A short YouTube talk by Dr. Nicole Cain explaining how thiamine (vitamin B1) deficiency can produce anxiety and panic by impairing histamine detoxification. The speaker links inability to clear histamine—via the methylation/histamine methyltransferase pathway—to elevated histamine and histamine aldehyde, which stimulate the nervous system and can cause allergy-like, anxious, and “hungover” symptoms.
Chapters
Today we're going to talk about how thiamine deficiency can cause panic. I'm Dr. Nicole Cain. I'm the founder of the Holistic Wellness Collective, where you can learn to be your own holistic health expert. To learn more, click on the link in the bio. And I can't wait to see you on the other side. Have you ever experienced anxiety that feels like it comes out of the blue? Nothing new is going on in your brain. You're not thinking anxious thoughts. There aren't any triggers that you could put your finger on. It's just coming from your body. You feel anxious, anxious and panicky. And that feeling is valid because sometimes anxiety can come from the body and not the brain. Let's talk about how thiamine deficiency can cause panic and anxiety. Thiamine is vitamin B1, and it has many important jobs in your body. In particular, detoxifying histamine. Why do you care about histamine? Because histamine is as stimulating to your nervous system as adrenaline. If you can't drain histamine as quickly as you're making it, you're going to get symptoms of allergies, anxiety, and panic. One of the pathways for draining histamine is the methylation pathway. It's called the histamine methyltransferase pathway. It has four steps. Step one is methylation. In this step, you make methyl histamine. In the next step, you make histamine aldehyde. This is where B1 comes into play. In order to progress to the next step of detox, you need thiamine or B1. And if you don't have enough, you're going to build up aldehyde in addition to everything else. Accumulation of histamine aldehyde can also make you feel hungover.
