Pantothenic Acid (Vitamin B5): The "anti stress" factor

Vitamin B5, otherwise known as pantothenic acid or pantothenate is a water soluble B-vitamin that is critical for normal function of the human body. This vitamin is also commonly called the anti-stress nutrient because it plays a role in the production of stress hormones by the adrenal glands. Deficiency of B-5 contributes to the inability to cope with stress. Additionally, pantothenic acid plays vital roles in energy production from foodstuffs. Pantothenate is a component of coenzyme A, which is necessary for energy production from carbohydrates, fats, proteins, and other compounds, as well as synthesis of fats, cholesterol, steroid hormones, porphyrin and phospholipids.

Signs and Symptoms of Deficiency:

• Fatigue
• Elevated cholesterol
• Burning and pain in the arms and legs
• Burning feet
• Nausea
• Indigestion
• Irritability
• Fainting
• Hair loss
• Elevated heart rate
• Susceptibility to infection
• Premature graying of the hair

Vitamin B5 has been shown to be beneficial for the following conditions

• Achlorhydria
• Depression
• Dermatitis
• Adrenal disease (adrenal burn out or failure)
• Headaches
• Insomnia
• High Cholesterol
• Chronic Fatigue syndrome
• Fibromyalgia

Drugs or Medications that may interfere with or deplete vitamin B5

• Caffeine
• High blood pressure medications
• Acid reflux medications

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One of the primary target organs for vitamin B5 is it helps the adrenal glands...it helps the adrenal glands properly produce cortisol, which helps us to fight inflammation. So cortisol is actually one of the major mechanisms by which we are capable of fighting inflammation on a day-to-day basis. One of the other functions of vitamin B5 is it actually helps to stimulate your adrenal glands' ability to stimulate eosinophilic production. So these are specialized cells that help us cope and deal with allergies. So B5, okay, is a fuel or a food for the adrenal glands and that helps us to produce cortisol, which helps us fight inflammation, but also helps us to fight allergies.

Okay, the other component here under its ability to help our immune system, and that's to produce antibodies like IgG, IgA, IgE et-cetera; the antibodies that we make, that our immune systems make to help defend our body from all of the different types of allergenic responses that we might be exposed to: environmental responses, viruses, bacteria, parasites, et-cetera...One of the other main components to vitamin B5 deficiency, and again this is all - these are all functions of B5 - is there's a nickname, you sometimes hear this term or you may have if you took biochemistry: acetyl CoA. And this is a, sometimes in biochemistry, nickname for vitamin B5 but its primary role is in the formation of a molecule called aceytlcholine.

So that brings us to, you know, what are some the symptoms of a choline deficiency or of, not a choline deficiency, but an acetylcholine deficiency: neuropathy. And one of the classic signs of a vitamin B5 deficiency is what we call a "burning feet" neuropathy. In other words, the feet will feel actually like they're quite on fire. Other symptoms associated to these effects of vitamin B5 deficiency would include: headaches, many people develop GI pain - gastrointestinal pain. So one of the functions of vitamin B5 is its role in the aid of digestion. So GI pain: an inability to properly digest the food can occur as a symptom or a side effect. Generalized symptoms of fatigue is quite common as well. So we can have a lot of these types of symptoms, we can have a lot of these types of problems when we suffer from vitamin B5 deficiency for a long enough period of time.

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So this particular B vitamin is actually found in all foods, and so where we see problems with people developing a deficiency is when they are chronically stressed...And so what happens with B5 deficiency is we actually lose our ability to respond appropriately to stress; we become stress intolerant. So even things that may have not bothered us five or ten or fifteen years ago will wipe us out today. Some people become exercise intolerant. Some people will get sick at the drop of a hat. So we can't exercise or we get increased illness, and that could be upper respiratory infections, it could be urinary tract infections, it could be chronic viral infections, et cetera, but we lose our ability to cope and adapt to stress so even small forms of stress tend to build and to affect us much, much sooner than what they should or otherwise would.

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According to Chris Kresser, 100g of beef liver contains 8.8mg of Pantothenic Acid.

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So again vitamin B5 deficiency causes adrenal problems, can cause nervous system problems, causes the inability to cope and adapt to stress, causes immune system dysfunction, reduces your body's ability to produce antibodies, and overall it's not a deficiency that we want to cross. In essence, we want to make sure there our levels of vitamin B5 are always adequate. One of the best ways to measure B5 deficiency is through a test called lymphocyte proliferation...As a result of that, there is a test that came out where we can actually measure the storage of vitamin B5 within the white blood cells, so it gives an average of B5 levels over a six-month period of time. So, if you're asking your doctor to measure your vitamin B5 levels, please don't have him measure B5 in the serum, it's not going to be very effective. Have him measure your lymphocyte proliferation levels for vitamin B5 and in so doing, you're going to get a much more accurate representation and much more accurate reading.

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Vitamin B5 toxicity symptoms
It doesn’t appear to be toxic in high dosage, although diarrhea, digestive disturbances and water retention have been reported on dosage exceeding 10 g a day.
Taking 1,500 mg a day over an extended period may cause sensitivity to the teeth.

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Foxx said:

_http://vitaminstoxicity.edublogs.org/2010/09/14/pantothenic-acid-vitamin-b5-toxicity/

Vitamin B5 toxicity symptoms
It doesn’t appear to be toxic in high dosage, although diarrhea, digestive disturbances and water retention have been reported on dosage exceeding 10 g a day.
Taking 1,500 mg a day over an extended period may cause sensitivity to the teeth.

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What Does Vitamin B5 Do in the Body?
Plants make vitamin B5 to help them make complex antioxidant molecules such as the polyphenols and lignins that help preserve tissues and normal cell function both in the plants and in the animals that consume the plants. Animals, including humans, use vitamin B5 to make coenzyme A and acyl carrier groups.
Coenzyme A is essential for connecting small fat molecules to make large fat molecules. Most of the body’s hormones begin as cholesterol. Coenzyme A helps transform cholesterol into all kinds of hormones. The body also uses it to make ubiquinone (also known as coenzyme Q10) and vitamin D. If you don’t have enough vitamin B5, your body can’t make enough Co-Q10 or vitamin D. Every cell in the human body uses coenzyme A to make complex lipids, such as the phosphatidylcholine that in every cell membrane and the ceramide that makes up most of the water-resistant layers of the skin.
The body uses acyl carrier groups to make the enzymes that transform one fatty acid into another, such as converting DHA (the essential fatty acid found in plant foods) into EPA (the essential fatty acid found in fish oil). It also uses vitamin B5 in the processes that create some kinds of proteins.

Vitamin B5 is useless without other nutrients.
The first step of the body’s process of transforming vitamin B5 into various enzymes requires an enzyme called pantothenase. Your body can’t make this enzyme without magnesium.
The second step of the body’s process of transforming vitamin B5 into enzymes requires the amino acid cysteine. The body uses this amino acid to make an intermediate chemical known as 4′-phosphopantothenoyl cysteine. Without this amino acid, the products of the first step just accumulate without ever being used to make essential enzymes. Later steps in the processes that the body uses B5 to make enzymes also require magnesium or cysteine.
The human body can only absorb about 10 mg of vitamin B5 in any one day. Excess vitamin B5 is not absorbed and is eliminated from the body with feces. The processes that require vitamin B5 keep it in a buffered state for up to about 3 days. If your diet suddenly eliminated all vitamin B5, it would take about 3 days for any deficiency symptoms to appear.

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Some other kinds of vitamin deficiency can cause vitamin B5 deficiency.
Vitamin C seems to help the body conserve vitamin B5. In laboratory experiments, giving animals the equivalent of 2000 mg of C every day helped relieve symptoms of vitamin B5 deficiency without giving the animals any additional B5. It’s possible than vitamin C deficiency could aggravate the symptoms of vitamin B5 deficiency.
The same cells in the small intestine absorb both biotin (another B vitamin) and vitamin B5. Taking large amounts of biotin might cause or aggravate vitamin B5 deficiency. [this also means that taking large amounts of B5 can cause a biotin deficiency by blocking it's absorption]

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Using Vitamin B5 to Support Recovery From Diseases
Vitamin B5 has been used to support recovery from many disease conditions, sometimes successfully, and sometimes not.

Acne is sometimes treated with vitamin B5 supplements, but the single clinical trial in the medical literature invites extreme skepticism.
Dr. Lit-Hung Leung published a study in the journal Medical Hypotheses that he had recruited 100 residents of Hong Kong aged 10 to 30 who had acne. He persuaded them to participate in an experiment involving the internal and external use of vitamin B5 to treat acne. They were instructed to shitake-mushroomstake 10,000 mg of B5 a day plus to treat their faces with a 20% vitamin B5 cream six times a day. Without mentioning how many blemishes were treated or whether there were any side effects, Dr. Leung reported that “liberal” use of vitamin B5 might result in a “complete cure.”
This dosage of vitamin B5 is enough to cause side effects in some people. There is no other evidence that the treatment works for acne—or that it works for acne who do not have Asian skin types. It’s probably OK to try to treat acne with vitamin B5, since there are no reported side effects. Creams made with the form of B5 called dexpanthenol may relieve dryness and itching caused by Accutane.

Adrenal “burnout” may be prevented with vitamin B5. Chronic insufficiency of vitamin B5 in the diet may result in shrinking of the adrenal glands. This can lead to feeling tired all the time and having trouble dealing with diseases that cause inflammation. It is important to pay attention to diet or to take vitamin B5 supplements before adrenal burnout symptoms develop. Once there have been permanent anatomical changes in the adrenal glands it may be too late.

Cold stress (stress reactions to winter cold) has been treated with vitamin B5. In one study, men who received very large doses of B5 (10,000 mg per day) had smaller drops in white blood cell count after swimming in ice cold water. If you don’t swim in ice cold water during the winter, however, the side effects of the supplement may be more annoying than the colds they may prevent.

Hair loss in women caused by polycystic ovarian disease (PCOS) or autoimmune disease (such as Sjögren’s syndrome) may respond to the form of vitamin B5 called dexpanthenol. It has to be applied directly to the scalp. A product called Hair Start by New England Associates may help—but don’t buy it without a money-back guarantee.

High cholesterol and high triglycerides often respond to vitamin B5 supplementation. There have been three clinical trials of vitamin B5 for high cholesterol and high triglycerides. Two of the trials showed a benefit from taking vitamin B5, but they had so few participants that data analysis could never have shown statistical significance.
In the one clinical trial that had enough participants to produce statistically significant data, taking 300 mg of the pantethine form of vitamin B5 led to an average 30% decrease in triglycerides, an average 13.5% reduction in LDL or “bad” cholesterol, and an average 10% increase in HDL or “good” cholesterol. Other studies have found that the pantethine form of B5 is also helpful for diabetics managing cholesterol and triglycerides.

Obesity sometimes is treated with vitamin B5, but as with acne, the scientific evidence for the treatment is limited to a single study in China. One dieters, all of them Chinese, were put on a low-calorie diet limited to 1,000 calories per day. They were given 250 mg of vitamin B5 four times a day. The average weight loss in the group was 1.2 kilos/2.6 pounds per week, but dieters did not complain of hunger, and urine tests indicated the dieters’ bodies were using sugar rather than fat for fuel. (This is a good thing if you are diabetic.) The dosage used in the study is at the borderline of amounts high enough to cause stomach upset—scale back your consumption of B5 if taking 250 mg four times a day causes diarrhea or vomiting.

Osteoarthritis has been treated with a combination of vitamin B5 and L-cysteine supplements. Among arthritis supplements who used aspirin to control pain, however, taking 500 mg of B5 a day was, at least in one clinical trial, found to reduce morning stiffness and severity of pain.

Rheumatoid arthritis responds to higher doses of vitamin B5. One study found that taking 2,000 mg of calcium pantothenate reduced morning stiffness, swelling, and pain. This dose is high enough that some people may experience stomach upset from taking it unless they take eight 250-mg tablets or capsules throughout the day. Even then, stomach problems are common.

Wounds usually heal faster when treated with skin creams that contain pantethine or pantothenic acid. Taking a B5 supplement by mouth probably won’t hurt, but it isn’t likely to help, either.

Is Vitamin B5 Ever Toxic?

Unlike some other vitamins, vitamin B5 can cause serious problems when overdosed—but you have take far more B5 than required to prevent deficiency or to support recovery from any health condition. Animal studies have shown that extreme overdoses of B5 cause death from respiratory failure. A lethal dose of B5 is about 10,000 mg per kilogram of body weight. This means that a person who weighed 100 kilos (220 pounds) would have to take 1000 tablets containing 1000 mg of B5 before death occurred—but it’s unlikely that the stomach could hold that much.
Taking a single dose of 1000 mg of B5 may cause heartburn, nausea, or diarrhea. Since this is about 150 times what most people need and about 100 times the amount in most vitamin B5 supplements, this effect is unlikely for most users of the vitamin.
There is one report in the medical literature of a person who developed pulmonary effusion (fluid around the heart and lungs) after taking 300 mg of vitamin B5 and 10 mg of biotin every day for two months. The symptoms stopped when the supplements were discontinued. There also have been reports of vitamin B5 interfering with the action of some prescription anticoagulant medications (such as Coumadin/warfarin), so caution in taking B5 supplements when taking blood thinners is advised.

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Foxx said:

Thanks for the additional info, RedFox!

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