Benfotiamine
 

First four days I got pain relief from Neutopathy. Went from 150mg to 300mg to 900 mg, and have been on it for a month now and went back to 600 mg. Now I can't sleep and pain is horrific. Tried cutting back , worsening pain. I am sold on the product, some days are good and some days are bad. Going to try 900mg now with all the following vitamins and supplements, B-complex, C, ALA,etc. I find if I do too many carbs I hurt more and if I push myself to walk, bike and use my elliptical I feel better.

Hi Catrina, i noticed that you said to many carbs worsen your symptoms, exercise lowers blood sugars so i am guessing you may be prediabetic or diabetic ? if so, low carb diet should help.
Brian :)

I agree..
 

Thiamine (and benfotiamine) help with carb metabolism.

Other metabolic enhancers to help are chromium and
r-lipoic acid. I'd try those as well.

I use 400mcg of chromium picolinate and 100mg of r-lipoic acid daily.

Benfotiamine stays in the body longer than regular thiamine.
Over time, it is stored in the fat. You may be able to reduce your dose with time. But there is a condition called vitamin dependence, which occurs in some people. High doses of anything, even Vit C can cause this. So that really high doses tend to make the body dependent on them, so withdrawal may cause a deficiency state.

There is another insulin resistance treatment called
d-chiro inositol. I am considering it now.But it is pretty expensive, around $75 a month.

I've been on it for a month, now @ 50 mg / day.
Can't see any difference than when I was
taking generic Thiamine OTC from the drugstore.
Same 'ol, same 'ol.

50mg is not enough.
 

I started with 300mg a day, and used that for just over a month, and reduced to 150mg a day for over 6mos.

I have just stopped taking it, with no relapse yet. It really helped with burning (my major symptom).

Doctor's Best brand at iherb is not expensive.

Benfotiamine
 

To all those who answered my post yesterday, thank you for caring. I appreciate your comments and helpful suggestions. Bless you all and will keep you posted on my progress. Catrina from Florida:)

OOOPS !!
Typo, I meant 150/day

Re: benfotiamine

Yesterday, Alan and I had our podiatrist appointment. We go to the same doctor at the same time.

So I sit in the chair and the doctor says "Melody, we have a new treatment for Neuropathy that they want me to sell here in this office"

I said "Really, what's it called?" and he said "wait a minute, I have to go and get the paper". He goes to his office, makes a copy of it, and hands it to me.

It's all about BENFOTIAMINE.

I said "oh, I know all about this, from the Neuropathy forums on Neurotalk".

I then said "you're going to sell this here in your office"?

And he said "yeah". I then said "well, I take Methyl b-12, and that did the stuff for ME".

He said "really??"

Then we discussed Benfotamine.

The paper he gave me was about a protocol that was done using this supplement.

Imagine....they are now going to sell this in my podiatrists office.

Now I'm wondering. Do I switch from my Methyl b-12 to the benfotiamine when he starts selling it.

I don't know how much it will cost. Alan said to him "if you give us any free samples, we'lll be glad to take some".

The doctor (we love him), he laughed.

He takes very good care of us and our feet.

I just found out I have a corn under my foot. I had no idea. I wondered if I stepped on something. Then it hardened. Alan told me "you have a callous over the corn". I told him he was nuts.

Guess what? he wasn't nuts.

I said "how on earth did I get a corn"? and he said "you stepped on something, it's a very small something that had no bacteria (otherwise you would have gotten an infection and the thing would have come to the surface and come out". But since you did not get an infected, whatever the thing in your foot is, it's very tiny and the corn grew over it.

The doctor then said "you can't do anything about this corn. I'll debride it and when you come back again, we'll do the same thing. It's very small.

I said "can't you just do a procedure and take out the root"??.

He said: "You don't want to do that, sometimes scar tissue grows over where we remove whatever was imbedded in your foot, and a corn will again grow over that".

So when I wear my orthotics in my shoes, I'm just fine.

So now I'm going on the internet and looking up corns (and benfotiamine)

lol

ask how much it costs thru him.
 

I bet it is alot of $$.

When benfotiamine came out in Germany about a decade ago, and the papers were so positive about it, one could not find it here in US for less than $60 a month, if you could find it at all! Its advantage over plain Thiamine (B1) is that it remains in the body longer, and because of that works more efficiently. Thiamine is excreted very fast, often within 2 hrs. (you can smell and see it in the urine). You do NOT get the same response with the benfotiamine form.

Now it is much less:

This is the one I use:
http://www.iherb.com/ProductDetails.aspx?pid=42&at=0

Quite a change! At 300mg a day, this is a 2 month's supply for
$7.30 a month! At 150mg a day it is a 4 month's supply!

If one is conflicted about it, try plain old Thiamine 100mg 3 times a day for a month. (that would be about $4.00 from a store like Walgreen's or any other pharmacy)....If you see some improvement with it...switch to the Benfotiamine.

Thiamine in the "old days" was a treatment for PN. When Neurontin and Lyrica came out, it was shoved aside. Which is unfortunate because it actually heals you. Whereas the other very expensive drugs do NOT. They are just cover ups.

Thiamine is a cofactor in the dehydrogenase enzymes that metabolize alcohols. Not just ethanol, but all alcohols that are in food etc. (the alcohol portion of molecules is very common). Its designation is --OH.

benfotiamine is vitamin b1. it is not the same thing as b12. Its in addition to b12 not in place of. b1 helped me to lessen further the burning feeling in my feet.