About thiamine

Thiamine, also known as thiamin or vitamin B1, is one of the B vitamins.

Thiamine helps to turn food into energy and to keep the nervous system healthy. Your body is not able to make thiamine for itself. However, you can usually get all you need from your food.

Synthetic thiamine can be used to treat or prevent vitamin B1 deficiency (this is when you do not have enough of this vitamin in your body).

It's sometimes also used to treat children with rare conditions like maple syrup urine disease and congenital lactic acidosis. A specialist doctor will need to prescribe it for them.

You can get thiamine on prescription. It comes as standard and slow-release tablets. For severe vitamin B deficiency it comes as an injection, but this is usually given in hospital.

You can buy thiamine supplements from pharmacies or shops. These include vitamin B complex tablets and multivitamin tablets where thiamine is listed as an ingredient.