because it supports the body’s ability to function under stressful conditions. Inadequate intake of this vitamin in diet causes dropsy, palpitations and heart failure.

Thiamine acts as an anti-beriberi or antineuritic vitamin. People with beriberi have difficulty standing, walking, and controlling their muscles. This disease was common in the 1800s in Southeast Asian countries when people started eating white “polished” rice instead of brown rice.

Thiamine also acts as an antineuritic which is preventing or relieving inflammation of a nerve.
Thiamine rich orange juice

Manifestation of thiamine deficiency

Beriberi is caused by thiamine (vitamin B1) deficiency and also known as thiamine deficiency. It is most serious in infants due to their rapid growth and development that occurs during this time and the relatively high thiamine needs compared to body size.

Beriberi is rare in the United States. The disease often occurs in developing countries among people with a diet that consists mostly of white rice or highly refined carbohydrates. Thiamine deficiency can develop within 2-3 months of a deficient intake and can cause disability and death.

Thiamine is required for the production of ribose, RNA, DNA, nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD), and adenosine triphosphate (ATP). It is particularly important in tissues that are highly metabolically active, including neurons, cardiac myocytes, and erythrocytes, all of which rely on glucose as a main energy substrate.

Thiamine deficiency leads to impaired glucose metabolism, decreased delivery of oxygen by red blood cells, cardiac dysfunction, failure of neurotransmission, and neuronal death.

Early symptoms of thiamin deficiency are nonspecific: fatigue, irritability, poor memory, sleep disturbances, precordial pain, anorexia, and abdominal discomfort.

There are 2 major manifestations of thiamine deficiency: cardiovascular disease (wet beriberi) and nervous system disease (dry beriberi and Wernicke–Korsakoff syndrome).

Wet beriberi: mainly affects the cardiovascular system, causing poor circulation and fluid buildup in the tissues. Usually presents as predominantly right sided heart failure associated with a high cardiac output or less frequently as cardiovascular collapse.

Dry beriberi: primarily affects and damages the nerves and can lead to decreased muscle strength, eventually muscle paralysis.

In extreme cases, beriberi is associated with Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome. Wernicke encephalopathy and Korsakoff syndrome are two forms of brain damage caused by thiamine deficiency.

The disorder (or spectrum of disorders) is classically associated with a diet consisting largely of polished rice (oriental beriberi), but may also arise if highly refined wheat flour forms a major part of the diet, and in food faddists (occidental beriberi). Nowadays, beriberi occurs mostly in people who abuse alcohol. Drinking heavily can lead to poor nutrition. Excess alcohol makes it harder for the body to absorb and store vitamin B1.
Manifestation of thiamine deficiency

Thiamine deficiency and their symptoms

Thiamine efficiency can cause cardiovascular and neurological signs and symptoms. Beriberi a serious thiamine efficiency disease, usually affects Asians, who subsist mainly on a diet of unenriched rice and wheat.

Among the symptoms of beriberi: chiefly nervous and cardiovascular systems affected; mental confusion, muscular weakness, loss of ankle and knee jerks, painful calf muscles, peripheral paralysis, edema (wet beriberi), muscle wasting (dry beriberi), enlarged heart.

In the United States, although uncommon, it usually occur in alcoholics, malnourished young adults, and infants who are on a low proteins diet or are being breast-fed by thiamine efficient mothers.

Sign and symptoms of infantile beriberi include cyanosis, dyspnea, tachycardia, aphonia (soundless crying), and eventual cardiac failure.

Although whole grains may be rich in thiamine, processing of grains significantly reduces their thiamine content. Likewise, because thiamin is water soluble and heat sensitive, cooking largely results in the loss or destruction of this vitamin especially when chlorinate waster is used.
Thiamine deficiency and their symptoms

Wernicke’s syndrome

Wernicke’s syndrome is an inflammation, hemorrhagic, degenerative condition of the brain.

The condition frequently occurring in alcoholic due to thiamine deficiency resulting from poor nutritional intake, alcohols-induce malabsorption in the small bowel, and decreased production of the thiamine-dependent enzyme transketolase.

Thiamine

It also occurs as a complication of GI tract disease and hyperemesis gravidarum associated with malabsorption and malnutrition.

Wernicke’s patents do have unawareness, as evidence by the fact that they do not attempt to correct what they say. Wernicke’s syndrome is characterized by sensorial impairment, apathy and inattentiveness accompanied by nystagmus, abducens and conjugate-gaze palsies, and ataxic gait.

Failure to treat the coma can increase the risk of mortality; the longer the coma remains untreated, the poorer the prognosis.
Wernicke’s syndrome

Wernicke’s syndrome

Wernicke’s syndrome is a condition frequently occurring in alcoholics due to thiamine deficiency resulting from poor nutritional intake, alcohol-induced malabsorption on the small bowel and decreased production of the thiamine-dependent enzyme transketolase.

It is characterized by lesions in several parts of the brain, including the hypothalamus, mammillary bodies and tissues surrounding the ventricles and aqueducts, double vision, ophthalmoplegia, involuntary and rapid movements of the eyes, lack of muscular coordination and decreased mental function, which may be mild or severe.

The symptoms are usually of absorption onset and may occur slightly or in various combinations. Although it is most commonly associated with nutritional deficiency of chronic alcoholism, Wernicke’s syndrome has been reported with hemodialysis and gastric surgery for morbid obesity.
Wernicke’s syndrome

Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome

Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome is the classical manifestation of central nervous system (CNS) deficiency of thiamine caused by alcoholism.

S. S. Korsakoff was a 19th century Russian physician who observed amnesic patients with widespread brain damage from alcoholism.

Thiamine deficiency in alcoholic results from a combination of factors, including inadequate dietary intake, reduced gastrointestinal absorption, decreased hepatic storage and impaired use do thiamine.

Thiamine

Acutely, recent memory is impaired more severely than other metal tasks. In its acute stages, Wernicke–Korsakoff syndrome includes combinations of ataxia and ocular motility abnormalities, including conjugate gaze paresis, abducens nerve paresis, and nystagmus. However, only a minority of patients display all these abnormalities.

Not all alcoholics develop Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome which suggest that genetic factors may be involved. The selective vulnerability to thiamine deficiency in different populations appears to be related to genetic variations of TK*(transketolase).
Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome 

*TK is a key pentose phosphate shunt enzyme that plays an important role in the production of reducing equivalents and pentose sugars.

Thiamine and memory

Thiamine or vitamin B1 is one of the B vitamins with antioxidant properties. It’s found in whole grains, brewer’s yeast, molasses and meats.

Among its functions, thiamine helps manufacture acetylcholine, one of the brain’s major chemical messenger. A scarcity of this nutrient impedes human brain’s ability to use glucose, sapping the energy required to perform mental activities.

A study at the University of Connecticut noted that thiamine supplementation increased memory abilities. The result showed that the people who took the thiamine supplement reported feeling significantly more clearheaded, composed and energetic.

Severe thiamine deficiency has at times cause memory loss, although in society such cases are unusual, and thiamine deficiency alone generally produces peripheral neuritis and numbness as its most outstanding features.

The deficiency would induced metabolic central nervous system disease predominantly affects memory. This characterized by confabulation and defect in retentive memory.
Thiamine and memory

Food rich with thiamine

Thiamine was the first if the B vitamins to be recognized. Like the other B vitamins, thiamine is an important participant in many energy-yielding reactions.

It promotes general body efficiency. It plays a role in growth, cell metabolism, appetite, neurologic functioning RNA and DNA formation and normal muscle tone in cardiac and digestive tissues.

Thiamine is found throughout the food supply though most foods contain only a small amounts. Pork is an excellent source of thiamin.

Other best source are wheat germ, whole cereals containing bran, liver, yeast and egg yolk.

Soy products, legumes, orange juice, nuts and organs meats such as liver ranks as good thiamine sources. 

Meat (except pork and organ meat), dairy products, seafood, and most fruits contain very little thiamine. Eating a wide variety of foods is the best way to ensure adequate thiamin consumption.

Thiamine is lost during cooking, especially when cooking is prolonged or at high tenrpatrues, Alkali also destroy thiamine.

The recommended adult daily allowance for thiamine is about 1.0 1.5 mg. depending on age and sex.
Food rich with thiamine

Discovery of Thiamine

Thiamine was the first vitamin to be discovered. Kanehiro Takaki, a Japanese naval doctor, was the first to report that beriberi seemed to be a nutritional deficiency based on reducing the incidence of beriberi in Japanese sailors by giving them additional meat, dry milk and vegetables.

Christiaan Eijkman, a Dutch military surgeon, who traveled to the Dutch East Indies to study beriberi, in 1890s began to clarify the role of diet in the development of beriberi.

Eijkman discovered that a disease similar to beriberi occurred in birds that were fed a diet of steam-cooked polished rice, as opposed to crude rice.

In 1926, thiamine was the first B vitamin isolated, as a crystalline, water soluble, yellowish white powder with a salty, slightly nutty taste. It was crystallized from rice polishing by two Dutch scientists Barend Jansen and W. F. Donald as antineuritic vitamin.

By 1936 it had been synthesized and its chemical structure determined by Robert R. Williams which he named ‘thiamine’.

The discovery of thiamine revolutionized the management of wet beriberi because thiamine quickly reversed the cardiac manifestations of the disease.
Discovery of Thiamine

Thiamine in general

Thiamine is a generic term applied to all substances possessing vitamin B1 activity, regardless of the anion attached to the molecule. Thiamine the biologically active thiamine pyrophosphate (diphospho-thiamine, cocarboxylase) has an important role in carbohydrate metabolism as a co-enzymes.

This substance is heat and oxygen stable in its dry form, heat and alkali reactive in solution and stabilized by acid.

Thiamine supplementation is usually provided in vitamin B –complex formulations, in most multivitamin preparation and in vitamin enriched foods such as cereals. Breakfast cereals and bread are often supplemented with additional vitamin B1. Thiamine is found widely distributed in foods. Thiamine is found in all plants and is synthesized by some microorganism, particularly yeasts.

Thiamine does not appear to be stored in the body to any appreciable extent; consequently, deficiency symptoms may be observed within a few weeks in subjects maintained on a deficient diet. The disease known as beriberi, which has neurological and cardiac symptoms, results from a severe dietary deficiency of thiamine.

In the diagnosis of thiamine deficiency, symptoms to be noted in particular are anorexia, fatigue, loss of weight, sensation of burning in the soles of the feet, tenderness in calf muscles, muscle cramps and general muscular weakness.
Thiamine in general