Benfotiamine is an ally in the fight against tissue damage from diabetes, aging and Gastric bypass surgery
Benfotiamine is a substance that, when taken orally, is converted into thiamine (Vitamin B1). It is found in food in only
small amounts.
Thiamine itself has been used for many years to treat
neurological disorders but its poor absorption and rapid metabolic
conversion
makes it difficult to achieve therapeutic levels in the body.
Benfotiamine solves this bioavailability problem. Taken orally, it is well absorbed and remains in the body for days.
Benfotiamine is typically used to prevent:
diabetes-induced damage to nerves, blood vessels, eyes, and kidneys
neuropathy due to alcohol consumption
tissue damage and aging due to protein cross-linking
genetic damage in late-stage kidney disease
nerve damage due to vitamin B-1 deficiency after gastric bypass surgery.
It is also used by bodybuilders to improve muscle flexibility and performance.
Read Benfotiamine Monograph
Benfotiamine is a substance that, when taken orally, is converted into thiamine (Vitamin B1). It is found naturally in plants
of the onion family, but the amounts present are miniscule.
Thiamine has been used for many years to treat neurological disorders. But this form of the vitamin is poorly absorbed and rapidly
metabolized, making it difficult to achieve therapeutic levels in the body.
Benfotiamine, being fat-soluble, solves this bioavailability problem.1 Taken orally, it is well absorbed and remains in the body for days.2 Consequently, benfotiamine can raise thiamine concentrations in the blood and tissues about 5 times higher than oral thiamine
consumption can.3
What we can’t tell you
In
the U.S. and some other industrialized countries, government agencies
like the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have adopted censorship as a
method for intensifying their control over supplement users and their
suppliers. Thus, FDA regulations prohibit us from telling you that any
of our products are effective as medical treatments, even if they are, in fact, effective.
Accordingly, we will limit our discussion of benfotiamine to a brief summary of relevant research, and let you draw your own
conclusions about what medical conditions it may be effective in treating.
Applications
Benfotiamine is typically used to prevent:
diabetes-induced vascular damage
neuropathy due to diabetes4,5,6 or alcohol7 consumption
nerve damage due to vitamin B-1 deficiency after gastric bypass surgery
How does it work?
Generally speaking, benfotiamine supplements serve as a source of thiamine and therefore increase the concentrations of this
vitamin in the body. Thiamine itself plays at least two biological roles:
increasing the rate at which glucose is converted to other sugars;8
maintaining conduction of information along nerve fibers.10,11,12
Thus, thiamine works to prevent high concentrations of glucose from developing in cells and thereby decreases the damaging
effects which glucose has on the body’s tissues. And thiamine also helps to maintain nerve function.
How
can glucose be damaging to the body? Isn’t it one of the body’s main
sources of energy? Yes, glucose is the most common of all sugars — it
is a basic constituent of honey and table sugar, and is the building
block of starches and other carbohydrates. Nevertheless, glucose has
two tragic down-sides:
during the metabolism of glucose (i.e., when cells break down glucose to extract its energy), free radicals are produced which
then proceed to damage the surrounding tissues;
a
small portion of the glucose molecules, instead of being metabolized,
react chemically with proteins in the tissues, producing crosslinks
(‘AGEs’) that impede or inactivate the proteins. The result is a loss
of flexibility and function in skin, muscle, and all other living
tissues.
Both of these side effects of glucose consumption are destructive to the body. They are considered major contributors to the
aging process as well as to the failure of organs and tissues in diabetes.13,14,15
But this damage can be limited if glucose levels in the body’s cells can be kept low. And they can be kept low if excess glucose can be rapidly converted to less harmful substances. Thiamine is a biological cofactor that
does exactly this16
— it promotes the conversion of glucose into other, less harmful
sugars, as well as promoting the breakdown of glucose into carbon
dioxide, water, and energy. Since benfotiamine is converted into
thiamine in the body, benfotiamine supplementation is equivalent to
dramatically increasing the bioavailability of thiamine.17
Diabetic applications
Diabetes
causes tissue damage in many — perhaps all — bodily tissues. This is to
be expected, since the hallmark of diabetes is a failure to limit the
body’s exposure to high glucose levels — levels that will cause damage
to any type of tissue. However, some kinds of glucose-related damage
can be prevented, or even reversed, by benfotiamine. Among these are:
damage to limbs caused by wounds and inadequate blood supply;19
damage to retina and other tissues by free radical production;20
dysfunction of nerves and kidneys due to a variety of mechanisms.5
Alcoholism
Alcoholics absorb thiamine poorly, and often show symptoms of thiamine deficiency.21
One of the results of such deficiencies is nerve damage, especially in
the extremities. Benfotiamine supplements can reverse some of these
neuropathic symptoms. For example, in a 2001 study, patients with
alcoholic polyneuropathy were given benfotiamine at 450 mg/day for 2
weeks followed by 300 mg/day for 4 weeks. The researchers reported a
regression in sensor and movement disorders, as well as some neuropathy
symptoms.22
Nerve conduction
Indirect
evidence suggests that thiamine plays a fundamental, but still-obscure,
role in cell signalling — not only in mammals, but throughout the
biological world. During the evolution of nerves as specialized
communication cells, this role of thiamine evolved, too. For example,
thiamine came to be involved in controlling the pores in nerve cell
membranes through which ions pass during neural activity.12 Thus, thiamine levels seem to be correlated with the efficiency with which nerves conduct information.
Gastric bypass surgery
Gastric bypass surgery can leave some patients with nutritional deficiencies because certain vitamins, such as vitamin B-1,
normally get absorbed in the parts of the digestive tract that have been bypassed.27 Symptoms of such B-1 deficiencies include numbness and weakness in arms and legs, and cognitive failures.28
Injections of vitamin B-1 are sometimes used to correct such B-1 shortages, but benfotiamine offers a more convenient approach
that can — and should — be followed soon after surgery rather than waiting for symptoms of nerve damage to appear.
Why not just take oral B-1 supplements after gastic bypass surgery? Because benfotiamine’s ability to raise B-1 levels in
the body is 5 times greater than that of oral B-1 supplements or of other B-1 derivatives.3,26
Bodybuilding
Because
of benfotiamine’s reputation for improving nerve conduction and
preserving tissue flexibility, it has become popular with
body-builders. Bodybuilders know from experience that muscles perform
better when the nerves controlling them work better and when the muscle
tissue itself is flexible.23
Safety
Benfotiamine has an excellent safety record. No reports of toxicity can be found in the medical literature.24
Reviews
A good overview of Benfotiamine and its uses is the one by Thorne Research.24 Another good Thorne Research review is their discussion of peripheral neuropathy.25
Conclusion
Is benfotiamine useful for the conditions and purposes mentioned above? We aren’t allowed to tell you, so you should take
a look at some of the references cited here, and then decide for yourself.
