Show citation(s) that CHF patients' thiamin deficiency is
reversed or prevented through 'eating right'.

PMID: 10809999, shows that the stored thiamin in these folks
is not reduced.  "This change is most likely not an expression of a
thiamine deficiency, but rather of an altered metabolism of thiamine,
which is not understood at present."  Adequate thiamin there, but it
wasn't making it to the active form.

PMID: 10482308 verified that furosemide increases urinary thiamin loss.

PMID: 12845243 studied dietary intake of a group of these folks, said
thiamin level was below recommended levels.  That doesn't say that
'eating right' would have made enough difference to matter.  You seem
to know that it will.

Hi Robert.

In various lifespan studies, animals eating a balanced and nutritious
diet including various vitamins and minerals have shorter lifespans
than animals eating a nutritious diet plus the addition of higher
supplemental dosages of certain natural substances that cannot be
obtained at this dosage through diet alone, including some of the B
vitamins.  Numerous human trials with various nutritional supplements
also show health benefits that nutritious diet alone does not provide.

I think one of the misconceptions here is that supplements may only be
good for preventing deficiencies, and that if the right foods are eaten
to give the RDA of such vitamins and minerals that there will be no
benefit to extra supplementation.  This is not the case.

As one example, every time you ingest sugar during your life, some of
this binds to proteins in your body through a process called glycation.
This is especially the case with fructose (juices, soda pop), which
glycates at about 7 times the rate of table sugar.  These glycated
proteins crosslink over time and form what are known as "advanced
glycation end products" or AGE's.  AGE's are permanent, and lead to
permanent damage and stiffening of blood vessels and heart tissue, and
damage to tissue in the rest of the body.  One of the more proven ways
to extend lifespan in healthy animals is to inhibit this process using
AGE and glycation inhibitors including carnosine, and B vitamin
products like pyridoxamine, thiamine, and benfotiamine.  The RDA for
pyridoxamine(B6) is 2mg per day, but the optimal dose for inhibiting
glycation is likely four hundred miligrams or more.    [Favorable
Effects of Pyridoxine HCl on the aging process. Lindseth K, Dictor M &
Miquel J in AGE 5(4), 143, 1982. Late middle-age intervention gave mean
total lifespan extension of 11% over healthy controls in mice].
Pyridoxamine is much better than the pyridoxine form for this and other
purposes, so the lifespan extension may be much greater.  It's been
proven that B vitamin products like pyridoxamine and the thiamine
derivative benfotiamine are very effective at blocking AGE formation in
humans.  For instance, one human trial found that benfotiamine at
600mg/day blocked at least one third of AGE formation in human tissue.
The health and life extending benefits from B vitamins are by no means
limited to inhibition of glycation, this is just one of many.

As to thiamine, the RDA may be set at 1.5mg in males, but based on
cumulative information from published human and animal studies, optimal
dosing in humans may actually be hundreds of times this amount, taken
in balance with the other B vitamins at appropriate dosages.