Beriberi is a disease that has affected people for thousands
of years, particularly in Asia where white rice—also known as polished
rice—has long been a staple food. The condition was first documented over
4,500 years ago in ancient Chinese medical texts. Its name, “beriberi,” comes
from the Sinhalese language, meaning “weak, weak”—a fitting description
of its main symptoms, which include severe fatigue, nerve damage, and heart
failure.
White rice is heavily processed, with its outer layers—the husk,
bran, and germ—removed. Unfortunately, this process also strips away essential
nutrients, including those critical for nerve and heart health.
Dr. Takaki Kanehiro: Linking Diet to
Disease
In 1884, Takaki Kanehiro, a Japanese naval doctor
trained in England, made a breakthrough observation. He noticed that beriberi
was rare among naval officers and Western sailors who ate a more balanced
diet but was common among Japanese sailors whose meals consisted almost
entirely of white rice.
To test his theory, Kanehiro conducted a controlled
experiment by comparing the health of two groups of sailors—one fed a
traditional rice-only diet, and the other given a diet with added meat,
vegetables, and barley. The results were striking: beriberi was ten times
more common among those on the rice-only diet.
Despite the clear connection between diet and disease,
Kanehiro’s findings were dismissed at the time, as most scientists believed
beriberi was caused by an infection. Tragically, this misunderstanding had dire
consequences. During the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, more than 27,000
Japanese soldiers died of beriberi, nearly half as many as were killed in
battle.
Christiaan Eijkman: A Crucial Clue from
Chickens
In 1897, Christiaan Eijkman, a Dutch physician, was
sent to the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) to investigate beriberi. While
studying the disease in laboratory chickens, Eijkman observed something
unexpected: birds fed white rice developed beriberi-like symptoms, but those
switched to unpolished rice quickly recovered.
This simple but powerful discovery led Eijkman to propose
that polished rice lacked a vital nutrient, which he called the “anti-beriberi
factor.”
The Birth of Vitamin Science
In 1911, Polish chemist Casimir Funk isolated the missing
nutrient in rice and identified it as a nitrogen-containing compound,
which he named “vital amine” or “vitamine.” When scientists later
found that not all such compounds were amines, the term was shortened to “vitamin.”
The specific compound that prevents beriberi is now known as thiamine,
or vitamin B1.
In 1912, British biochemist Frederick Hopkins
conducted a separate study with mice and found that those fed only synthetic
food stopped growing, but growth resumed when milk was added to their diet. Hopkins
proposed the “Vitamin Hypothesis of Deficiency,” suggesting that certain
diseases arise from the absence of essential nutrients.
Together, Hopkins and Eijkman were awarded the Nobel
Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1929, marking a turning point in our
understanding of nutrition and preventive medicine.
A Legacy That Changed Global Health
The discovery of thiamine and the recognition of beriberi as
a nutritional deficiency disease laid the foundation for modern vitamin
research. Today, we understand that many chronic conditions once thought to
be mysterious or infectious are actually caused by nutrient deficiencies.
These early discoveries helped reshape public health policies, dietary
guidelines, and food fortification efforts worldwide—saving millions of lives
in the process.
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| Removal of the husk of brown rice extends its shelf life, but the resulting white rice lacks thiamine (vitamin B1) content. |
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