Best known of the B vitamins is B1- Thiamin, which has a good deal to do with making you what you are today—or, just as important, what you aren’t.

Vitamin B1- Thiamin

The first signs of B1 deficiency are usually “that tired feeling” and a loss of appetite. Constipation, “nervousness,” digestive disturbances, headache, dizziness, loss of weight, rapid heartbeat, irritability — the frequency of these complaints reflects the common deficiencies of thiamin in an average American diet. Sometimes all the victim complains of is no zest for life, which probably attributes to poor appetite… sounds familiar?

Vitamin B1 is needed for sound digestion; recently it has been shown that rats deprived of the vitamin develop peptic ulcers which are cured when intake is increased. You need it for normal intestinal activity. Besides being profoundly important to the heart and circulatory system, it is also a builder of morale.

All of these jobs are performed through thiamin’s ability to help your cells to take up oxygen—in a sense, to enable your whole body to breathe. Energy-yielding carbohydrates require thiamin to set ‘fire’ to them. In fact, the fewer carbohydrates you eat, the less thiamin you need, which is why thiamin requirements are relatively low in reducing diets.

Where can Vitamin B1- Thiamin found?

Practically in all common foods contain thiamin for it is essential to every living thing, plant or animal. This vitamin prefers to live in the coarse, outer portions of foodstuffs—the husks and skins and tough integuments—exactly the portions discarded by us through modern refining processes. if you can tolerate whole-grain products found in cereals and flour , they are the preferred choice to the fortified refined varieties because of other values not supplied when adding thiamin.

Take cereals as a case in point. Ordinary white flour is poor in thiamin because the wheat germ and bran layers of the kernel are removed. Diets built around polished rice, stripped of the outer coats of the grain, are responsible for nutrients deficiency in the long run.

Nuts and legumes—peanuts, peas, and beans—are “whole grain” products and good sources of thiamin. So are fish, fowl, milk and meats where pork is found to be a rich source of thiamin, so is liver and kidney.

If you are still short of Vitamin B1 and because it is water soluble, the intake can easily bolstered up by a few spoons of granulated or flaked wheat germ for the adequate amounts every day. Do not forget, Yeast is also an excellent source.

Some of the most astonishing miracles to come out of the nutrition laboratories in recent months have had to do with the mighty family of water-soluble vitamins grouped together under the head of this amazing Vitamin B Complex.

When they use the term “Vitamin B complex, scientists are tacitly admitting that they do not know all the vitamins that compose it. Yet experiments with animals indicate that the B vitamins may turn out to be the most remarkable treasure house of human health thus far discovered.

The entire B complex (not the individual and better known B vitamins) appears to be a preventive of baldness and of gray hair, at least in animals, as we shall later see. Liberal Vitamin B Complex intake in animals is believed by many researchers to encourage greater resistance to infantile paralysis. Also, in very recent experiments, it has proved remarkably effective in preventing the development of liver cancers in laboratory rats. Right now there is a ferment of activity to relate these startling findings to human beings.

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A couple of days I wrote about the benefits of ripe mango. Today’s post is the continuation of the subject - about the benefits of green or unripe mango which I read in article recently. Since the mango is still unripe, the properties of the fruit is acidic, astringent and anti-scorbutic or scurvy.

This is beneficial for the followings:

Heat Stroke : It protects men from the adverse effects of hot and scorching winds. Eat raw mango with salt quenches thirst and helps prevent the excessive loss of sodium chloride and iron due to excessive sweating.

Gastro-intestinal Disorders : Eating one or two small tender mangoes with salt and honey is found to be very effective for treating diarrhoea, dysentry, piles, morning sickness, chronic dyspepsia, indigestion and constipation.

Bilious Disorders : The acids contained in the green mango increases the secretion of bile and act as intestinal antiseptic. Thus, eating green mango daily with honey and pepper treats biliousness and food putrefaction as well as tone up the liver and keep it healthy.

Blood Disorders : It is valuable for treating blood disorders because of its high Vitamin C content. It increases the elasticity of the blood vessels and helps in the formation of new blood cells. The unripe mango helps in the absorption of food iron, prevents bleeding tendencies and increases body resistance against anaemia, tuberculosis, cholera and dysentry.

As always, it is still best to consult your physician first before you treat yourself.

I love eating mangoes…The King of Asiatic Fruits! My favourite way of eating it, is to cut the mango into half and scoop out the flesh and savour the fruit. I also love mango gelato than mango ice cream because I feel that in most ice creams, the fruit essence is used instead of the real fruit puree.

Anyway, I came across this very interesting article on the natural benefits of mango today of which I never thought about until now and would like to share them here, maybe it might help someone? Anyway, don’t take them too seriously.

There are two parts : the ripe mango and the green or unripe mango.

Here, I’ll list about the Ripe Mango benefits:

Eye Disorders : Ripe mangoes are highly beneficial in the treatment of night blindness in which one cannot see properly in dim light. Eating mangoes liberally will also prevent development of refractive errors, dryness of the eyes, softening of the cornea, itching and burning in the eyes.

Infections : Liberal use of mangoes can prevent frequent attacks of common infections such as colds rhinitis and sinusities due to the high concentration of Vitamin A in the fruit.

Scorpion Bites : The mango juice that oozes out at the time of plucking the fruit from the tree gives immediate relief to pain when applied to the scorpion bite or bee sting. The juice can be collected and kept in a bottle for external use only.

Weight Gain : The mango-milk cure is an ideal treatment for loss of weight. Always select and eat the ripe and sweet mangoes first and then followed by milk, three times a day. The quantity of milk and mangoes should be carefully regulated according to the condition of the patient. For rapid weight gain, the patient has to consume between 3 to 4 kilos of mangoes with 4 to 5 litres of milk.

Precautions : In general, excessive consumption of mangoes will cause constipation, eye infections, blood impurities and seasonal fever. So, eat in moderation is the best!

It is said that Iron deficiency - Anaemia, affects about twenty percent of the world’s population. It is the most common type of anaemia caused by inadequate dietary intake or absorption of iron. The deficiency is highly increased by pregnancy, bottle-fed infants, heavy menses and those who are on strict vegetarian diet.

I have just found out that there are two natural types of iron :

• Haeme iron, found in animal foods
• Non-haeme iron, found in plant foods

Here are the three natural ways to prevent iron deficiency :

1. Cooking your foods in cast-iron cookwares

Cooking foods in cast-iron cookwares could add significant amounts of iron to your food and into your body. Research have proved that acidic foods, which have higher moisture content like spaghetti or apple sauce, absorb the most iron. Foods that cooked longer in cast-iron cookwares also absorbed more iron than food being heated up quickly due to the cast-iron cookwares contact.

2. Eating foods that are naturally iron rich

It is suggested to eat animal based products because they contain haeme iron . To improve the absorption rate, it is best to cook haeme iron foods like meat, fish or poultry with non-haeme iron foods that are plant based like green-leafy vegetables or beans. Also, foods that are rich in Vitamin C would help to increase iron absorption.

3. Avoiding whole cow’s milk during infant’s first 12 months

Even though, cow’s milk contains as much iron per litre as breast milk, only a small portion of it is actually absorbed by the body. Hence, breast milk is still one of the best sources of iron for the infant in the first 6 months, besides the other nutrients and benefits found. After that, if breast feeding cannot be continued, then iron-fortified milk formulas should be given instead of whole cow’s milk.

Precautions: Don’t take iron supplements unless advised by your physician, because the need for iron supplements varies between individuals. Excess iron in a person’s body can cause damage to the liver, pancreas, pituitary, joints and heart. As a result of this damage, one can develop cirrhosis of the liver, diabetes, impotence, arthritis and heart failure.