Got my allithiamine. Told spouse I need extra thiamine because my giant fat brain needs extra brain food. Shook the bottle at him like a rattle and declared myself a super genius (like Wile E Coyote, natch).

"There will be no living with you if this works," he said with a sigh.

He's probably right.

I was cleaning the kitchen still thinking about vitamin stuff. I had briefly looked for a link between copper and thiamine, or zinc and thiamine, and nothing of note came up. If my problem is thiamine, was the copper toxicity thing just a red herring? A collection of misattributed symptoms? Or perhaps I do have a slight imbalance exacerbated by hormonal rise and fall? Not that it really matters. I don't care what the name of the problem is, I just care that it goes away.

I noticed my teakettle on the stove was grungy. Time to give it a good scrub with barkeeper's friend. Especially the copper bottom ... the COPPER bottom ... of the teakettle I bought when I first moved to Fairbanks in 2005, and I've been using much more frequently since covid to heat the water for all our tea and coffee. I shined a light in the kettle and yup, it's just a cheap kettle with a piece of stamped copper for the bottom. Not layered metal, with steel inside. Exposed copper. Cool. Threw it straight in the trash.

Maybe I'm demonizing an innocent kettle that served me faithfully for many years. Realistically, how much extra copper could it add if the water pipes themselves are copper? Is it worse if the metal and water are heated? The world may never know. Next time I go to buy a kettle I'll be pickier.

I wonder if the Romans had some health nuts who insisted on clay pots instead of water transported by lead pipe. Will future generations look back and say, wow, people suffered from so many horrible health problems in the 21st century because of pesticide use, industrial farming practices, corner cutting manufacturing, and because it was more profitable to engineer frankenstein food products with addictive taste profiles. The medical system was largely ignorant of basic vitamin function and used deficiencies to sell expensive medications that treated symptoms and caused more problems. Then the rampant mental and physical health problems in the population caused people to become more agitated and desperate and buy into conspiracies for the relief they were denied by the larger system. That's how empires fall. It was really messed up, gosh, I'm glad I didn't live back then!

I've been looking at nutritional labels more and it's a bit concerning how many foods have little to no vitamin content. I was looking specifically for potassium. Aside from one freak food with 40% (a soybean spaghetti - it's a pretty good sub for wheat pasta), the rest were 8% for "potassium rich" foods like spinach and kale, and mostly 2-4% per serving for other foods. I have looked at food labels for protein/fat/carb content, but I assumed the vitamins would sort themselves out, especially living in a first world country (supposedly) where food is regulated. Popular opinion says that vitamin supplements are nothing but an expensive toilet flush. But I don't see how I could get more than a quarter of my recommended potassium intake on a good day, and potassium is supposed to be so plentiful that supplementation is actively discouraged. Seems odd. Maybe I am misremembering but I thought food labels showed more vitamin content in food 10, 20 years ago? Now it's 0% of this and 0% of that. Little bit yikes.

This article is already 10 years old.

Guess I'd better figure out how to like steamed kale and spinach. I warned spouse. We're going to eat a lot more of this. I made a side dish a couple of days earlier that was basically a baked kale/spinach dip served with the blue corn chips. It was good. So there's ways to make it without it being a sodden wet lump of greens.

On allithiamine a couple days. So far no significant effects, positive or negative. The heavens did not part and there was no golden shaft of light with angels singing. I feel fine, normal. Not super amazing, just plain normal. No weird heart feelings. Maybe a little extra rumbly in the tumbly, and a slight bobble head feeling, like my brain has a bit more room in my skull. A little minor leftover neck soreness and stiffness from the headache. When I take potassium now I notice no difference in how I feel. Took my supplements with a hard boiled egg and waited for 30 min before making coffee. Supposedly coffee/tea and red, blue, purple fruits and vegetables, spices, have substances that can interfere with thiamine absorption, so I'll space them out. Felt normal all day. Maybe a little less tired than I ought to be.

Ran across an unpleasant discovery. Spouse was taught to administer a field sobriety test, and at one point made me do the "follow my finger" part in a restaurant after I'd had a glass of wine an hour earlier (I volunteered to drive us home if he wanted an adult beverage for himself - we were less than a block away from the apt! He drunk tested me!). This is how I got to learn about nystagmus - the involuntary eye movements that give away an intoxicated state and what they're looking for when they ask you to follow the finger. Some weeks ago I realized I was having nystagmus trying to focus on my phone screen, but I'd had no alcohol for days. I figured my eyes were tired. Well, turns out nystagmus is a sign of something nasty called Wernicke encephalopathy.

Wernicke encephalopathy (WE) is an acute neurological condition characterized by a clinical triad of ophthalmoparesis with nystagmus, ataxia, and confusion. This is a life-threatening illness caused by thiamine deficiency, which primarily affects the peripheral and central nervous systems.

Wernicke encephalopathy

Slight eye issues aside, my motor coordination is fine and though my brainpower feels like it drops by half during a headache, I can still keep a coherent train of thought. I forget words and sometimes it is hard to enunciate well, but nothing out of the ordinary for someone who is exhausted and in significant head pain. I doubt my condition is anywhere bad enough for a WE diagnosis, but it's like realizing there's a huge scary wolf watching you from the shadowy edge of your campsite. Feeling the hair rise at the back of your neck as reality sinks in. If your fire dies, that wolf will attack. You better keep the fire going.

It's like the ebb and flow of hormones also cause an ebb and flow of thiamine, and I've been slipping deeper into deficiency with every cycle. If I'd gone to a doctor complaining of hormonal headache, what treatment would I have received? They'd think for a half second, put me on painkillers and send me home, right? And when that failed, they'd try a different painkiller, and another, and another. Maybe some psychiatric drugs, maybe some heart medication. They'd give me a photocopied list of "migraine triggers" and tell me to avoid chocolate and red wine (now I realize these things interfere with thiamine absorption). I might have never even seen the wolf before it attacked.

And we make fun of the middle ages for being barbaric and using leaches.

I've got my fingers crossed that this solves my problem. It seems like it should. They say a paradox reaction can happen where thiamine supplementation can make symptoms worse for a little while, which means you were genuinely deficient. So I may have to be patient and give it a couple months. Not give up if I don't feel better right away. I'm just taking 1 pill (50mg) right now, might bump it up to 2 next week.