Some of the most astonishing miracles to
come out of the nutrition laboratories in recent months have had to do with the
mighty family of water-soluble vitamins grouped together under the head of the
B complex.
When they use the term "B
complex," scientists are tacitly admitting that they do not know all the
vitamins that compose it. Yet experiments with animals indicate that the B
vitamins may turn out to be the most remarkable treasure house o£ human health
thus far discovered.
The entire B complex (not the individual
and better known B vitamins) appears to be a preventive o£ baldness and of gray
hair, at least in animals, as we shall later see. Liberal B intake in animals
is believed by many researchers to encourage greater resistance to infantile
paralysis. Also, in very recent experiments, it has proved remarkably effective
in preventing the development of liver cancers in laboratory rats. Right now
there is a ferment of activity to relate these startling findings to human
beings.
Two practical and potent sources of the
entire B complex in human diets are liver and yeast. Liver is a veritable
hoarder of vitamins, known and unknown—among the unknown elements being the
factor that prevents niciôus anemia. Early experiments were performed with
calves' liver, leading to exaggerated demand and high prices for this
particular variety. Beef liver, pork liver, and chicken livers are considerably
cheaper and just as important nutritionally as the organ of the aristocratic
calf.
Baker's or brewer's yeast is a good source
of the B complex, since the living plants of yeast have the ability to
synthesize vitamins.
Best known of the B vitamins are Bi, G, and
nicotinic acid, which have had a good deal to do with making you what you are
today—or, just as important, what you aren't.
Vitamin B1 Thiamin
Once upon a time there was a wife who
scrapped with her husband. She resented his mild suggestions that they go to a
movie or listen to the radio or do this or that. She was continually on edge,
fretful, jumpy and contentious, and constantly tired out.
Having a poor appetite, she usually
breakfasted on a cup of black coffee and was satisfied with a slice of white
bread and a bit of jelly for lunch. The harried husband finally got her to a
doctor who checked up on her symptoms and concluded that she was a victim of
vitamin starvation, with particular shortage of Vitamin B1 A vitamin-rich diet
of properly balanced foods restored connubial felicity to the household.
Note the vagueness of this virago's symptoms.
It is not difficult for a doctor to diagnose acute vitamin deficiencies, but
mild shortages—the kinds that are surprisingly common in this supposedly
well-nourished country of ours— are often confusing because the symptoms can
originate from many different causes, many of them having nothing to do with
vitamins. Moreover, vitamin deficiencies rarely exist singly—shortages of one
vitamin usually indicate that the intake of other vitamins is also inadequate.
The first signs of B1 deficiency are
usually "that tired feeling" and a loss of appetite. Constipation,
"nervousness," digestive disturbances, headache, dizziness, loss of
weight, rapid heartbeat, irritability—the frequency of these complaints
reflects common deficiencies of thiamin in the average American diet. Sometimes
all the victim complains of is no zest for life, which he probably attributes
to his poor appetite.
Long continued thiamin shortage brings such
signs as pain and heaviness in the legs, cramps in the calf muscles, burning
feet, numbness of fingers and toes, and, in extreme cases, the serious disease
of beriberi which if not arrested usually results in death from heart failure.
Vitamin Bi has been called the
pepper-upper, the nerve vitamin, and lack of it does result in conspicuous damage
to the nerve fibers. But that isn't the half of it.
The "horrible example" who used
to decorate the platform of the temperance lecturer was undoubtedly a casualty
of Barleycorn. It has just been learned, however, that the old soak was less a
victim of what alcohol did to him than of what it didn't do for him.
Specifically, alcohol cuts down one’s
all-important intake of thiamin in two ways: it furnishes calories that
increase the need for thiamin; at the same time it not only fails to provide
the vitamin but it decreases the intake by diminishing the normal appetite for
food. This applies to heavy drinkers who, notoriously, are poor eaters.
Continued thiamin deprivation, moreover,
causes the appetite to dwindle to the vanishing point.
The victim of alcoholism who is carried to
the hospital in a straitjacket, flailing about to keep from being trodden upon
by polychrome elephants, is partly a victim of poisoning but mostly a victim of
starvation. His nerves, heart, digestion, and appetite show effects of lack of
thiamin.
Dramatically, an injection or two of pure
thiamin will frequently bring a delirium tremens patient back to normal in a
day's time. He loses his jitters and hallucinations and starts eating like a
truck horse. The ability of revolutionary forefathers to consume huge amounts
of hard liquor has been attributed to their heavy thiamin intakes from the
whole-grain, unrefined foods of older diets.
It has also been proposed that whiskey be
fortified with thiamin tablets to prevent hangovers. The remedy would
theoretically work, but alcohol can hardly be recommended as a food. Life is
not lived on thiamin alone.
You need B1 for sound digestion; recently
it has been shown that rats deprived of the vitamin develop peptic ulcers which
are cured when intake is increased. You need it for normal intestinal activity.
It is profoundly important to the heart and circulatory system, a builder of
morale.
All of these jobs are performed through
thiamin's ability to help your cells to take up oxygen—in a sense, to enable
your whole body to breathe. Energy-yielding carbohy¬drates require thiamin to
set fire to them. In fact, the fewer carbohydrates you eat, the less thiamin
you need, which is why thiamin requirements are relatively low in reducing
diets.
However, if you go out and play a few fast
games of tennis, or cram 36 holes of golf into a sunny Saturday, up zooms your
need for thiamin. The more energy you burn, the more thiamin you need for
efficient combustion.
Practically all common foods contain
thiamin; it is essential to every living thing, plant or animal. Deficiencies,
then, ought to be very rare. The trouble is that thiamin is a rough,
shirt-sleeved worker who is repelled by the sissy notion of refinement. The
vitamin prefers to live in the coarse, outer portions of foodstuffs—the husks
and skins and tough integuments—exactly the portions we throw away or have
discarded for us by modern refining processes.
Cereals are a case in point. Ordinary white
flour is poor in thiamin because the wheat germ and bran layers of the kernel
are removed. Diets built around polished rice, stripped of the outer coats of
the grain, are responsible for the scourge of beriberi that plagues Oriental
countries.
On the other hand, whole-grain flours and
cereals are good sources. So are the fortified flours and white breads that
have recently, with government persuasion, been put upon the market. Breakfast
cereals are likewise available in vitamin-fortified forms. Nevertheless, if you
can tolerate whole-grain products, they are preferable to the fortified refined
varieties because of other values not supplied by addition o£ thiamin alone.
Nuts and legumes—peanuts, peas, and
beans—are "whole grain" products and good sources of thiamin. So are
meats, fish, fowl and milk, since they are usually used in substantial
quantities. Among meats, pork is an unusually rich source, and gland meats such
as liver and kidney rate high.
Thiamin intake can be bolstered rather
easily by the use o£ a few spoons of granulated or flaked wheat germ every day.
Drug stores can supply wheat germ at reasonable prices, and the pure vitamin at
slightly higher cost. Yeast is also an excellent source.
Unhappily, your capacity to store thiamin
is very limited, which means that you must get adequate amounts every day.
Since it is soluble in water, you can help to assure your supply if the liquids
in which foods are cooked are served in soups and gravies.
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