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Alcoholism: Can Vitamins Prevent Alcoholism?

Can Vitamins Prevent Alcoholism?
You wouldn’t think so would you? How would you even go about studying such a thing? Most of us know that abuse of alcohol will produce deficiencies of B complex vitamins, especially B1 or thiamine, sometimes so severe that brain damage can result. It is much less well known that being deficient in B vitamins may increase the craving for alcohol. Animal studies in the 1950’s showed that healthy animals will always chose water over a water/alcohol combination. Yet nutritionally deficient animals would often choose the alcohol. A more recent study in 1996 looked at thiamine status. Induced thiamine deficiency in rats made them prefer the alcohol solution over pure water, and a strain of mice that were genetically bred to prefer alcohol were found to have lower thiamine levels! So thiamine can be both a consequence and a cause of increased alcohol consumption. The moral in this story is a good multivitamin is probably a great idea for everyone, but if you have a family or personal history of alcoholism or alcohol abuse, then it is doubly important that you avoid B vitamin depletion.

In this calorie rich, nutrient poor, refined and vitamin depleted stressful world we live in, it is fairly easy to end up with a B vitamin deficiency which these studies suggest may just predispose you to unhealthy alcohol use.  Also it is possible that heredity doesn’t inevitably cause multigenerational alcoholism, but rather gives some people a higher than average requirement of certain nutrients, including the B complex vitamins, and therefore a greater vulnerability to the disorder.  A one pill per day multivitamin from the super market or department store isn’t good enough. For starters, I recommend Supervits from Beulaland Nutritionals at a dose of at least 3 capsules twice daily. Nutritional and dietary therapy should play a major part in the management of alcoholism so it is important that patients suffering from alcohol related problems seek the services of an experienced nutritionally oriented physician.