The #1 Vitamin Depleting Food in the World

Today, we're going to discuss the number one vitamin depleting food in the world. Can you guess what it is? If you answered refined starches, you'll be correct because the answer is actually not sugar. If we look at how much a sugar depletes, you have certain nutrients, a starch will deplete you way more than a sugar. We're talking about refined rice flour, tapioca flour, corn flour, modified corn starch, maltodextrin, and modified food starch. In order to process or metabolize or break down a refined starch and turn it into energy, it requires certain nutrients. One of the big nutrients that is needed to metabolize starches is vitamin B1, thiamine. Another question that you might have is why is a starch worse than a sugar? As far as depleting nutrients, a person consumes much less sugar than starch in their given diet. An average person consumes about 150 pounds of sugar per year. An average person consumes almost 300 pounds of starch per year. On the glycemic index, refined starches are much, much higher than sugar. What is the glycemic index? It's a measurement or a scale of how fast a food or a carbohydrate can turn into glucose or raise your blood sugar. If we compare sugar to starches, sugar is about 74, maltodextrin is like 180. And those refined starches jack up your blood sugar way faster. One of the really important nutrients that's needed is vitamin B1, thiamine. A couple of things you need to know about thiamine. We don't store a lot of it. I mean, like in our entire body, we might store 30 milligrams. The RDAs for B1, which were established like 80 or a hundred years ago, have never been changed. It's like between one and 1.2 milligrams. Do you realize how tiny that is? From my viewpoint, that is like way, way, way too low. Doctors never check for a vitamin B1 deficiency. What are the symptoms of the B1 deficiency? Beyond fatigue is problems with your GI system, your digestion. You might get slow digestion, bloating, maybe a little constipation, feeling nauseous, because so many parts of the digestion need B1. You're also not going to make enough stomach acid, can't release the bile coming out from the liver, just going to get a lack of digestion. Another common symptom with the B1 deficiency is stress, nervous tension, solving problems, especially when you're trying to get to sleep. This is why a B1 deficiency creates insomnia. You're just not going to sleep that good. As this deficiency gets worse, you're going to notice a personality changes, mood swings more frequently. If you're in a relationship with someone and they just like fly off the handle with no reason, and they're extremely moody, suspect a vitamin B1 deficiency. How many children have that? Purely because they're eating too many refined starches. They need a lot of B1. Women that are pregnant are more susceptible to a B1 deficiency. One of the big symptoms that they get right off the bat is feeling nauseous. If you yourself are pregnant or you know someone who's pregnant and they get nauseous, make sure they take more B1 because also that infant needs B1 too, especially in the early years. In infants, they can have what's called a horse cry. They're trying to cry, but no voice comes out. Muscle twitches, can't get enough air. Your breathing is going to be off. I wonder how many people with sleep apnea just have a vitamin B1 deficiency. All the starch that comes in the body that breaks down the glucose, it can't be used as energy, so then it's converted to lactic acid, which shuts down the oxygen. It makes the body more acidic, which is going to affect the breathing and it might be even hyperventilating to try to push out more CO2 to balance this acidity. This could be one of the reasons why people can't sleep. And also in the muscles, they're going to get restless leg syndrome. Another thing like diabetics, I would say nearly a hundred percent of all diabetics are deficient in B1 because they have a high sugar in the blood, constantly demanding a lot of B1. The form that I recommend is something called benthotamine. It's a very specialized type of B1. If someone is really, really deficient in B1, they literally can be psychotic. They can also have another symptom called confabulation, which I had to look that up. That means a production of memories, which are false, all from a severe vitamin B1 deficiency. Other things will exaggerate a B1 deficiency. Alcohol, tea, coffee, raw fish, as in sushi. Having certain digestive inflammatory issues with your gut where you can't absorb certain things, taking metformin can create a deficiency. Exercising a lot increases the demand for vitamin B1. Think about how many athletes are using maltodextrin as an energy source, but without B1. And on top of that, they're exercising like crazy. But what are some foods high in B1? Whole foods. You can get B1 in meat. In fact, the meat that has the highest source of B1 is actually pork. Meat, liver has B1, eggs have B1, sunflower seeds have B1. Sometimes you'll hear that refined grains are a good source of B vitamins. That's only because they're adding them in there through the fortification process. I definitely don't recommend taking a synthetic B1 product. I recommend taking a natural B1. The name of the natural B1 is called allithiamine, and it's from garlic. It fixes a lot of nerve issues. It's a much better bioavailable source of B1. I have a lot of it is in B1, but I need to get to the next nutrient that's commonly deficient when you consume these starches, and that is magnesium. Magnesium is another co-factor involved in this whole process going from starches to energy. What's really interesting about magnesium is it's needed to allow for B1 to work. If you don't have enough magnesium, guess what? B1 can't work either. In fact, your vitamin D won't work. The other thing that magnesium does is it helps control calcium. Calcium typically causes contraction of the muscle. If there's not enough magnesium, you're going to get more contraction of the muscle. What do you call that? A charley horse muscle spasm, which usually occurs in the early morning because that's when you have the lowest point of magnesium. Magnesium is important in regulating calcium because if there's too much calcium in the wrong place, you can get a lot of problems. Calcium that builds up in arteries, kidney stones, magnesium is so important with all that. Without magnesium, you tend to have higher blood pressure, palpitations, just a lot of problems with the heart. Just think about the medication is called a calcium channel blocker. Well, they're just mimicking the effects of magnesium because there's too much calcium that's affecting the heart. If you don't have enough magnesium, your cortisol goes up and then you can't sleep. This is why a lot of people take magnesium before bed. The type of magnesium I would recommend is magnesium glycinate. If you're very deficient in magnesium, you can get tremors, muscle weakness, migraines. You can't absorb vitamin D without magnesium, so that's important. Yes, you can start taking these nutrients to allow you to digest the starch, but a better thing would be to avoid refined starches. For more information about these starches, you should watch this video right here. Check it out.