Vitamin B1 (Thiamine), POTS, & Your Gut - IBS Freedom Podcast #202

In this episode of the IBS Freedom Podcast, Amy and Nicole celebrate the start of season three by diving into the first episode of their single-nutrient series, focusing on Vitamin B1 (thiamine). They discuss the critical role of thiamine in energy production, gut-brain axis function, and overall health. Highlighting its importance to the autonomic nervous system and its potential impacts on motility and stomach acid production, the hosts emphasize the need for a balanced diet over supplements while considering practical steps to address thiamine deficiency. They also explore vulnerable populations, symptoms of deficiency, and the benefits of dietary diversity in achieving optimal nutrition.

00:32 Introducing the Single Nutrient Series
01:16 The Importance of Vitamin B1
02:07 Nutrient Deficiencies and Gut Health
03:08 The Pitfalls of Supplementation
05:48 Synergy in Nutrition
12:58 Thiamine Deficiency: Vulnerable Populations
29:33 Signs and Symptoms of Thiamine Deficiency
35:52 Understanding the Autonomic Nervous System
36:36 Thiamine Deficiency and Its Effects
38:21 Thiamine in Gut Health and SIBO
42:35 Practical Steps to Address Thiamine Deficiency
49:57 The Importance of Dietary Diversity
01:01:17 Thiamine's Role in Mental Health
01:07:56 Conclusion and Next Steps

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Nikki's Info:
- Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/TriangleHolisticGutHealth
- Instagram: @Gut.Microbiome.Queen
- FODMAP Freedom in 90 Days: https://www.fodmapfreedom.com/enroll
- Private Appts: https://infinityholistichealth.com/

Amy's Info:
- Practice: https://sibodiaries.com/
- Instagram: @Amy_Hollenkamp_RD

Transcript

# Vitamin B1 (Thiamine) - IBS Freedom Podcast #202

Hello, hello and welcome back to season three of the IBS Freedom Podcast, if you can even believe it. Not two, not two, three. Three. I feel like the. The way that we said that kind of reminded me of how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop? 1, 2, 3. 

And then the owl just, just bites it.

I feel it's that the commercial, it was an owl, right? It cheats. Yes it was. 

Yeah. 

Okay. Core millennial memories unlocked, right? For those of us this age. Um, Amy, I'm very excited about today's episode actually, because this is something that we've had on the docket for, what would you say, maybe two years?

Yeah. We've talked about the idea of doing a single nutrient series and highlighting one vitamin or mineral in a whole dedicated podcast episode all to its own. So this is the first in that series. And what better place to start than vitamin B one? 

I know right when I go on, I'm not yawning because this topic is boring, I promise.

Um, she's not yawning at you, she's yawning with you. I'm yawning. That's worse. Just being sleep deprived as a postpartum woman. Um, but yeah, I'm super excited. I, again, just through the journey of writing my book and just over time working with people, I can't overemphasize how important nutrition is. And you could look at it broadly of just needing enough calories, but then you could get more granular about needing micronutrients.

Your gut brain axis needs certain micronutrients to function optimally, and we know that IBS and gut issues are. Usually, there's usually difficulty with the, that communication between the gut brain access something is, um, messing with the signal to a degree. There's not efficient or effective communication between the gut and the brain.

The computer's not computing 

the 

way it should. 

Exactly. So, you know, and why could that be? I think a big reason for a lot of our patients, uh, is because of nutrient deficiencies. Like thi in, um, be, and a lot of times it can, it can impart be because they're trying to get their gut symptoms better and they can start restricting more and more foods, which leads to more nutrient deficiencies and things over time.

And so I love this series because it starts to create. A different way of looking at nutrition, of not just pulling stuff out. It's more like, oh, how do I fuel the gut brain access appropriately and adequately so that it runs better? It's like you wouldn't put apple juice in your car and expect it to run well.

Uh, from an energy standpoint, it's like we need to figure out what's missing and why, um, why the gut-brain axis isn't working optimally. 

I, I think you just accidentally grazed on something that I wanna cover right in the beginning of this episode. Okay. So if I may for just a moment. Would you agree with me here two minutes into the episode that the solution is not for everybody to run out right now and get a thiamine supplement?

Correct? Correct. They are useful at times and there might be people who listen to this episode who feel it's appropriate or even necessary for them to do that. But I'm telling you right now, all of you listening to this are Pill popper crazy people. You run out, you know, you run to Amazon or Fullscript or whatever, and you get the next pill that you think is gonna cure everything.

The answer is not in a pill. The answer is making sure you have the nutrition and the lifestyle that supports the use of this vitamin and the other ones that we're gonna talk to or talk about later in the series. So yeah, resist the urge people. 

Well, and it's, it's also important to recognize if you're deficient in one nutrient, there could be other nutrients that you're deficient in because your diet's limited.

And so. Going out and buying a supplement is not necessarily a really root cause or holistic way to deal with the deficiency. You could get way more bang for your buck, uh, working on increasing certain nutrients, dietarily and have like synergistic effects. Like maybe you can find, maybe you've looked at your diet and you see like, oh, I'm low in these three or four nutrients.

You can find certain foods that might cover two or three bases. Um, versus going out and buying, uh, you know, a vitamin E supplement and a vitamin B one supplement and a vitamin A or whatever it is. Or a multi, like, I think you can. Um, get a lot more benefit by looking at nutrition in a more synergistic, holistic way of, oh, I can get some of this in dietarily and you probably will absorb the nutrients better from food.

Um, as well, not, not in all cases, like I, the, the good news if, if you were to do a B one supplement or if you were deficient and there's signs of that and you kind of get confirmation of that. I don't think a B one, B one seems like a pretty safe supplement to try and you can kind of pee out excess B one.

Um, but again, from a holistic lens, you're much better off working on nutrition and making sure that you're getting it in dietarily and maybe you do supplement for like a month or something, but after the, you replenish levels, you wanna be able to maintain that across time. 

Well, yeah, and I, so I think that there's a few factors here for the argument to get this stuff through food and not it, not exclusively through supplements.

I think a, um, and probably the least compelling out of the reasons is that it's gonna be more cost effective. Yeah. You have to eat food anyway Right. To survive. Like, you might as well make it nutrient dense and that your food is kind of, uh, feeding two birds with one stone, if you will. Right. Like you're getting calories in, but you're also getting your vitamins and minerals in versus if you like divided those two things up, like, oh, I'm getting calories from my Doritos and then I'm getting my vitamins from a vitamin product that I purchase separately.

Right. Like, you might as well combine the two. It's more cost effective to do that also. Um, I do think that there's more and more research coming out, the idea of synergy in the constituents in foods. Mm-hmm. And. You know, there's, there's probably a lot of chemicals or constituents in foods and plants that we don't even know about yet.

Right. That like scientists haven't studied and they haven't named and they haven't published the papers yet. And I, I love the way Michael Pollan describes this at one point in one of his lectures. He says, we don't know what's going on deep inside the soul of a carrot. 

Mm-hmm. 

And it's this idea of like, we egotistical.

Humans, right? With our smarty pads, frontal lobes, we like to look at a food and then think, what are all the good things that we could suck outta that food? Right? Like, oh, I'm just gonna remove the betacarotene. I'm just gonna remove the fiber, I'm gonna remove the whatever, and I'm just gonna suck all those things out and that I could just throw away the rest of the carrot, right?

Because none of that is important. And then I'm just gonna take this new scientifically derived pill of betacarotene, and it's just the same as a carrot. And it's like there's probably stuff in that husk that you threw away that is valuable and we just don't understand it yet. Um, actually as a potential mini side tangent, did I ever tell you about this with turmeric?

No. Okay. So when people take turmeric supplements. They usually go for the Curcuminoid products, right? Like X amount dose of emulsified, liposomal whatever, curcumin and curcuminoids. And that's what you'll see on the shelf for like 80 bucks. And I remember there's this herbalist who's very, very well respected in the herbal medicine community.

And he was talking about this at of conference ones. And he said, yeah, but there's other good stuff in turmeric beyond the curcuminoids and like you're missing out on that synergy. And he made a point of saying that he's had people who are taking the expensive 80, $90 bottle curcuminoid products and it works, but that he has switched people over to just a tincture of turmeric.

And it works equally well, but for a fraction of the cost. Right? And so I actually went home and I did that. I had a patient who had arthritis and she was on one of those super expensive curcuminoid gel cap formulas. And it was working for her. And I still remember her name, Bonnie. Hi Bonnie, if you're listening.

But I remember going home from that conference and telling her, I was like, Hey Bonnie, I will give you a bottle of turmeric tincture. Will you be my Guinea pig and report back and tell me if this is as good as what you had been taking? And it was, and a bottle of the tincture was like 20 bucks. 

Hmm. So it was 

way more cost effective.

But this guy, when he was talking about it, he talked about a study I think that might've been done in mice where they extracted all of the curcuminoids out of the turmeric. And they gave that as a supplement and it worked. But then they took like whatever was left, the husk of whatever, remained from the plant, and they ground that up and gave that as a supplement.

And that. Also worked. Right. And it had no curcuminoids in it whatsoever. Right. So similarly, you know, don't, don't look at it from a reductionistic, you know, egotistical smarty pads point of view. Don't look at this as, oh, I'll just take vitamin B one all by itself and then that'll do the exact same thing as if I had a pork chop.

'cause I assure you it's not the same thing. Yeah. It could be a bridge to get you there. Right. But it's not the end goal, you know? Right. 

Yeah, no, I totally agree. And I, I do think if you're deficient in some of these supplement, or sorry, if you're deficient in some of these nutrients, you're probably deficient in more than one.

And again, it's sort of, uh, you need to look at this from the lens of, am I doing, is my outlook on my diet or nutrition potentially leading to. More deficiencies across time because again, a lot of people that I work with too, it's not just that they have thymine deficiency, that they have all, they have maybe five or six deficiencies in their diet, plus they aren't getting enough calories, plus they, you know, are scared of foods, plus they aren't getting a fiber.

So like a lot of times if you're looking at this holistically too, um, like you said, you're gonna get fiber if you add in beans or something and you get more fiber and then you get some folate and you get some, uh, thi and you get kind of some of these other things as well. But I, I do think thi is one where.

Being restrictive or going low fodmap, you can become more deficient in thiamine. Like you're, you're taking out some sources, um, some really good sources of thiamine in the diet. So I do find in the IBS space when people are restricting different things like, um, grains, um, beans, legumes, that kind of stuff, um, you can really start to get lower, um, yeah, with thiam.

So I agree. Um, that's something to keep in mind too is just the simple fact. It could be kind of a symptom of the restriction. Um, the fact that your thi is a little bit low 'cause. A lot of these foods are thi and rich that we're removing. 

Well, it's, it, it goes back to what we've talked about a lot on this podcast.

It's this idea that you're digging yourself a deeper hole and you don't even realize it. But then your chief complaint is that you can't see out of the hole. Right. And like every practitioner that comes along, every internet influencer other than us who comes along is just handing you a new shiny shovel.

Right? Like, oh, but this shovel is diamond encrusted, this shovel is made out of platinum. Right? Like it's just, it's still a shovel, right? At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what's made out of. Um, and the restriction is, in this case a really big shovel. Mm-hmm. But actually, I wanted to lead the episode with this, and I'm gonna give myself a point 'cause we're doing this before we hit the 15 minute mark, which is pretty decent for us.

But I will say this, let's maybe paint a little bit of a picture of who. Who might be especially vulnerable to thiamine deficiency or like the populations where you would see it the most? So I, I pulled up some notes that I had on thiamine from a while back at this particular list, uh, of like, kind of quick reference, like vulnerable populations I had gotten from self hacked.com, which I think is, it's, it's a pretty decent website usually.

Um, so they list, for example, vulnerable populations, people who would probably be more prone to thym and deficiency, um, athletes and super active people. And we could, we could explain these later. Let me just rattle 'em off for a sec. So athletes or super active people, alcohol abusers, pregnant and nursing women.

Diabetics, cancer patients, obese people, people with hyperthyroidism, and people who take diuretics or chemotherapy. And then I would agree with you, I think that anybody who's, who is on a super restrictive diet is at risk of nutritional deficiencies, but particularly like the low carb, low FODMAP kind of bend that we see in the IBS population, I think sets you up for that.

Um, I will say too, I've seen this swaying both ways because thiamine is so necessary for carbohydrate metabolism. I feel like if you pardon the expression, if you fuck up your carbohydrate metabolism enough, I feel like that's gonna mess with with diamond. And I've seen people clinically where this became relevant and like either people who went on kind of a bender and they ate nothing but carbs for a while.

Um, or people who get super into fitness. Like there was one woman, she was doing figure posing. You know the thing where you get like super abnormally shredded and you wear like spray tan, like spray tan, and then you go out in a thong bikini and stiletto high heels and you pose in front of people in a judge panel.

She was doing that and she ran herself into, did you say 

finger posing or figure posing Figure. Okay. So like bodybuilding. Is it bodybuilding or. 

Figure posing is its own sort of world, apparently. Okay. And the whole, I thought you were saying finger posing and I was like, Ooh, what is this? That's kind of even better.

Could we like make a do thing and call it figure finger posing and we just, we take pictures of our fingers like this, like, right. Like our fingers are people walking. Yeah. I'm gonna, I'm going to tag you in an Instagram story with no other context whatsoever. I'm just gonna like, take a picture of my hand like this and call it finger posing and I'm gonna tag you.

And nobody's gonna know what we're talking about Yeah. Until they listen to this episode. That's true. Um, but yes, figure posing. Okay. But again, it's like you're getting abnormally ripped and shredded and lean and like mm-hmm. 0.0001% body fat. Right. Um. But I, I remember I worked with a woman who was getting super into fitness and I think it was figure posing and she only ate like chicken breasts, broccoli and white rice.

Right. For months and months and months while she worked herself into the dirt with her workouts. And then after the figure posing competition was done, she went on a total bender and she ate nothing but like bread and cookies and carbs. Yeah. Because she over restricted for so long that when the competition was over she just snapped and yo-yo aggressively to the other direction.

But that was what around when her symptoms all started and we looked at that and we were like, oh, so you basically burned yourself into this thym and deficiency place and then you. Ate nothing but carbs exclusively and sugar right. For a period of time where you really needed the thiamine to right.

Process that. And then you burned through any remaining thi that you might've had on hand, and then your autonomic nervous system suffer the consequences of that. And now here you are stuck talking to me. And of course, by the way, she had done all of the quote unquote SIBO diets by the time she met me.

Right. Digging herself a further hole. 

Yeah. I think you're right in terms of some of the dietary extremism, potentially driving some thiamine issues. Just because, um, thymine is responsible for carb burning or like, it, it plays a big role in carb metabolism and car burning. And so if you're. Overdoing it, you're gonna need, or if you're eating high carb, you're gonna need more thim.

And some people can kind of keep up with that and that's fine. When you are, um, low carb, you don't need as much thi but you're also not eating as much Thym. Yes, she's wearing a lama mish shirt. Beautiful la But yeah, I mean, I think if, if you're not eating a ton of carbs, you are going to, um, you're not gonna, you're not gonna need as much thi but you're also not gonna get as much thi 'cause you're not eating a lot of the higher thymine sources like whole grains, legumes, that sort of stuff.

Um, so. I think you're exactly right. When people sort of oscillate back and forth, it can be really problematic. And I do think one sign of th needing some thymine is if you've tried to go from a low, uh, carb diet to eating carbs again and you have some girliness and you are not tolerating that super well, you may really need to work on increasing thymine.

Um. And so if it feels like you're kind of having a, a glucose intolerance, issues with that and some issues kind of processing carbs, that could certainly be it. And I would say to give that a little bit of time, because there could be naturally some swings that happen when you add some carbs in that you haven't eaten.

Your hormones need to adjust. So you need to, you need to increase insulin levels and things like that that just naturally come with adding carbs in. So there has to be some natural adjustment that you give yourself. But if you try to add carbs in and it's continually, you've continually been hindered and haven't really gone through an adjustment phase, you just naturally don't feel well whenever you've tried to do that.

That might be a time to explore thiamine. Um. So I would just keep that in mind. That would be usually like some of the people that I've worked with where, ooh, they're trying to increase carbs and they're noticing, ooh, I'm having some tolerance issues to this. Um, the only other person that you didn't mention that I think could also, and we somewhat mentioned it, but people that are gluten-free, I feel like a lot of the gluten-free options, um, you know, if, especially if people were eating, uh, grains that were fortified with thiamine and fortified with some nutrients, if you can then switch to gluten-free, um, items, you're usually gonna have a lot less thim.

Um, so sometimes that could be. Something you weigh in, is that switching from like more whole grain options? Um, maybe if there was a little bit of, um, supplemental thiamin put in, like, like they do with a lot of the foods, um, you might get a lot more deficiency symptoms switching to like a gluten-free diet.

Yeah, that's a valid point. 'cause actually I brought up, uh, there's an NIH page that's just handy to reference when you wanna look up, you know, foods that are high in X nutrient, right? And the number one and number two spots are both fortified. Yeah. Um, grain products. So the number one spot goes to fortified breakfast cereals, and then the number two spot goes to enriched egg noodles.

Hmm. And then, let's see, then the number six spot is an English muffin. Right? So there's. Three out of the top six foods would be eliminated on a gluten-free diet. Right. And then you look at the other ones, pork chop, trout, black beans, mussels, tuna. A lot of those are not foods that people are going to eat every single day.

I mean, maybe black beans if they're a vegan or a vegetarian. Right. But certainly not if they're going low fodmap. Yeah. And you just, you know, and this is another good case too, for the horror that is overlapping multiple restrictive diets, one on top of the other. Right. So let's picture as an example, I'm gonna pick on myself here.

For once I was a vegetarian from the age of 11 to, it was either 22 or 23. Then I went, there was about a year worth of time where I then went gluten-free, dairy free, and I, I experimented with other stuff at the time, but I went gluten-free and I was still a vegetarian and that it took me maybe like six months or a year to gradually reintroduce some meat into my diet.

But I wouldn't say that I was eating meat on a regular basis for several more years after that. So, looking at this, okay, I would've cut out any of the gluten containing sources of thiamine from my diet. But coming off of a, you know, a vegetarian diet, I was not eating pork chops at all, period. Trout specifically, I wasn't eating very much of like maybe salmon here or there, but it wasn't a regular thing.

Um, I probably wasn't eating black beads. A lot. I mean, again, here or there if I went out for Mexican food or something. Um, 

what about like a veggie burger? I feel like some of you might have a few beans mixed into that. Sometimes. Yeah. A few beans though. Yeah, hardly enough. Have a few black beans 

mixed into that.

Mu I wasn't eating regularly. Tuna, I've always been a sucker for canned tuna fish, so that might've been my one and only saving grace. And then way down the list is brown rice and white rice. But you know, looking at this list, combining those two diets, and that by the way is not uncommon. It's not uncommon to meet somebody who's right gluten-free and vegetarian or gluten-free and vegan or gluten-free.

Low fod. Well, with low fodmap it's kind of mixed in that. Well, yeah, but then we get into our patient population and we see people who are like, oh, my integrative doctor put me on. I kid you not. The one time I remember I, I messaged you frothing at the mouth over this one. Low fodmap. Paleo and low sulfur and they were talking about layering in low histamine on top of that because why not?

Yeah. At that point the person is withering away before you, you might as well cut out any food they have left, but you know, good luck getting any of your nutrients, including, but not limited to thiamine when you restrict that much. And it's really not an uncommon phenomenon to see in the IBS SIBO space.

Right. No, totally. Um. Yeah, I, I, I, this is one that I even see when I do tracking that can be low, fairly frequently, um, just casually observing someone's chronometer data. Um, and usually I will say, just as a reminder, if you are gonna use chronometer, which I think is a really great and valuable tool, one thing I will really mention that's helpful is, you know, if you are low in calories or in carbs, or sorry calories in general, like, work on that first and try to kind of balance whatever micro macronutrients you need to get squared away.

So maybe you need to increase carbs, maybe you need to increase some other nutrients, but try to work broad first and then get more nuanced. Because if you're not eating enough calories. You're likely not getting enough of lots of micronutrients. You get micronutrients from the calories. So just keep that in mind because like, you might be 800 calories from where you need to be, so you need to work on the calories and then see where your thiamine's at.

Um, 'cause luck likely you're gonna have some increases in these micronutrients. So just keep that in mind when you're doing any sort of micronutrient work, is you wanna focus on the bigger fish to fry first and then move to more nuanced, uh, micronutrient stuff. 

Yeah, that's, that's actually a really important thing and we'll probably wanna mention that every episode in this series.

Yeah, because, um, I'll, I'll give an example again from my own life. I lived this recently myself, and I'm sure I probably told you about this in some capacity, but now I'm forgetting what I filled you in on. But at the beginning of 2024, I decided, I looked at my chronometer data. And I decided, okay, I need to work on some of this.

Because there, there were pretty consistent gaps, but admittedly I kind of fell into the same trap that a lot of people do. And I thought, well, but I take a multivitamin or a B complex, so I'm kind of like filling in those holes reasonably well and like hopefully this is good enough. But last year I decided, no, I think I actually need to make more of a point to like get my B vitamins in particular up, right?

'cause they weren't, they weren't pretty consistently, none of them were hitting a hundred percent. And I was cruising at like 60, 70, 80% on average for all of the B vitamins. And I was like, all right, I think I'm at a point in my life where I'm gonna say that's not good enough anymore. Um, even with the B complex or whatever, supplementally.

But I was looking at my chronometer and I started kind of examining myself and I thought. You know what though? The first thing I need to look at, so calories I'm fine on, but I've wrapped my head around recently. I think I'm Undershooting protein for the, the woman that I am. 

Hmm. 

I'm uh, now we've met in person, Amy, so you now know I am a tall drink of water.

I'm six feet tall, about 190 pounds. I have a solid human and so I think I just need more protein than I ever realized. Mm-hmm. And again, coming off of a vegetarian diet for a lot of years. Yeah, I think that kind of all my life I've undershot protein and didn't realize it. So I decided before I tackle any of the B vitamins or any of the other things, I'm just gonna take some time to focus on protein and nothing else.

And I did not do any chronometer tracking. I just kind of loosely tabulated my head and kind of thought, oh, I need more protein today. And I took about six months. To just get the protein thing dialed in and make it feel normal second nature. Mm-hmm. Like, yeah, I've got this. Then in October, about six months later, I did another couple weeks of chronometer tracking and not only had my protein increased, which I, I thought that it had, uh, but also almost all of those b vitamin deficiencies cleared up.

Mm-hmm. As a consequence of just getting more protein. Yeah. Overall calories the same. I mm-hmm. I took away from carbs or fat, or both, I forget which, but I just shifted my macros around prioritized protein for the first time in my life. Mm-hmm. And, and not like, not absurd amounts either, but just prioritizing protein cleared up all of these other.

Issues. Right? And now the list of stuff I have to work on is so much more manageable now it's like, oh, okay, I still need to work on folate. But folate is the one B vitamin that's more abundant in plant foods. 

Mm-hmm. 

So that kinda makes sense that the protein thing didn't fix that Right problem. So I have one single vitamin to work on instead of a dozen or whatever it might have been previously.

So yeah, priorities, people, calories first. Once you have enough calories going into your system, then you could start looking at the macro nutrients, protein, fat, and carbs. And I would, I would kind of lump fiber in at that stage of the game too, personally. Then go on to vitamins and minerals and like more of the detailed work.

But doing it this way, you'll find that you have less to work on and it will be far less intimidating if you go about it in the right order. 

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I mean, I think, um. In terms of like, where do we go from here to, do you wanna talk like signs, symptoms of deficiency? Yeah. Okay, let's do that. Um, you know, I think I was telling Nikki before we hopped on, you know, some of these signs and symptoms of deficiency would, you would maybe see in severe issues.

Like, I always remember when we learned about thymine in dietetic school, we talked about wees encephalopathy, which is basically like what happens. And severe, more severe thy and deficiency. And that can lead to like gait changes, like severe muscle twitching, like really s more severe neurological issues.

Um, especially like twitching of the eye paralysis, weakness, like kind of more extreme, uh, issues from like a nervous system standpoint. Um, there's even something called cor coughs, um, psychosis, which, um, you know, that's gonna have things like confusion, like distorted memories, amnesia, like a, a lot of kind of really weird like psychological symptoms.

So like you always hear about that kind of stuff in, in school, like the more extreme nutrient deficient type issues. Um, people you would see 

if you were a dietician in a hospital. 

Yeah, and I would say it's probably still a little bit rarer, but like Wernicke, uh, tended to be common in like alcoholism, especially like severe alcoholism.

When people are, um, detoxing, you can see it a lot more. It kind of makes itself known, it reveals itself. Um, it, it reveals itself more when people are detoxing from alcohol. Um, but yeah, the, the, you kind of hear about more of the extreme cases in school and maybe in a clinical setting, um, like a hospital setting, but I think you can definitely see some of the more.

Like mild to moderate symptoms that could be still bothersome, but they're not like, whoa, there's a major issue here. Um, so they can be more subtle. And I think those, I think anything that could be like tingling or neuropathy type symptoms can sometimes be things I've seen. Um, one thing I have seen too, um, with, uh, Simon, like we were describing before, a lot of like carbon tolerance issues, um, where it hasn't really gotten to the point where you're seeing like really clear like neuropathy type symptoms.

Um, sometimes like feeling like you're not as coordinated, but it's not like extreme. Um, could be a symptom. Um, there can also be some like heart cardiovascular type symptoms, like irregular heart rate. Um, I. That kind of stuff could be at play. 

Um, 

I 

think too, to go to like the really low hanging fruit, um, fatigue and brain fog Oh yeah, for sure.

Can be symptoms of this, and that's really common mm-hmm. In this group of folks. Now again, it could just be that you are under durish, right? And you're not eating enough calories or enough carbs just in general to fuel your metabolism. So fatigue and brain fog, you don't automatically get to jump to, you know, thymine deficiency or berry berry.

But I think that also, again, because you need thiam. To metabolize carbs and run your crep cycle and make a TP make energy. Right. You could just be tired and your brain might not work right. And your neurons might not work Right. If they don't have enough a TP, right? So like thiamine is needed 

to extract fuel from your food.

Yeah. Um, so yeah, I, I think you're right. There could definitely be, you're definitely gonna see more subtle symptoms typically in our patient population. I have seen neuropathy type symptoms with some people that have, um, thymine issues in my patient population. But I think you're right, like the fatigue energy piece is big.

Um, and I think, uh, sometimes motility issues gut wise, I mean, it has so many effects gut wise, which we can talk about. Um, so again, 

go ahead. Do we wanna just briefly touch on why, because. Among the different neurons in your body that need thiamine and need a TP delivery to work your autonomic nervous system.

Mm-hmm. Which is basically your gut brain axis and your fight or flight system like that part of your nervous system needs thiamine very much and needs a TP. Yeah. So there's like neuropathy that you could get in your hands and feet and tingliness that you can get from thiamine deficiency, but there's also autonomic nervous system neuropathy.

Yeah. Where your vagus nerve doesn't work so good and you can't control your motility and your gastric emptying. Mm-hmm. And your bile flow and whatever else. I think that's where a lot of it comes into play is that your autonomic nerve system is compromised because of the deficiency. 

Yeah, for sure. I, I think again, it, which if it's sort of leading to deficiencies in your autonomic nervous system, it's gonna affect every aspect of digestion and motility.

Right. Um, and I think, again, like I sort of view, I always say like, TH's your vagus nerves best friend in a lot of ways because again, it's, it's making energy that is important for the nervous system. And I do think that, um, you know, TH's really important for making the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, which is really essential for the vagus nerve to work optimally.

Um, and plays a big role in like motility, um, mucus barrier function, kind of, uh, intestinal barrier function, um, in, um. Kind of regulating digestive juices. Like again, anything that the vagus nerve sort of touches is gonna be affected in a lot of ways. Um, 

yeah. So basically from your collar bones down to your pubic bone.

Right. More or less. Yeah. Um, and actually you could even make the argument beyond that because that statement was more focused on the vagus nerve specifically. Right. But there are other parts of your autonomic nervous system, right, that innervate and control the rest of your organs or, you know, like your eyeballs or, you know, tear glands and sweat glands and 

mm-hmm.

That sort of stuff. So even, even my statement was maybe a little bit overly simplistic, but I think for people in the gut health world, the part of the autonomic nervous system that they care about the most is the vagus nerves. Right. So we tend to focus more of our conversations around that. Yeah. Um, for sure.

But, you know, uh, I'll share this too. This might be interesting fuel to add. Uh, pun intended. By the way. There's, uh, one of the things that I had written in my notes when I was doing a deep dive on thiamine was from, uh, a pamphlet from a supplement company that makes one of the fat soluble vitamin products that are out there.

And I thought that this was worth stating. They said, we have compared, uh, thym deficiency to a choked engine in a car where there's an excess of fuel that cannot be efficiently oxidized, resulting in an increased com. Uh, combustion from that exhaust relative thi and deficiency is easily induced by an excess of simple carbohydrates.

So again, going back to, you know, in the case of like the woman that I described where her exercising and her diet and lifestyle. Probably induced with thiamine deficiency, and then she went balls to the wall and just ate nothing but cookies for days on end. Or one of the example vulnerable patient populations, which is diabetes.

You have people with an excess of blood sugar, glucose hanging around and your body is trying to burn that fuel for energy and make a TP. So you have all of this fuel hanging around that you can't really do anything with. And I, I liked the metaphor of the choked engine. I thought that that was appropriate Yeah.

For this. 

Well, yeah, and I, I do think that, um, there is some research to support that people with diabetes typically have more thymine deficiency. Um, I believe Chris, master John might have talked a little bit about that. Um, so yeah, it makes total sense. Um, yeah, and, and again, I, I think I. You know, we're getting really granular with this one particular nutrient, um, and how important it is for gut health and, uh, it's kind of crazy that there's all these different nutrients too that are, are essential.

Um, but this one too, I think because it's such a big vagus nerve supporter, I've heard it talked about a bit more, um, yeah. In like the SIBO and IBS space, I actually had one patient too. He was working with a, a doctor who was doing a whole bunch of like, studies basically on Simon. I don't think any of it had been released, but he was doing all this like experimental stuff with really high dose Simon for sibo.

Um, like kind of as a motility aid. Uh, the guy that I was working with actually didn't get like much benefit. I think like he had gotten enough thim, like it might've helped at first, but like more, wasn't necessarily better. But it was kind of interesting. I remember hearing a little bit about using high dose thim in the SIBO space.

Um, a few, like one or two times in my work. Um, so I, I do think I've heard it more so than some of it gets more press, I think, than some other nutrients. 

Yeah, I agree. I think it does. I will say I think thiamine could be a supporter of motility. If you give thiamine to somebody who's deficient right. But like super flooding the body above and beyond what that person actually needs is probably not gonna have an effect, is my guess.

It's kind of like similarly, maybe this will help, um, if you take somebody who eats enough vitamin C and they are not deficient at all in vitamin C. Mm-hmm. If you give. A group of people like that, a vitamin C supplement, it will do nothing to reduce cold and flu and upper respiratory infection because they're not deficient.

They don't need more vitamin C. But if you take a group of people whose deficient in vitamin C and then you replace the thing that they lack, which happens to be important for immune function, then vitamin C supplementation can help reduce upper respiratory infections like colds and flus. And I feel like similarly, if, if you took a group of patients with SIBO and if you could kind of break them up into thymine deficient and not thi deficient, I think that that would predict the efficacy right.

Of a, a regimen like that. And it's, it's not anything against thi, it's just like you're gonna see, you're gonna see like the therapeutic effect if you actually were depleted in that thing. Um, right. 

Yeah, I agree. Um, yeah, 

I feel like similarly, if you are deficient in magnesium and then you take magnesium, then maybe you'll see a resolution in symptoms.

Yeah. Like say constipation. But for sure if you were not deficient in magnesium in the first place, you're probably not gonna see anything super profound, right. From taking a magnesium supplement. Um, so there's lots of examples of that, but, um, it is, you know, it is interesting. I've seen this a lot in the pots and like the, uh, you know, autonomic nervous system dysregulation kind of community as well.

And we know that there's a pretty significant overlap with like pots dysautonomia type stuff mm-hmm. And the gut health world. Um, and again, since the autonomic nervous system in particular seems to be vulnerable to thiam depletion, it makes sense. Right. Um. I find that a lot of those people have already tried thiamin by the time they reach me.

Yeah. Because they're like, they're Googling, they're finding this information. This is not new news in the 

back, in the, in the Reddit threads and Exactly. Facebook forums. And yeah. And I think, again, like if you're listening to this episode and you're like, Ooh, maybe I am someone that needs a little bit of thymine, I think what, what should you do?

Or like, what would be the action steps? I mean, first and foremost, again, I would say seeing what you're taking in would be a good first step. Um, and again, like I said before, you wanna be focusing on broader things first. So make sure you've covered calories and like macro balance first, and then you can kind of hone more specifically on micronutrients.

But if you've already done that. And you look and you see like, oh yeah, I'm pretty consistently low in thiamin across days. Um, I think you could do a couple things. I mean, first you'd wanna work on getting more thi in your diet. Um, I think, you know, for a lot of people in our world, it might be building tolerance back up to some of these foods if you haven't eaten them in a while.

So that could be whole grains, that could be things like legumes. Um, nutritional yeast has a decent amount of thiamin as well. I know Chris, master John kind of recommends that as a, as a way to boost your thiamin intake. Um, so like that could be helpful. You could also, again, look up different sources and kind of see, Ooh, I can work a little bit more of this in, um, for Thim.

Um. So I think that that could be a really, an important step. So like, kind of looking up, seeing where you're at, trying to figure out ways to fill the gaps. Um, and maybe again, that is just building diversity back up and, and kind of working on tolerance building. If you do feel like you wanna like, explore labs, like, which you could, you could get, kind of get, um, like LabCorp, thiamin, um, like the TPP, uh, I can never know how to pronounce it.

The Thyman Pyrophosphate, um. In the, in the blood. You could kind of look that up and see if you're sufficient. Um, I think the other thing you, like, if you were curious about a supplement and you're really struggling to get some of these foods in, you could supplement for like a month or something as a test to see like, Hey, does this make me feel better or not?

Um, and I do think it's a pretty low risk experiment, like you just kind of pee out excess B one. So it's not necessarily something that I would think, you know. I mean, you never know. Some people can react to certain things, but it's a, I would say a very low risk, low reaction, uh, supplement. You could potentially try and see like, Ooh, do I notice any benefit or not?

Um, and you could kind of use that as a gauge if it's something to, to 

keep, to keep in mind. Um, yeah, you kind of use the supplement diagnostically in a way. Right, right. Um, and I'll share too, I have seen some people who try a thiamine supplement and then within a couple days or even a week, they're like, 

wow, 

this, yeah, this made a huge difference.

Right. I will say, I feel like if this is gonna be something that really moves the needle for you, you will be aware of it within about a week. 

Yeah. 

I agree. I have yet to see a single person who's like thymine supplements did nothing for me for the first three months, but then man, when I hit month four, Ooh.

It was good. Like I, I have not personally found that to be true. So. Sometimes you talk to people about their supplement regime and you get talking about it. It's like, oh, well, do any of these make a difference for you? Like, do you feel better on them? And they're like, oh, I don't know. I just had this, you know?

All right. I, the answer's no. 

I just had this conversation today with a patient because they're on a bun, like they had a pretty long list. And I was like, so how do you feel with this? And they're like, really? Any of these things, I don't think help. And I'm like, like, well, you're on a bunch. We probably wanna, right.

And I think, again, like. Sometimes there can be fear, like a provider has been prescribing them, so they're just following the prescriber's orders, and then you kind of get 20 supplements deep and you're like, well, what am I doing? Are these things helping? I don't know. Um, so yeah, I think it's always important when you take a supplement just to have a decent idea of how long to give it before you really know, um, if it's helping or not.

And I think it's a, I'm glad you brought that up, that usually it's fairly quick that you would notice a, a difference. 

And the goal should be like, if you're gonna use a supplement at all, in this case, maybe supplement, like maybe a bottle's worth Yeah. You know, like get, you know, 30 or 60 days out of it maybe.

Mm-hmm. 

And 

then by that point, that should buy you enough time that you can introduce some foods into your diet. Right Now, I, I will say, to give a different example. I think for the vast majority of people, the goal needs to be that you use the supplement as a bandaid while you're introducing foods that contain that nutrient, and that by the time you're done with that bottle of the supplement, hopefully your diet has enough of that nutrient to support you.

There are gonna be cases where people are not willing to change their diet. So like I'm picturing a vegan or a vegetarian who is not willing to introduce meat and they're taking a B12 supplement, right? Right. If you are on a diet stubbornly, right, like it's, you know, it's up to you. I'm not saying stubborn is a bad thing, but if you are stubborn and you refuse to change that part of your diet and you just know that you're gonna be deficient in that nutrient for the rest of your life because of it.

That is one of the only cases where I think it makes sense for that person to continue the supplement. So like if you are still a vegan or a vegetarian, I hope and pray to God you're on a B12 supplement. Right. But in, you know, any other normal person, right? You discover you have a deficiency, you treat it for a short period of time while you learn about the nutrition and introduce the foods and then your food should support that, that nutrient for you.

And you shouldn't have a prolonged need for the supplement. 

Yeah. Well, and I think too, like even people that have a glucose tolerance issue related to thiamine deficiency, it can be helpful to supplement, like you said, for a month so that they can tolerate more carbs. Yeah. Um. So again, like that can be another important piece.

And, and similar to your point too, calcium's, another one like that, like if someone's just really lactose intolerant or, uh, has an allergy or something to dairy, it's gonna be really hard to get calcium in. Um, yes, you could eat like bone and fish, but I just can't imagine someone eating enough bone and fish to equate to their, their calorie needs.

So again, like that could be another example of like, oh yeah, if your diet is just consistently low in this thing and there's not gonna be any ability to add that in, then you have then supplementation is a necessary thing. Um, but thym usually isn't one of those. Usually you can work it into your diet.

It's nice in the sense that you could get it from plant foods and animal foods. Mm-hmm. So it, it is doable. I think it requires a little bit of work. Like, again, I'm looking at this NIH page that I pulled up and. The only food on this list that hits a hundred percent at the daily value is the fortified breakfast cereal.

Yeah. 

Um, no natural foods are gonna hit even close to that. So, for example, the enriched egg noodles, 42%, three ounces of pork chop, 33%, three ounces of trout, 33%, half a cup of black beans, 33%. So you're starting to picture this day where like you could hit a hundred percent if you eat three ounces of pork chop, three ounces of trout and half a cup of black beans, and then you nailed it for the day.

But most people are not eating those three foods every single day of their life. So like it, it, I think, pulls in this conversation of diversity and having your nutritional bases covered broadly. 'cause the odds of you eating. The heavy hitters and getting all of your thymine from these couple of really high foods is probably slim.

Mm-hmm. But you know, like, okay, sunflower seeds, one ounce of sunflower seeds gets you 8% of your daily value. Right. A cup of yogurt gets you another 8%. A glass, you know, a cup of orange juice gets you another 8%. You can add up the little bits of thiamine. Mm-hmm. And you could get it from like many little small portions of thiamine through your day.

But you're only gonna do that if you have a diverse diet. Right. If you are eating no sugar, no fodmap, no fruit, no whatever, no whatever, and you're limited to like 20 foods that you're eating, the odds of you hitting enough thiamine are pretty slim. 

Right. It's true. 

Just diversity has a lot of functions.

Yeah. In this case, nutrition, nutritional repletion. And that's even not even getting into the conversation of. What diversity will do for your microbiome. Right, 

right. It's like the 

spoiler. It's great. 

Yes. It, It lowers the risk of deficiency. The, the more across every, sorry, I, I'm not close enough to my mic, apparently.

Thank you. It, yeah, I think it just, it lowers the risk of deficiency. I mean, I think that there's no, no doubting that if your diet is limited, you're definitely gonna have a higher risk of lots of deficiencies. So might as well kind of continue to diversify as much as you can. It doesn't mean that you have to eat everything or that you have to eat things you hate, but like, you know, if you're eating five to 10 foods or something on a regular basis, it's probably time to kind of have the goal of nourishing and, and less of the goal of like.

Minimize all and every symptom based on the diet. So it, it's tricky. It's a tricky mindset shift to really focus on nutrition. But I do think the more educated that you get on how nutrients affect the gut-brain axis, the more you're gonna want to diversify and the more motivated you're gonna be. 'cause I will say, the longer that I've looked at specific nutrients, especially just doing research for my book, it's like crazy how much nutrition matters in the gut-brain access.

And it seems like, duh. Like yes, of course it's gonna matter. Like in some ways it's like, oh duh. But then there actually is a lot of, a lot of interesting research on exactly how nutrients affect the gut. Um, and it just pulls everything together. That nutrition is so important and highlights that. Um, so yeah, I think just being able to make that mental shift of I'm gonna use diet to control my symptoms, versus I'm gonna use diet to really fuel my gut brain access so I get better.

Long term is a different mindset change, but very important one I've found for people to get better. Yeah. 

Yeah. And I, I guess here's a new, a new metaphor that just popped in my head. I don't know if it's a good one yet. We're gonna explore it together. Oh boy. Because it's brand new. It just, the synapses just fired this one off a moment ago.

Maybe you have enough thymine to fire off your maybe synapses hope. And you're making 

a metaphor 

now because of the thiamine. 

There we go. Um, think of it like a car and you, you're trying to get to your destination. But you're going downhill to get there. You can use the car and you could just stomp your foot on the brakes repeatedly to like keep yourself from going too fast.

Or you could use the car in the sense of like grabbing the steering wheel and steering yourself where you want to go. And I feel like it's almost that different energy of like, you can use your diet to try to minimize and control every little symptom and over analyze the sh*t out of it. And that's like continually stomping your foot on the brake pedal.

But it's gonna take you forever to get wherever you're going doing that. 

Mm. 

Or you could just learn how to grab hold of the steering wheel and steer your diet in the direction where you want to go or where you know you need to go. Hmm. And it's, it's a different energy. It's like panic and hit the brake pedal or steer the ship, like command the ship and take it where you wanna go.

Right. 

Well, I think there has to be an energy shift of like, I am willing to accept. I'm willing to accept. Um, sorry, I was too, too far from the mic. I don't know what's happening there. Someday we're 

gonna teach Amy how to podcast. We're only 202 episodes in people. 

You know, my back's kind of bother me, so I'm like kind of stretching.

Um, but yeah, I mean, I think now I totally lost my train of thought. Um, steer the ship. Amy steer the ship. Steering the ship. What was I gonna say? Uh oh. Well hopefully it wasn't some, some, oh, you know what it was. Okay. What I was gonna say was it's a different energy because you have to change your mindset of being willing to accept the ebbs and flows of like maybe symptoms adjusting or transitional things.

You kind of accept, like, okay. I might have some like growing pains or just kind of some changes in discomfort along the way. Like that's just gonna be a part of the process and I'm not gonna try to analyze every one of those. I'm just going to accept that there's gonna be ebbs and flows in my symptoms along this journey.

So you, there's a level of accepting that, but then trusting that shifting to be more nourished and shifting the approach is going to lead to long-term benefit in your gut brain access. So I think there's kind of like, there's less urgency because you're accepting that there's just going to be some changes gut wise, and there's gonna be sometimes discomfort in days where you might have a little bit more symptoms and you're kind of like accepting that that's a part of the process instead of resisting and like, you know.

Trying to prevent every symptom. Yes. 

Yeah. Yeah. And you know, lord knows that's easier said than done. 100% for sure. Especially if you have a lot more like kind of health anxiety as part of this, and you're really just, you're exhausted by this whole process and you don't, you know, you feel like you've tried everything and it's, it's a lot.

But, uh, to the degree that you're able to let go and pivot, pivot towards nourishment, pivot towards health mm-hmm. Rather than resisting disease. I think that, um, I think that's one of the best things you could do for yourself. 

And it's not gonna happen overnight. I think if you could just take baby steps and kind of like try to, um.

Try to give yourself some grace as you're shifting the mentality, you're still probably gonna get into a tizzy sometimes and, you know, be pissed and upset and react when you have symptoms. We're all human and that's just gonna happen. But I think, um, you know, if you can start shifting it, like, okay, maybe that doesn't happen 100% of the time.

Maybe that's 50% of the time now that's progress. Or like, again, even just learning more about nutrients makes you intrigued and wanna focus on that and, and, um, approach, uh, IBS recovery in a different way, in a different mindset. 

Yeah. And you know, I think as a side note, by the way, before I forget to mention this, as we go through this nutrient series, if you want to learn more about the individual nutrients and where you could get them through food.

You know, there are databases you could play with chronometer and learn a lot, but I wanna put a plugin for the Nut Vore website. Um, Sarah Ballantine, formerly known as the Paleo mom, has a fantastic website and accompanying book called Nut Travo. And you can navigate on there and you can fiddle around and you can, you could go to the nutrient section and then learn about every single vitamin in mineral.

What is it used for? A little bit of the research, what foods contain that vitamin or mineral. And it's a really user friendly platform, I think, and it's, and it's presented in a way that's not gonna scare the will occurs outta you. Yeah. Which is really, really, really important. If you just do a Google search or if you go to the Facebook forums or the Reddit threads.

It's a crapshoot. You might find information that's valuable, but you might find information that is very fear mongering and scary. Mm-hmm. And it just makes your health anxiety that much worse. Um, Nutrivore is not like that. It's just very like, scientific and down to earth and like, helpful. So, wanted to put a plug in there.

I have one more thought to share. No, two more. I lied. They're quick. I promise. Okay. Um, look at this hair though. Look, you see that your hair See this little? 

Yes. Yes. You have a, a stray. I have a stray, stray guy there. I keep looking at it. Look, I keep just making it worse. I keep like trying to, like you are trying to pat it down, but it is a just Amy, just go, Ew.

I'm not gonna spit on my hand on camera. 

She'll do it off camera, but not on camera. I'm just gonna do this. Okay. 'cause that doesn't look weird even a bit. Um, no, actually, you know what they make, they make a, I'm just gonna look like this then. Then you can't see it equally not weird. Sure. They make wax, it looks like I'm telling a joke.

They make a wax stick for hair and you can kind Oh, really? Oh yeah, that's good. Taped down your flyaways. I discovered that in recent years. So if I put my hair at a ponytail and I have a lot of fuzzy flyaways Yeah. I'll sometimes like wax 'em down. Um, it's pretty hot. Yeah. I like with Amy, Nick Frizzing or something.

Focus. Darn it. Focus two more tidbits to wrap us up. These are the rewards for the people who stayed with us until the bitter end. So, number one, um, again, looking through my notes, when I did a deep dive on thiamine, one of the things that came up is that thiamine is needed for hydrochloric acid secretion, AKA stomach acid.

And if we think about the symptoms and how important that is for something like SIBO and motility. 

Mm. 

Right? Like how many people have bloating, excessive fullness, belching, they feel like they eat two bites of food and then they're full for some reason. Yeah. And they can't eat anymore. Poor motility, constipation, like just abdominal pain.

There's so many symptoms of low stomach acid, and it could be that you're not getting the nutrients that you need to and the a TP that you need mm-hmm. To make stomach acid. So that was one additional tidbit. Love it. Another thought, um, this I thought was interesting and then there's actually a little bit from a research article that I think supports this.

So, uh, in this research article, it's actually titled Thymine, the Spark of Life. Whoa. And they mentioned, uh, moderate, prolonged restriction of thiamine in humans leads to. Emotional instability reflected by irritability, moodiness, quarrelsome behavior, lack of cooperation, vague fears and agitation, mental depression, variable res restriction of activity, and numerous somatic complaints.

Kind of interesting then in a different research article. Let me scroll to find it. These guys made, uh, so this one was titled Thiamine and Magnesium Deficiency Keys. To disease. And they made a point of saying that mild to moderate thiamine deficiency results in pseudo hypoxia of the limbic system. And brainstem, emotional and stress reflexes of the autonomic nervous system are stimulated and exaggerated.

So that's kind of interesting. Hmm. Like your, your ability to regulate mood and brain function and your, basically your limbic system is that deep, deep, deep part of like the lizard brain, the survival brain that is constantly deciding, are you in danger or are you not? Do I need to be hypervigilant on red alert or am I okay, do I need to care about this thing or can I chill out?

Like your limbic system is not going to work if it's in a state of pseudo hypoxia, which means basically that it doesn't get oxygen delivery. Right. Um, adequate oxygen, so. That I thought was really interesting. This mild to moderate thymine deficiency results in pseudo hypoxia of the limbic system and emotional and stress reflexes of the autonomic nervous system are stimulated and exaggerated.

It just, it makes you wonder for people who are really anxious or hypervigilant or just like kind of pissed at the world as a consequence of what they're going through, it makes you wonder if part of that is thym a deficiency. Yeah. Yeah. And some of it's merited. Like maybe if you've been dealing with this crap for 10 years and you're exhausted and you've spent thousands of dollars, try to get better.

Like maybe you have a right to be pissed at the world. Yeah. I'm not saying that you don't, but could also be that parts of your nervous system aren't doing so hot. Yeah. 'cause you haven't given them fuel in a really long time. 

Yeah, it's kind of like, you know, I think there's a healthy level of being upset about things or kind of reacting in a emotionally, uh, appropriate regulated way.

Like yeah, emotionally appropriate way. But yeah, I, I think if you feel like it's, you have an exaggerated emotional response compared to maybe other people, um, that is really fascinating. There. There's a few other nutrients too, um, that seem to kind of do some weird stuff that could lead to more hypervigilant type behavior too.

I know Zinc being one, like when I was doing some research, um, microphone, dear Microphone, when I was doing some research on my book, uh, 'cause it plays a big role in like gaba, um, GABA and, and that sort of thing. Um, I. So, yeah, I, I think like, there, there, certainly, it certainly isn't helping, it would definitely not help if you're in an IBS situation to have a thi deficiency from a variety of different angles.

But even the mental health side and sort of being able to not be hypervigilant or not be kind of, uh, able to feel like emotionally balanced is definitely not gonna help your journey well. 'cause it'll keep you sucked in, it'll keep you kind of inward, um, versus being present in the, in the world. 

Well, and it keeps you in that fight or flight mode too.

Mm-hmm. Because remember you get to be in one or the other. You don't get both simultaneously. You get to either do fight or flight. Or rest to digest. You don't get to digest your food like a champion and poop like a champion while you're running away from the cybert tooth tiger. Like those, those two things are not gonna go together.

Um, so you know, even from the perspective of if your autonomic nervous system and your limbic system is constantly stuck in that state of fight or flight, not only does it keep you hooked into the symptoms and like perceiving them a lot more, right, like an amplified pain response or an amplified, magnified, magnified response to that stimuli that you might not otherwise notice or care about quite as much.

But also. The fight or flight nature of it is going to squash down your vagal activity. And then again, there goes your opportunity to make stomach acid enzymes, bile motility, right. Colon contract, like Right. Any of that just goes out the door. 

Mm-hmm. Yeah. 'cause it's like kind of a feedback loop, right?

When your body's like, oh, there's danger with these symptoms, pay attention. And then it's like, oh, then you feed into that more and then that further leads to suppression of uh, the vagus nerve and things like that. So 

yeah, it very quickly snowballs away from you. 

Yes, for sure. 

we haven't quite figured out yet. We might have a guest for the next episode or we will continue the single nutrient series with our next highlight, which is riboflavin, which is a nutrient I almost guarantee that you are under, uh, under appreciating right now.

Yes. Um, but we're gonna continue this deep dive into nutrients that are important for your gut health. Spoiler. They're all important, uh, but we look forward to seeing you back here on the next episode of the IBS Freedom Podcast. Until then to Lou.