Niacin Was, Is, and Always will be Essential to Life and the Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease, Just for Starters
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@DavidPS said in Niacin Was, Is, and Always will be Essential to Life and the Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease, Just for Starters:
Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, March 9, 2024
http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v20n03.shtmlIt's a great read. Thanks!
I wonder why the article mentions the other forms of NAD, but makes no mention of niacinamide. As I've been using niacinamide for a long time only because haidut talks a lot about it in RPF and very little is said of niacin except for my associating it with the flush reaction which I always had a negative association with. Although I bought some niacin from Prescribed for Life 3-4 years ago, I have not moved from thinking about trying it out and it has been in its unopened package.
What interests me more in the article is its use for patients with glioblastoma and demyelination disease. A short keyword search shows them to be neurological in nature. And since I still struggle with a mild form of ataxia now, having improved from megadosing with thiamine with the urging of @mostlylurking, I wonder if megadosing with either niacinamide or niacin would help as well.
For a long time, I couldn't make up my mind and even until now, I have just been taking niacinamide at 250mg daily. But when I moved my thiamine dosage daily from 250mg to 1500mg daily I experiences great improvement gait ataxia and another form of it involving vertigo, and the complete disappearance of ALS symptoms involving the throat retaining food that I've recently eaten.
Now, I should just start doing instead of thinking and start incorporating niacin in place of niacinamide, and go on to megadose on it to see what salutary effects it brings.
Temporal thinking is the faculty that’s
engaged by an enriched environment, but it’s
wrong to call it “thinking,” because it’s simply
the way organisms exist... - Ray Peat Nov 2017 Newsletter -
@yerrag - Just as a quick reminder, this thread is in the Not Medical Advice section of the forum. I am eminently unqualified to post medical advice.
I am surprised that niacin is being considered by others to treat glioblastoma.
Daily Lifestyle Modifications to Improve Quality of Life and Survival in Glioblastoma: A Review
The Promise of Niacin in Neurology (2023)
Nicotinic acid inhibits glioma invasion by facilitating Snail1 degradation (2017)
Glioblastoma and Methionine Addiction (2022)
Dr. Hoffer used 3 grams of niacin as his standard dose and went much higher if he deemed it necessary.
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@Mulloch94 So, are you saying that those overmethylaros should not be taking methyl-donor substances, such as TMG, along with the nicotinic acid?
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@yerrag said in Niacin Was, Is, and Always will be Essential to Life and the Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease, Just for Starters:
@DavidPS said in Niacin Was, Is, and Always will be Essential to Life and the Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease, Just for Starters:
Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, March 9, 2024
http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v20n03.shtmlIt's a great read. Thanks!
I wonder why the article mentions the other forms of NAD, but makes no mention of niacinamide. As I've been using niacinamide for a long time only because haidut talks a lot about it in RPF and very little is said of niacin except for my associating it with the flush reaction which I always had a negative association with. Although I bought some niacin from Prescribed for Life 3-4 years ago, I have not moved from thinking about trying it out and it has been in its unopened package.
What interests me more in the article is its use for patients with glioblastoma and demyelination disease. A short keyword search shows them to be neurological in nature. And since I still struggle with a mild form of ataxia now, having improved from megadosing with thiamine with the urging of @mostlylurking, I wonder if megadosing with either niacinamide or niacin would help as well.
For a long time, I couldn't make up my mind and even until now, I have just been taking niacinamide at 250mg daily. But when I moved my thiamine dosage daily from 250mg to 1500mg daily I experiences great improvement gait ataxia and another form of it involving vertigo, and the complete disappearance of ALS symptoms involving the throat retaining food that I've recently eaten.
Now, I should just start doing instead of thinking and start incorporating niacin in place of niacinamide, and go on to megadose on it to see what salutary effects it brings.
Although I did take high dose niacin for a few weeks before I found Ray Peat, I switched to niacinamide after reading Peat's articles. You might find this collection of Peat quotes about niacinamide helpful.
Peat made the point multiple times that he considered niacin to be too stressful on the body and he always made the point to specifically recommend niacinamide, probably because it is not stressful on the body. iirc, he said that because niacinamide is water soluble, it doesn't stay in the body for longer than maybe a couple of hours. I took 200mg of niacinamide 2Xday for about 5 years; around 2021, I changed that dosage to 100mg, 4Xday. When I made that change, I experienced improved body chemistry and during the first 4 months on that regimen, I lost around 35-38 unwanted extra pounds. I should also say that I also take 100mg riboflavin 4Xday too. Both are important.
Perhaps you might consider trying 100mgs dose of niacinamide, taken 4Xday? I think this would better align what Peat recommended.
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Thank you David, excellent links and information, info has been passed on to others already.
Am personally a believer that sometimes there is a proper time and place for different forms of the same vitamin e.g. Niacin vs Niacinamide, standard B1 vs Allithiamine, the different Magnesiums etc etc.
As for Niacin flush, i have read product comments from folks who have been pretty traumatized. It sounds like it can be very stressful. Low and slow seems to be the right way to start, then work your way up. Or depending on what your health goal is then maybe Niacinamide would be the easier or more proper alternate.
My curiosity has been piqued though, my next bottle may be standard flush Niacin. Going forward i'll possibly even alternate purchases of both forms.
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@tubert That would be what I recommend. I'm not exactly well invested in the methylation scene, but from what I've read nicotinic acid and TMG are basically pushing the methylation process in opposite directions. And if you're overmethylating then it seems like to me TMG would cancel out any benefits one might receive from nicotinic acid.
I think I would default back to what Chris Masterjohn said about the overmethylating. Which he's not even a fan of niacin. Not because it doesn't work, but because it's actually powerful enough to swing the pendulum in the other direction and make you an undermethylator. So if you respond well to glycine, then that might be a better option. However some people have a poor response to glycine, so B3 is basically their only choice.
I do remember Ray wrote an article on methylation. And he said CO2 activates the demethylation enzymes. So you might could use something like buteyko breathing, bag breathing, or CO2 baths to help as well.
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@Mulloch94 - I take equal amounts of both TMG and niacin to try to balance the methylation. I will still get the niacin flush if I have not taken niacin for a few days. So maybe there is something else going on.
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I feel like I am on the wrong side of the fence defending niacin. There are a few positives.
https://www.bioenergetic.life/clips/36a61?t=1361&c=30
For example, one of the basic effects of niacin is to inhibit the release of free fatty acids from our tissue stores. And free fatty acids poison our energy apparatus. And niacin is not only immediately involved in energy processes, but you've probably noticed how schizophrenics almost always are heavy smokers. And nicotine happens to have an actual brain protective and therapeutic effect against a lot of the degenerative inflammatory diseases. But I think that's because it's overlapping with the niacin pathways that are natural energy producers and anti-inflammatory nerve protective systems.
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@DavidPS If you get a flush after taking a break, but didn't get a flush while taking it daily, it might be a sign that your histamine stores have replenished enough to start causing the flush interaction again. Supposedly niacin doesn't do anything to directly increase histamine, rather it just releases it from mast cells. So overtime of consistent usage it could possibly deplete histamine. But because it reduces methylation it also lowers histamine degradation, so there seems to be some dispute here.
@DavidPS said in Niacin Was, Is, and Always will be Essential to Life and the Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease, Just for Starters:
I feel like I am on the wrong side of the fence defending niacin. There are a few positives.
I don't think niacin is bad at all. As Ray mentioned in your example, pretty much any form of B3 does some positive things for metabolism, like lowering FFA's and increasing NAD. I think I probably question some of it's usage as a lipid lowering substance, because people typically have to take really large dosages of it. And since it does in fact raise serotonin and histamine, it's probably best to use no-flush versions of B3 if you're taking more than 500mgs. Some people get flush at even lower dosages than that.
Niacinamide was also used in a trial to restore kidney function in kidney disease. I'm wondering if the effects would be the same for nicotinic acid? Presumably so, since the mechanism behind it's action for the restorative effects is the increase in NAD. However one does have to take into account the massive dosages, and taking nicotinic acid at 1g+ would likely cause a surge in serotonin. Which lends to the notion that maybe when really large dosages are required it might be best to opt for no-flush varieties.
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Ray spoke about the no flush BB-3
https://www.bioenergetic.life/clips/423de?t=5718&c=108
“…The old, it's still popular, the nicotinic acid that makes people turn red, what it's doing is increasing the release of serotonin and activating prostaglandin production, stuff you don't want to happen. And even the kind they call no-blush, no-flush niacin, it's inositol hexonicotinate, I think is its name. It still releases nicotinic acid which releases serotonin, where the niacinamide doesn't do that. And even the slow release or the nicotinic acid are for sure going to increase the risk of diarrhea by increasing your serotonin and prostaglandins. Right. Good stuff. Once again, anything else you want to elaborate on?”
