Heart Disease Linked to Thiamine Deficiency

Furosemide (also known as Lasix) is a drug commonly used with congestive heart failure (CHF) patients when there is edema (excessive fluid build-up)present.

Although this treatment is quite effective for eliminating the edema, there is an interesting side effect that medical doctors disregard despite the research from their own medical journals.

Lasix depletes thiamine, the very vitamin known to be lacking in CHF patients in the first place!!

A study done in 2012 further confirms this link. It concluded:

“This study suggests that thiamine supplementation has beneficial effects on cardiac function in patients with diuretic drugs for symptomatic chronic heart failure. Subclinical thiamine deficiency is probably an underestimated issue in these outpatients.”

Why then don’t medical doctors have their patients take therapeutic dosages of thiamine?

And this deficiency isn’t limited to only adults with heart conditions. The same thiamine deficiency was also found in children with congenital heart disease (also see Heart Disease).

Children with Congenital Heart Disease

A study published in 2000 in the Journal of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition aimed to determine if the thiamine deficiency was due to malnutrition “common in children with congenital heart disease” or if the deficiency was due to loop diuretics such as Lasix.

The results left the scientists puzzled.

Since the diuretics only make the thiamine deficiency worse, it does not account for the development of the deficiency in the first place. The study claims that malnutrition doesn’t explain the thiamine deficiency either.

This is where I have questions:

• Why can’t the medical establishment reevaluate its position on nutritional requirements?
• Why the lack of interest in subclinical nutritional deficiencies resulting in health conditions?
• Why is there no research being done with regard to the countless chemicals we are exposed to on a daily basis, which are known to cause nutritional depletion in the first place?

Despite the research, and the great success of thiamine with heart patients, thiamine depleting drugs continue to remain status quo, without any recommendation for thiamine therapy.

 

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• Thiamine is Vital regarding Myasthenia Gravis
• Thiamine Deficiency: Disease Factor