I take Benfotiamine every day, lots of good supplements! It is excellent.

Thanks. Is it just B1 thiamine or is there something else in it? Also do they sell this at GNC?

You are not going to find Benfotiamine at a GNC most likely.
If they do have it they will charge an arm and a leg for it.

If you are leary of ordering on the internet, get a rechargeable charge card for internet purchases. That way if something is stolen from you the amount of $$ on it is very small and not a major issue.

We keep one charge card only for the internet, for this reason.

Some very large health food stores may have a section with Doctor's Best. Call around your area and see if that is likely.
Doctor's Best is a common brand in quality health food stores.
But buying locally can be up to 50% more expensive.

I get my Doctor's Best vitamins from Amazon now. Free shipping over $25.

You can start with plain old thiamine which is very very inexpensive. That is what I did. It is yeasty smelling and will make your urine have a strange odor. But it is sold everywhere, even grocery stores with mini pharmacies have it. The downside of this route is it is excreted in the urine very quickly whereas the Benfotiamine is not.

Starting Benfotiamine is 300mg a day for a month, then 150mg daily thereafter.
http://www.amazon.com/Doctors-Best-B...s=benfotiamine

Thiamine is 100 to 300mg a day in divided doses.

This is my Benfotiamine post:
http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/post653193-4.html

Thanks for the links. They have been very helpful.

In fact, It's hard to believe that I was NOT told about Benfotiamine, since I asked my neurologists over and over again if there was some-kind of vitamin or natural substance that could ease my PN pains and they simply answered "no." Although it was my therapist that insisted I take the B12.

After reading your links, I feel that I should have been taking Benfotiamine along with my other supplements long ago. I've never taken a Benfotiamine supplement before. I seen 1 type at my GNC -the reason I didn't buy it before was because I thought it was essentially the same as B12 and I didn't want to overdose by taking 2 supplement of the same make. Now I know they are not the same, but very different vitamins.

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mrsD: I want to ask you a few questions about yourself, and I hope I'm not rude or prying in any sense.

Do you work in the medical field? - you have an astonishing amount of helpful biomedical knowledge.

Could you tell me your personal story on PN - as in how you got it? Are you a diabetic? And how do you feel now, as in do you feel your life has improved on a daily basis?

I hope I'm not asking too many personal questions, just that I'm curious as to how well you have fared with this affliction.

--I also wanted to personally thank you for giving me some advice that really helped me. For example: I would never have started taking the right kind of magnesium without your advice.

I don't recommend things with "bad side effects"... on this forum.

The worst thing about the original thiamine I already mentioned.

You can search further on the topic to satisfy your need for more information.

I get my Benfotiamine from Life Extention Foundation. It is a wonderful site. I love the webinars and help you get there. My doctor uses several brands like Designs for Health for supplements he advises, and he likes Life Extension Benfotiamine, Eye health supplements and others. I get my protein powder there also.

I found this brand at GNC "Vitamin B-1 300" is that good to start with? I couldn't find the Benfotiamine yet. The pills I have are 300mg each. Do I take this once a day at 1 time, or am I supposed to break them into 2 and take them at different points in the day? It's important, as I could not find this answer anywhere. Maybe I can cut the 300mg into 2 - is that wise? ...please help.

I was floxed in Dec 2012.

At that time my symptoms were limited to insomnia, numbness on my head and chest, plus tendon and joint issues.

I actually couldn't walk well for about a week.

I got better over 4 weeks and returned back to normal.

Fast forward 7 months and after a rabies vaccine I have lower back pain/burning, joint issues and as of 8 days ago parethesia (prickly/itchy feelings under my skin).

Is this what you are experiencing?

If you look at my profile, you'll see my history.

I have told my story so many times, I am not going to do it again. enough for me. I've been online for over a decade now.
I started with PN in my feet and hands when I was about 30 yrs old. Mine began with hypothyroidism, and now I have some insulin resistance to deal with.
If you read the board consistently you can piece my history together yourself.
I prefer NOT to use drugs for my PN. The only one I have now RX is tramadol, and I only take 1/2 of that when in significant pain at night which is not often. Amitriptyline did not work for me, and it raised my blood sugar...so I only took it for a week.

Everything I put up here is substantiated in many studies.
I always put links up for people to read and decide for themselves, what they want to do. I know how to search for things, quickly because I know about them and know how to make accurate keywords. I learned that when I first started using the internet. I also type very fast, and that saves me time.
I search something every day and when I find links to help with PN I put them up here, for everyone to see.

I am very experienced with supplements AND drugs. 40+yrs.
I maintain a degree of privacy online for several reasons. And I would appreciate respect for that. This IS the internet after all.

If you start with regular thiamine, which is very inexpensive, and you only found 300mg tablets?????... Thiamine typically comes OTC in 50mg and 100mg tablets. You can start at 100mg a day and work up to a max of 300mg a day. This can work and give a clue as to being helpful. When that happens you can switch to the better form benfotiamine (since you cannot find it locally).

BENFOTIAMINE is different, and handled in the body differently.
So once a person is on it for while I prefer to suggest that 150mg a day in enough. I don't want people to develop vitamin dependency issues, and because I am conservative, I don't really believe in high doses of things...as research is not closed on these topics.

If you choose the thiamine 300mg you found, break it in half and take the 1/2 tablet morning and night. Regular thiamine causes an odor, in some people, but it is harmless. The Benfotiamine has no odor that I can detect in myself, and others don't report that either.

You could go to WalMart or Target or anywhere and find smaller dose tablets for less than $4.00/100. GNC has hugely inflated prices on things as well as many "health food" specialty stores who are profit driven. WalMart has an excellent supplement aisle now, with quality manufacturers. Look there, for better doses of thiamine. The majority of generic items in large stores in the midwest all come from Perrigo company. A quality place for decades.
http://www.perrigo.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perrigo

....First off, I want to genuinely apologize if I offended you in any way. I should have had the common sense to look up the things I wanted to know concerning my curiosity about you. You have helped me more than some of my doctors at this point and that is very valuable to me. I am truly impressed and grateful for your advice.

There may have been a sense of desperation in my posts earlier. I have had bad flare-ups last as long as 7 days before, but not past that...But this one made me particularly more depressed than the others. The weather here has been insane, too -over a week of damp, cold rain and waves of thick cartoonish fog -very odd for December in Chicago. Maybe that had something to do with it.

I did take a 300mg tablet of the B1 (as Thiamine hydrochloride) As for the BENFOTIAMINE I will have my daughter order it from the net. I searched desperately for it in 5 stores yesterday. When I went to GNC, they said they didn't have it at all, the same was said in Cub Foods, Walgreens and CVS.

However, my doctor told me that for now -the B1 I bought is fine and it should help.

I don't and can't take any medications for pain at all. In fact, I hadn't taken any pain medications since I got PN 6 months ago, so dealing with extremely bad flare-ups has been a real struggle for me.

As of now, I'm feeling quite better than yesterday. Any advice that you or anyone else can give me concerning my condition would be gratefully appreciated as always.