"When you have a surplus of thiamine," he explained, "you have the capacity to induce magnesium deficiencies, which have been linked to a number of alcohol's negative effects." He conjectured that thiamine-induced magnesium deficiency could be the root cause of a new sensitization to alcohol's effects.
Another way of counteracting thiamine deficiency - most often linked to poor nutrition among alcoholics, anorexics and senior citizens - is food supplementation. Both Langlais and Gauvin noted the Australia example (see EurekAlert/A:C&ER October 1999). During the 1980s, Australia had the highest recorded rates of WE in the world, mostly alcoholics, and large numbers of people needing long-term care because of WKS. In 1991, the federal government mandated that bread flour be enriched with thiamin. (In the U.S., most bread flour is enriched but enrichment is not mandatory.) Since then, Australia's WKS rates have significantly decreased. Some policy and health advocates are now calling for thiamine supplementation of alcoholic beverages, primarily beer.
"The Australian practice of food supplementation is okay," said Gauvin, again referring to his earlier study. "When we gave our animals regular food that contained thiamine, they did not develop sensitization to alcohol. The body can naturally absorb and process low-graded doses of thiamine in the gut and the liver. It's the whopping injections that are problematic. Eating enriched Wonder Bread or regular food gives you the thiamine in relatively normal concentrations." Gauvin is less comfortable with the proposition of supplementing alcohol with thiamine: "if you supplement alcohol with mega-doses of Vitamin B, what you may actually be doing is inducing magnesium deficiencies."
Conversely, Langlais believes that we nonetheless need to "re-examine
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Contact: Philip J. Langlais, Ph.D.
planglai@sunstroke.sdsu.edu
619-594-2208
Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research
21-May-2000