Disclaimer: The information following isn’t medical advice. I have zero medical education. While some of the information might be based on certain studies, I don’t know anything about those studies. I do think that the medical establishment can be slow to incorporate new knowledge, and that is why I am writing this, to help people who are in need like I was in need before I found these supplements. Elliot Overton is a great resource concerning these issues. He is a Nutritional Therapist and a Certified Functional Medicine Practitioner. Here is his website, www.eonutrition.co.uk. This was the guy whom my very good friend found on YouTube. What followed was radical healing for my friends and myself. 

“Children of Zion, delight and rejoice in the Lord, your God! For he has faithfully given you the early rain, sending rain down on you, the early and the late rains as before. The threshing floors will be full of grain, the vats spilling over with new wine and oil.” Joel 2

“Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains. You too must be patient. Make your hearts firm, because the coming of the Lord is at hand.” James 5

I have been receiving repeated little messages from St. Therese. She has manifested to me again and again in the last couple of weeks. To respond to her I am saying my current novena to her and asking for healing for many people in my family. When I wrote last, I spoke about Thiamine supplementation. Thiamine helped me tremendously and continues to help me, but it isn’t the only supplement I take that has made a huge difference in my life. Thiamine helped relax my muscles after almost two decades of chronic muscle tightness and atrophy. But until I started on vitamin B12 I didn’t see optimal results. When I first got a B12 injection at a med spa I noticed almost immediate cascading relaxation in the muscles throughout my body. I figured this was probably psychosomatic or something. Then I got another injection a couple of weeks later and I had the same results. After my third injection led to the same sensation, I was certain B12 was helping me tremendously.

It seems that my genetic beriberi also comes with a B12 transport disorder. A transport disorder is when your body struggles to transport a vitamin through the cell wall so that it can arrive in the cell and support cellular processes. A megadose of the nutrient containing metabolically active forms of the vitamin is necessary to adequately administer the supplement to the cells of a diseased body. I found a supplement that contains a megadose of vitamin B12 in lozenge form. It is called B12 extreme from Pro Health. The lozenge has thirty-five thousand micrograms of the vitamin. By comparison, the typical B12 injection contains about four to five thousand micrograms, but the injection is absorbed at about thirty percent while the lozenge is absorbed at about five percent. I realized that one lozenge is roughly equivalent to one injection. However, the megadose of the B12 lozenge when we consider the absorption is about the same as getting an injection every day. Therefore, it isn’t advisable to take one lozenge per day. I was taking a whole lozenge, but I believe it was slightly interfering with my sleep. Now I take one half of a lozenge in the morning. This supplement should only be taken in the morning because it can cause sleeplessness. Also, such supplements cause very high B12 readings if your doctor tests your blood for the nutrient. This isn’t of much concern because a simple internet search reveals that like B1 (Thiamine), B12 isn’t toxic at high or excessive levels. Furthermore, a person with a B12 transport disorder needs very high B12 blood content to increase cellular absorption.

After my life was so dramatically changed by Thiamine supplementation, I began to wonder whether many health problems, both mental and physical, might be caused by these transport disorders that produce symptoms so eclectic that they aren’t understood by the typical research processes of western medicine. Furthermore, western medicine is heavily based on pharmaceutical research. Selling supplements, by comparison, is a far less lucrative medical industry. However, studies are underway, and I hope that humanity will eventually understand these disorders.

B12 is generally understood to help people who struggle with anxiety and depression, but the recommended daily dose is only about one thousand micrograms. A person who struggles with a B12 transport disorder would derive minimal benefit from such a small dose, and the daily recommendation is based on the needs of healthy people who don’t have transport issues. Furthermore, forms of the supplement that aren’t optimally metabolically active may not have much of an effect on the body of a person afflicted with a transport disorder. B12 extreme from Pro Health has four metabolically active forms of B12. My theory is that many who struggle with depression and anxiety could benefit from a metabolically active megadose of B12 if their mental problems are caused by a transport disorder. I was able to get this product to a good friend of mine who struggles with depression and anxiety. He reported a huge increase in energy and a feeling of being calm and alert. Unfortunately, he also struggles with insomnia and reported that the B12 caused sleep problems. We are in the process of searching for an appropriate dose, and I’m optimistic the B12 will help tremendously.

If you want to try B12 Extreme to see if it helps with your health problems, I recommend starting with a much smaller dose than the 35 thousand mcg lozenge. I have copied links for two Pro Health supplements below. The first link is the lozenge with the huge dose, and the second link contains a dose that is much smaller at 5000 mcg or 5mg. Both lozenges contain the four metabolically active forms of B12. Note that another supplement on their website has only one form of B12 and thus is likely not to be effective. I would start on the 5mg lozenge when you wake up in the morning. If you go for a couple of days and don’t notice sleep disturbances, I would increase to two 5mg lozenges in the morning and so on. Remember to only take this supplement when you wake up in the morning because it can cause sleeplessness. Allow the lozenge to dissolve under your tongue completely. For me the lozenge often takes up to about ten minutes to dissolve completely. Another thing is that you might need to watch out for B12 paradox or cellular refeeding syndrome. In my last post I forgot to mention that any aggressive supplementation of B vitamins must be accompanied by a good B complex vitamin. I have also copied a link below for the best B complex vitamin supplement on the market. It isn’t purely synthetic and is derived from plant extracts. It is made by Natural Factors, what they call biocoenzymated. My friends and I have noticed that the biocoenzymated products are very much superior to the purely synthetic products. Other supplements that can assist in managing B vitamin paradox symptoms are magnesium and potassium. For more information about managing paradox please visit the website of Eliot Overton copied in the above disclaimer section of this post. If you find that the 5mg lozenge helps I would continue to increase your dose after you discern that the B12 isn’t disturbing your sleep. I would experiment by trial and error until unwanted symptoms subside. If you take the B12 for quite a while and don’t notice any difference perhaps you do not have B12 transport issues. However, B12 is known to provide energy even for healthy people, and the American diet is generally deficient in adequate nutrition. Therefore, it might be advisable to continue supplementation even if you discern you likely don’t have a B12 transport disease.

Remember, in Scripture ten lepers were healed by Christ and only one, a foreigner, returned to him to give thanks. We humans are chronically selfish and ungrateful! If God heals you in this way make sure you give thanks and let others know about these miracles of budding medical science.

PS I have heard online that a supplement called acetyl L carnitine can help people who have insomnia. However, others report the same supplement can cause sleeplessness. If you know someone who struggles with insomnia possibly point them in the direction of carnitine! Also, if my friend is still struggling with insomnia even on a much lower dose of B12 I will attempt to find a supplement for him like this one that will resolve his insomnia so that he can benefit from the B12 supplementation that helps so much with depression.

PPS Please see this linked video all about the effect of various B vitamins on mental problems such as depression. If you struggle with depression, I recommend to start with B12, but the problem could be with another B vitamin as the video discusses. Seek guidance from Eliot Overton because I don’t know about whether the other B vitamins might be problematic at high doses.

Eliot Overton Video about B Vitamins and Depression

B-12 Extreme™ (35 mg, 30 Lozenges) | ProHealth.com

Vitamin B-12 – 5000 mcg, 30 lozenges | ProHealth.com

Amazon.com: Natural Factors, BioCoenzymated Active B Complex, 60 Capsules (60 Servings) : Health & Household

Disclaimer: The information following isn’t medical advice. I have zero medical education. While some of the information might be based on certain studies, I don’t know anything about those studies. I do think that the medical establishment can be slow to incorporate new knowledge, and that is why I am writing this, to help people who are in need like I was in need before I found Thiamine supplements. Elliot Overton is a great resource concerning these issues. He is a Nutritional Therapist and a Certified Functional Medicine Practitioner. Here is his website, www.eonutrition.co.uk. This was the guy whom my very good friend found on YouTube. What followed was radical healing for my friends and myself. 

First, if you are suffering with physical or mental issues when you read this my hope is you will come away with a very focused plan of action to find out if Thiamine supplements might help you. Before we get to that very focused plan of action I must go through some explanations. Please bear with me. If you or a friend or family member is suffering, please say a prayer to the Holy Spirit to help you implement a course of action that could change your life or that of your loved ones. Come Holy Spirit and fill our hearts, enkindle in us the fire of your love, send forth your Spirit Lord and you will create us, and you will renew the face of the earth!

To begin, it’s very hard to know where to begin, it is important to know that Thiamine is one of the most fundamental nutrients that supports the body and its functioning. I know very little about it, but I do know that it is essential for nerve functioning. It is also essential for processing carbohydrates. Thiamine deficiency can cause extremely eclectic health problems, both physical and mental. Here is a short list: cardiovascular problems, confusion, lack of appetite, muscle weakness, short-term memory loss, mental problems, weight loss, fatigue, stress, anxiety, depression, muscle atrophy, difficult walking, tachycardia, edema, neuropathy, psychosis due to nerve damage, paralysis due to nerve degradation, difficulty walking due to muscle atrophy, and heart failure. There are many more conditions on the list, but these are a few. 

It is important to distinguish between Thiamine deficiency and Thiamine transport disorders. A Thiamine deficiency can be caused by something as simple as a diet deficient in the types of foods that are rich in Thiamine. Such deficiency is easily solved by changing one’s diet or by taking a Thiamine supplement daily. Thiamine transport disorders, however, are very different. A transport disorder is when your body cannot absorb Thiamine into the cells of your body as it should. This doesn’t mean your body can’t absorb Thiamine at all, but it means there is a problem with the Thiamine transporters, proteins that bond with Thiamine so that it can cross the cell wall and arrive inside the cell to support cellular processes. Normal daily levels of Thiamine, that suffice for people with normal physical processes, are not sufficient for those who have Thiamine transport disorders. To deliver adequate Thiamine to the cells of a diseased body it is essential to take highly bio-available forms of Thiamine at high doses. After taking such supplements a Thiamine blood test may reveal very high Thiamine content, but this high Thiamine is necessary to administer Thiamine to cells when the transporters don’t work in an optimal way. A quick internet search will reveal that Thiamine isn’t toxic at high or excessive doses. As far as I can tell the medical establishment recognizes Thiamine transport disorders when they cause extreme health problems or imminent death. Other than that, the little studied transport disorders that cause various and eclectic health problems are mostly ignored. One reason for this seems to be because the symptoms are so diverse, and don’t proceed like a typical disease that is recognizable by its very specific symptoms. More study is needed, but anyone who suspects they have Thiamine transport issues just needs to begin Thiamine supplementation and see how their body reacts.

When I first started taking Thiamine, I immediately (by immediately I mean on the same day I took my first dose) noticed cascading relaxation in all the muscles of my body. I had suffered for 20 years with chronic muscle pain, extreme tightness, and muscle atrophy. I also noticed an immediate and sustained benefit to my mood. I was much calmer and started experiencing a deep feeling of contentment. All around my health started to improve dramatically. However, consistent mood benefits didn’t begin until I started taking Thiamine 6 times a day, about every two and a half to three hours. Me and my good friends noticed that if we missed a dose at some point in the day, we would feel distress and anxiety until we recovered from the missed dose. That led me to introduce a plan of dose frequency wherein I began to take the Thiamine supplements much more often. The result was an extremely even and productive mood instead of the ups and downs I had experienced before. My idea is that the Thiamine quickly dissipates and gets processed out of your body. Dose frequency is necessary to provide an even and plentiful quantity of Thiamine flowing to the cells of one’s body. 

There are 5 types of Thiamine that I have taken in various combinations. These types are Benfotiamine synthetic, Benfotiamine biocoenzymated (its produced by Natural Factors only and comes from plant extracts), TTFD, Thiamine HCL, and Sulbutiamine. Benfotiamine is probably the most popular form of Thiamine. Thiamine HCL is the most basic form of Thiamine. HCL requires a transporter to enter the cell, but providing an adequate supply can help people with transport issues. The other forms of Thiamine are highly bioavailable in that they are fat soluble. These are benfotiamine, TTFD and Sulbutiamine. Of these three TTFD and Sulbutiamine also cross the blood brain barrier. TTFD is the most potent form, so it probably is not the one you want to start with. You probably shouldn’t take TTFD and Sulbutiamine near bedtime because they can be quite stimulating. Fat soluble I believe means that the supplement can enter your cells without a transporter. This is why these supplements can be so effective in treating people with transport disorders. 

My good friends and I have noticed that Natural Factors Benfotiamine is the far superior form of Thiamine. It is a little more expensive, but when we tried other forms of Benfo that are purely synthetic and don’t come from plant extracts, we noticed that our negative symptoms return. When we return to Natural Factors Biocoenzymated Benfo we notice that our condition improves. This cycle has repeated again and again. Regular synthetic Benfo still provides benefits, but the Natural Factors Benfo provides optimal benefits. I use both purely synthetic and Natural Factors Benfo.

If you don’t have Thiamine transport issues you may not feel much of anything when you take Thiamine supplements. If you take a supplement like Benfotiamine for a few weeks and you don’t notice anything, in my opinion you probably don’t have a transport issue. But if you are attempting to resolve certain health issues with Thiamine supplementation it might be worth it to keep increasing your dose until you see results. Elliot Overton has dosing guidelines that can help you through this process. There are no generally accepted dosing guidelines, and a simple internet search will reveal that high dose Thiamine doesn’t pose a health risk. 

When you begin Thiamine supplementation you may notice what is called Thiamine Paradox. In people with transport issues introducing Thiamine can cause symptoms of physical and mental distress, even at times extreme physical and mental distress. Some symptoms are muscle soreness and irritability. Other symptoms can be more extreme depending on the person’s sensitivity to the Thiamine supplements. BUT if you have Thiamine paradox from taking the supplements it is absolutely time to rejoice. This means you likely have transport issues and Thiamine supplementation will soon bring great improvement to your health! I know this can be a difficult thing to try to process. When your cells start filling back up with Thiamine your body can go into shock, and you might even experience a worsening of the symptoms you are trying to alleviate with Thiamine supplementation. But just be patient! God is showing you the way toward healing, and he will be by your side all along the way! God will bring you through. My paradox consisted of some irritability and extreme muscle soreness, and it would resolve after about 3 to 4 days. Every time I increased my dose I would deal with paradox until it resolved.  After the paradox or cellular refeeding syndrome resolves you increase your dose again, then you experience side effects again, and then the paradox resolves again. You repeat this process until you are beyond paradox or until your health problems resolve. Some people have symptoms of extreme distress and pain from the paradox process. If you react in this way it is advised that you begin on a very small dose of Thiamine HCL. Furthermore, you need to research on Eliot Overton’s website about introducing other supplements that will help get you through the paradox until it resolves. Some of those supplements are Potassium, Magnesium and Glutathione. In rare cases paradox can take months to resolve, but mine resolved in three to four days every time I increased my dose. If you have extreme paradox the key is to research Elliot Overton’s website and start the Thiamine (usually HCL) at a very low dose and increase it very slowly. 

Ok, the knowledge you could accumulate about this topic is endless, but this isn’t about accumulating knowledge. This is about healing. I recommend going here (Natural Factors, BioCoenzymated, B1, Benfotiamine Plus Sulbutiamine, 150 mg, 30 Vegetarian Capsules (iherb.com) and buying Biocoenzymated Benfotiamine plus Sulbutiamine. The dose of Sulbutiamine is very small, but it could still cause trouble with sleeping if you take it too close to bedtime. I recommend you buy one bottle of this product and introduce one 150mg capsule in the morning. You might want to take it at a time when you have less responsibilities. For example, maybe take it on Saturday morning because you don’t have to return to work until Monday. If you have a bad reaction, you will have time to recover. Remember if you have a bad reaction that means you almost certainly have transport issues, and Thiamine supplementation is going to change your life. Slowly increase your dose as your paradox symptoms resolve. Elliot Overton has been known to recommend thousands of milligrams per day for those who are taking Thiamine to attempt to resolve a specific health issue. If you want to learn more about this from someone highly educated on the topic, please see his website I copied above. Thank you, and I hope Thiamine helps you like it helps me. Remember, in Scripture ten lepers were healed by Christ and only one, a foreigner, returned to him to give thanks. We humans are chronically selfish and ungrateful! If God heals you in this way make sure you give thanks and let others know about this miracle of budding medical science.  

Preface Note: This is part of a family email chain that I wrote during Advent 2014. I want to add that the re-creation that Jesus works in us through our Baptism, that lives in us, isn’t just a remaking but a NEW making. We are a NEW creation, and this describes what I meant by re-creation! In being made new in our Baptism there is being (soul stuff and whatnot) added to us that we did not have before, that Jesus added to us for his glory, for our participation in his love.

Cross that arose in World Trade Center Wreckage.

Advent 2014: Christ is the king of wreckage and the re-creator of broken things. The way of the world is to swim in wreckage, rearrange it, shine it, and ask people to come and buy it, or approve of it, or laud and honor it. The re-arranged wreckage is the idol of the self, that part of us that sees the wreckage and says “there must be some way to salvage this. It can‘t really be as bad as it looks. Lets rearrange, recast, re-frame!” And the people who are best at this sort of thing are the idols of this world, and no matter how much we hold them up they always seem to fall apart in the end.

Here is a nice music cooperative that is putting out some good spiritual music. It is called Mystic Chapel, and they are writing songs about particular Martyrs. This one is about Becket.

Here is their website: The Martyr’s Project

Eighth Rule. The eighth: When the consolation is without cause, although there be no deceit in it, as being of God our Lord alone, as was said; still the spiritual person to whom God gives such consolation, ought, with much vigilance and attention, to look at and distinguish the time itself of such actual consolation from the following, in which the soul remains warm and favored with the favor and remnants of the consolation past; for often in this second time, through one’s own course of habits and the consequences of the concepts and judgments, or through the good spirit or through the bad, he forms various resolutions and opinions which are not given immediately by God our Lord, and therefore they have need to be very well examined before entire credit is given them, or they are put into effect.

I got the chance to be with my baby boy for a long time today. I haven’t spent that much time alone with him since he was born about ten weeks ago. I went to pray with him in an Abbey Church. It is a special thing when an Abbey Church somehow intermingles with your day’s events. I was slightly weary from many hours of caring for him alone, of trying to provide with bottles what my wife does in her sleep. At first I wished he would sleep through, that I could pray in silence. But soon his cries began to echo through the stone church, and I was struck with thoughts of our infant Lord as he lay there in the tabernacle.

Our Lord would cry to ask his Mother for  milk just as any baby does, and his human infancy echoes in an eternity of Divine love. He is always an infant, always a young boy, a young man, and finally a grown man who would die for each of us. What does it mean though that he would cry? It means that he is hungry, that he became one of us, helpless, weak, begging for help from those he hopes will love him. It means that he thirsts not just for mother’s milk but for the milk that only Mother Church can give to him, the souls of the just, of those who love him as he loves them, of those willing to accept this screaming child. Our Lord asks us to hold him and to feed him, to keep trying to give oneself to him through all the failure inherent in the weakness and sin that he took upon himself for our sake. He is a screaming child, screaming for the souls that are being taken from him through sin. He is a beaten, bruised, and bloody man. He is tortured and yet says “I thirst” for you who have done this to me.

Until we seek to feed him even as he feeds us, with the bread of eternal life, until we offer back to him what he gives to us without considering the price, he will come to us crying, hoping, screaming for milk. He will come to us beaten, bloody, bruised, asking for us to feed him. He will come to us with cries echoing in a Church of stony hearts, and the harder our hearts become with sin the more his cries echo in the emptiness of our inner being. Let us seek to comfort him, no matter the cost, let us live to see him still, happy, smiling, and cooing with delight that he has found his Mother’s face.

In the wake of tragedy one often wonders whether God has allowed this or that suffering as a chastisement. This notion often meets with vehement disapproval or a tacit acceptance that can seem void of meaning. I’ve wondered about this, and I came to the conclusion that God does not allow a tragedy for the chastisement of one person or of even a few. When God allows some tragedy he does so according to his all knowing plan for the salvation of man kind. When we consider the interconnection of everything that God does we can see that there cannot be one reason for any one thing that happens. Everything that happens is connected and there are thus a thousand or a million reasons for everything that happens according to the mind of God. Of course we can’t know the mind of God, how he intends for us to suffer and the things that he does or allows to that end. But it might be helpful to consider that it is possible to be chastised by God without somehow taking the full brunt of some tragedy onto oneself. We need to accept God’s chastisements for whatever they mean in the particularity of our lives. We too often create a straw man saying “God could never allow such a thing because he is loving.” But the reality is that God does allow suffering in our lives even at times in the form of tragedy. This does not mean that God would seek to saddle us with the full weight of some tragic event, but it does mean that he intends to allow suffering in our lives for our good and the good of others. Any one thing that happens might have a thousand or a million causes and a thousand or a million effects, and God is taking all of this into consideration in his plans. It is not for us to fear God’s love by isolating one of a million reasons and making it the only cause or the only effect. The causes and effects that we need to worry about are the ones that God desires to communicate to our hearts in the personal relationship we have with him. God is speaking to us in the depths of our being concerning these matters if we would only listen. Allowing God to chastise us will alleviate our suffering as we become acquainted with his plan for us. Even a small insight into his plans for our welfare will give us great joy and consolation as we attempt to offer back to him with gratitude the sufferings he intends for us.

Mother of Sorrows, Pray for us