In this YouTube video, Kamilah Stevenson explains why vitamin B1 (thiamine) is a crucial, often‑deficient, water‑soluble vitamin and how its shortage can disrupt multiple body systems. She describes how B1 supports stress regulation by balancing the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, fuels mitochondrial energy production, and enables proper digestion, sleep, mood, and heart rhythm. Deficiency symptoms she lists include chronic fatigue, brain fog, irritability, insomnia, nightmares, palpitations, constipation, and general malaise. Stevenson highlights groups that may need extra B1—people on antidepressants, antibiotics, metformin, those with infections, diabetes, inflammation, or high sugar intake. She advises against synthetic B1 supplements and recommends natural sources, especially nutritional yeast, which also provides protein, essential amino acids, and trace minerals (zinc, copper, selenium, chromium, phosphorus). Practical tips include taking nutritional yeast before bed to improve sleep without overstimulation, using B1 to counteract caffeine spikes, and incorporating B1 daily for optimal stress resilience and overall health. The video ends with a call to like, subscribe, and follow for more healthy‑living guidance.
Chapters
Kamilah Stevenson.
Today I want to talk to you about the most important water-soluble vitamin that I think most people are deficient in, and you're gonna want to stick around to the end because I guarantee you, you are not going to want to be deficient in this vitamin. Now before I move forward, make sure that you like this video and you subscribe to my page because I'm going to continue to notify you and get content out to you to help you live your highest quality life in the area of healthy living. Now this vitamin that I want to share to you, uh, talk about today is vitamin B1, which is thiamine. Now let me tell you something, you know, we live in a society where we're constantly stressed and we need our energy levels to be exactly where they need to be. We don't need to be full of fear and anxiety and panic and worry, and our digestive system is not functioning well, and we can't sleep at night, and all of these different things. And I'm telling you, if you're deficient with vitamin B1, you're going to experience all of these issues and actually more. So one of the things that vitamin D does is it helps you to regulate stress, okay? Now, when we're talking about stress, we're talking about the sympathetic and the parasympathetic system. And a lot of us are in the sympathetic system, which is the fight or flight mode. We're always going and we're rushing and we're doing things, and life can bring some stressful things our way, and it has an impact on our body. And when we talk about, uh, relieving stress or de-stressing, we're talking about resting and digesting. See, when your body relax, when your body is able to de-stress and you're able to be in the parasympathetic mode, then you are able to rest and your digestion improves. So, um, this will impact your digestion because vitamin B1, what it does is it allows your colon to even, um, have that pumping factor to be able to move toxins out of the body. And if you're deficient, then you can wind up constipated because your digestive system is not, um, relaxed enough to be able to do its job. Now another thing is, and I'll get into some of the other stress, um, problems that people have when it comes to vitamin B1 deficiency, but your energy. You will be tired all the time. You will wake up tired. It won't matter if you drink coffee or put caffeine in your system, you're still going to have some issues if you're vitamin B1 deficient. And because vitamin B1, it's like the spark. So if you're like, um, trying to jump start a car, you know that little spark when you put the two wires together and it sparks, and then it allows you to utilize, uh, the energy, the gas or whatever. That's what B1 does. And so you can have all the fuel you need, but if you don't have that spark, you're not going to get the energy. And your mitochondria plays a huge role in this, and you need vitamin B1 to have that spark to be able to utilize that energy, um, for you. So you're going to be tired when you're deficient. You're going to have, um, mood problems, you'll have brain fog, you'll be, um, agitated and impatient, and you'll just have neural agitations because vitamin B1— the vitamin helps to empower your nervous system, and you need your nervous system well in order to be well. If your nervous system is not well, you are going to have all kind of problems, mood swings, you're not going to be able to focus. You won't have clarity. You will be irritable. You won't be able to handle certain things. You'll be that person who's driving in traffic and you are so distraught because people are driving slow. And vitamin B1 gives you that calming mechanism to focus, to relax, to be able to endure the stressors of the world, to be able to get good sleep at night because vitamin B1, thiamine, actually jumpstarts your sleep cycle. So if you're deficient, you won't be able to get quality sleep. You'll have sleep insomnia and, um, you'll have problems, um, really just feeling rested, um, after you wake up in the morning. You're going to have a lot of problems with this. You'll have nightmares and vivid dreams and just things that completely will affect, um, your sleep at night, you know. So you want to make sure that you do have vitamin B1 in your system in order to allow your body to handle stress, to recover, to bring your pulse down, to help with your breathing, to help with the quality of, of your ability to be able to recover and bring you into that parasympathetic mode. And I also want to add that if you are dealing with any levels of like palpitations and things like that, because again B1 helps to calm you from like panic attacks, palpitations, anything that manifests itself when your body is stressed. That is going to become a problem if you're vitamin B1 deficient. And I think we all just like to feel really, really good. We don't want to be anxious and moody and have brain fog and don't have clarity and can't focus and agitated and have anxiety. We don't want to feel like that. We want to feel calm. We want to feel recovered. We want to make sure that our digestive system is functioning properly because that makes us feel like irritable and it makes us just feel bad. And a lot of times people will actually go to the doctor because they're vitamin B1 deficient and they feel this sense of like, I just don't feel good. And they'll go to the doctor and of course the doctor might get them more medicine and it doesn't really fix the problem. Now some people actually need more vitamin B1 than other people. Like, for example, if you are on medication, if you're on any kind of like antidepressants or antibiotics, or you're on like metformin, or, um, you have an infection, even, um, those, uh, conditions will actually require you to need more vitamin B1. And also, if you're diabetic or if you have inflammation in your body, you're going to need more vitamin B1. If your blood sugar levels are higher, like you eat a lot of sugar and carbs your body is going to require more vitamin B1 in those conditions because the sugar is really draining, um, your body and your ability to have the level of energy— the levels of energy that you actually need. And you'll enter into chronic fatigue a lot quicker, um, if you, if you have high levels of, um, sugar in your body. And so you're going to need to recover a little bit more with vitamin B1. Now, um, it's not healthy to take synthetic versions of vitamin B1. So one of the best ways, um, that you can take it— and you can get it from like other stuff like fish and pork and other things— but one of the best ways to take it is through nutritional yeast. Nutritional yeast is amazing, and I would recommend that you start to take it to get your vitamin B1, because not only does it give you the B vitamins, but nutritional yeast gives you protein. It gives you all your healthy amino acids that you need. It also involves trace minerals like zinc and copper and selenium and also chromium, which actually helps with leveling off blood sugar problems, and even phosphorus. So even without the vitamin B1, nutritional yeast is just a really, really good way to get in your vitamin B1 levels. And again, I'm telling you, you know, it will make you feel good. I mean, it's good to take a little bit before bed because, I mean, it energizes you, but it won't keep you up at night. It actually will help you to sleep better, but it will calm you. It's a relaxing, um, um, it's a relaxing vitamin to help to relax the nerves, again, to empower your entire nervous system. But then you have all these other things because of like the amino acids, for example. I mean, you will have, um, better— your— you can help with your hair health and other areas in your body to help you to become a lot healthier if you can get the proper amounts of vitamin B1 into your eating regimen. So again, I would recommend nutritional yeast. And listen, you know, this thing with stress— I mean, so many people ask questions all the time about stress and how do I get my stress down and how do I calm myself and how do I get, um, rid of brain fog and how do I increase my mood and how do I, you know, increase my ability to have energy to think through throughout the day to accomplish the things that I have on my list to accomplish. Well, a lot of people again will need vitamin B1 to do this. And again, if you are also drinking a lot of coffee, and sometimes caffeine can like really ramp you up a little bit, um, to take a little vitamin B1 afterwards will help to level that off also. And a lot of times people don't recommend this until people get extremely, um, super stressed by certain um, dependence, you know, like alcohol and things like that, then the doctor will finally say, okay, this person needs vitamin B1 or whatever. But honestly, we need it in our daily regimen to make sure, um, that our bodies are recovering very healthily and that we are, um, in our best place, in our best mood, and that we're able to again digest properly and we're able to just function, um, the way we're supposed to function within our nervous system. Okay, so, um, I hope that this helps, um, to make sure that you are not vitamin B1— again, thiamine— um, deficient. Make sure that you start to include this in your regimen, and I guarantee that you will feel a lot better. All right, so if you want to hear some more information to help you in your healthy living, um, a lot of times people don't often know some of the information that I give out. Some people do, but I just want to inspire and encourage you to live your healthiest self. Make sure again that you like this video and that you subscribe to my page, and I will make sure that I continue to nurture, uh, you with principles that will help you live healthy and better. See you next time.
