Vitamin B1 may be an effective agent against alcohol-induced heart enlargement.
Indian researchers studied the effect of thiamine (vitamin B1) on patients whose hearts were enlarged by too much alcohol and whose left ventricle no longer pumped out blood properly. Heart size and so-called ejection fraction are the two main criteria of this fatal disease.
Doctors initially gave the patient vitamin B1 infusions for three days, then continued by tablet. Improvements were seen after only a short time: The heart pumped more vigorously again, and after a few weeks the heart muscle shrank. At the beginning of the study, the patients had an average cardiac output of 30 percent – after a quarter of a year, it was 55 percent. That’s huge and gives hope in an otherwise quasi-fatal disease.
Note: The study has two flaws – it was conducted in only eleven patients and unfortunately the authors do not specify how much vitamin B1 the patients received. Nevertheless, the results are impressive.
Image: G. Altmann / pixabay