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burtlancast said:You can always take Vit E, Vit C, selenium, niacin.
Niacin has been used extremely successfully by Abram Hoffer to treat a large number of diseases, notably depressions/ bipolar disorders/ schizophrenias and heart disease.
Some people took/ needed 30 g / day (!) for their symptoms to disappear, and were fine .
I myself took for a while 3 g/ day and felt very well; had to downgrade somehow because i'm subject to migraines sometimes.
There's a terrific book by Andrew Saul and Hoffer: "Niacin: the real story"
jyb said:Is the niacin you mention interchangeable with niacinamide?
burtlancast said:I believe niacin can be taken at any doses without any liver complications. Niacinamide , if i remember correctly, does cause some liver discomfort taken at very high dosages, altough i can't tell you for sure on the moment .
It's all in the book.
The main disadvantage of the niacin derivatives will be cost. Inositol hexanicotinate is an ester of inositol and niacin. In the body it is slowly hydrolyzed releasing both of these important nutrients. The ester is more effective than niacin in lowering cholesterol and triglyceride levels, Abou El-Enein, Hafez, Salem and Abdel (1983). I have used this compound, Linodil, available in Canada but not the U.S.A. (at the time this paper was written) for thirty years for patients who can not or will not tolerate the flush. It is very gentle, effective, and can be tolerated by almost every person who uses it.
It is possible the beneficial effect of niacin is not due to the cholesterol effect but is due to a more basic mechanism. Are elevated cholesterol levels and arteriosclerosis both the end result of a more basic metabolic disturbance still not identified? If it were entirely an effect arising from lowered cholesterol levels, why did Clofibrate not have the same beneficial effect? An enumeration of some other properties of niacin may one day lead to this basic metabolic fault. Niacin has a rapid anti sludging effect. Sludged blood is present when the red blood cells clump together. They are not able to traverse the capillaries as well, as they must pass through in single file. This means that tissues will not receive their quota of red blood cells and will suffer anoxemia. Niacin changes the properties of the red cell surface membrane so that they do not stick to each other. Tissues are then able to get the blood they need. Niacin acts very quickly. Niacin increases healing, as it did with my gums. Perhaps it has a similar effect on the damaged intima of blood vessels.
Beamish and his coworkers (1981, 1981a, 1981b) in a series of reports showed that myocardial tissue takes up adrenalin which is converted into adrenochrome, that it is the adrenochrome which causes fibrillation and heart muscle damage.
Under severe stress as in shock or after injection of adrenalin, a large amount of adrenalin is found in the blood and absorbed by heart tissue. Severe stress is thus a factor whether or not arteriosclerosis is present, but it is likely an arteriosclerotic heart can not cope with stress as well. Fibrillation would increase demand for oxygen which could not be met by a heart whose coronary vessels are compromised.
Niacin protects tissues against the toxic effect of adrenochrome, in vivo. It reverses the EEG changes induced by intravenous adrenochrome given to epileptics, Szatmari, Hoffer and Schneider (1955), and also reverse the psychological changes, Hoffer and Osmond (1967). In synapses NAD is essential for maintaining noradrenalin and adrenalin in a reduced state. These catecholamines lose one electron to form oxidized amine. In the presence of NAD this compound is reduced back to its original catecholamine. If there is a deficiency of NAD the oxidized adrenalin (or noradrenalin) loses another electron to form adrenochrome (or noradrenochrome). This change is irreversible. The adrenochrome is a synaptic blocking agent as is LSD. Thus niacin which maintains NAD levels decreases the formation of adrenochrome. It is likely this also takes place in the heart and if it does it would protect heart muscles from the toxic effect of adrenochrome and from fibrillation and tissue necrosis. None of the other substances known to lower cholesterol levels are known to have this protective effect. Niacin thus has an advantage: (1) in lowering cholesterol and, (2) in decreasing frequency of fibrillation and tissue damage.
One of the most exciting findings is that niacin will protect against cancer. A conference at Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine at Fort Worth early this year, was the eighth conference to discuss niacin and cancer. (Titus,1987). The first was held in Switzerland in 1984.
In the body niacin is converted to nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD). NAD is a coenzyme to many reactions. Another enzyme, poly (Adenosine adenine phosphate ribose) polymerase, uses NAD to catalyze the formation of ADP-ribose. The poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase is activated by strands of DNA broken by smoke, herbicides, etc. When the long chains of DNA are damaged, poly (ADP-ribose) helps repair it by unwinding the damaged protein. Poly (ADP-ribose) also increases the activity of DNA ligase. This enzyme cuts off the damaged strands of DNA and increases the ability of the cell to repair itself after exposure to carcinogens.
Jacobson and Jacobson (Hostetler (1978) believe niacin (more specifically, NAD) prevents processes which lead to cancer. They found that one group of human cells given enough niacin and then exposed to carcinogens developed cancer at a rate only one-tenth of the rate in the same cells not given niacin. Cancer cells are low in NAD.
It is not surprising that niacin also decreased the death rate from cancer in the National Coronary Drug Study. The first cancer case I treated was given niacin 3 grams per day and ascorbic acid 3 grams per day, Hoffer (1970).
Niacinamide also increases the production of NAD. Three grams per day given to juvenile diabetics produced remissions in a large proportion of these young patients, Vague, Vialettes, Lassman-Vague, and Vallo (1987). They concluded, "Our results and those from animal experiments indicate that, in Type I diabetes, nicotinamide slows down the destruction of B cells and enhances their regeneration, thus extending remission time." See also Yamada, Nonaka, Hanafusa, Miyazaki, Toyoshima and Tarui (1982). Kidney
tissue is protected by niacinamide, Wahlberg, Carlson, Wasserman and Ljungqvist (1985). It protected rats against the diabetogenic effect of Streptozotocin. Clinically niacin has been used to successfully treat patients with severe gIomerulonephritis. One of my patients was being readied for dialysis. Her nephrologist had advised her she would die if she
refused. She started on niacin 3 grams per day. She is still well twenty-five years later.
Niacin and niacinamide are protective in a large number of diseases. I will refer to one or more its ability to reduce fluid loss in cholera, Rabbani, Butler, Bardhan and Islam (1983). It inhibits and reverses intestinal secretion caused by cholera toxin and E. coli enterotoxin. It reduces diarrhea associated with pancreatic tumors in man.
Swandattur said:I think I see why niacin might have made me depressed. If it frees histamines. I think I have some histamine intolerance. All that histamine release might effect mood it seems to me if your body has trouble clearing histamines.
Mittir said:Ray Peat always recommends niacinamide to inhbit release of free fatty acids.
In this interview with Josh Rubin ( at 94 minutes) RP said that nicotinic acid and Inositol hexanicotinate both increases Serotonine and prostaglandin activity.
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/eastwesthe ... -endotoxin
Some 50 percent of the population of the developed world seems to suffer from disorders or diseases that respond beneficially to niacin or niacinamide supplementation. This figure is probably an underestimate. Sufferers from arthritis (20 percent), addictions (10 percent), children with learning and/or behavioral disorders (5 percent), cardiovascular disease, coronary disease and stroke (30 percent), cancer (50 percent), schizophrenia, or severe stress (unknown) would very likely improve if given more niacin.
pone said:And what is the best dosing for an anti-aging regimen? I read the posts online here, and honestly they are random number generators. You have people taking 50 mg of niacinamide once a day, and others taking 1500 mg several times a day. Up to 3 gm per day appears to be safe but it is not clear what that level might do to other vitamins, minerals, and metabolites. You pretty much get the feeling that no one has any basis for their actions here other than pure subjective feeling, and that is pretty scary.
tara said:pone said:And what is the best dosing for an anti-aging regimen
Some of the dosing I've read about here for niacinamide (and other supplements too) people have arrived at by noticing that if they take some they feel better, but if they take more something gets worse. It seems that for some people it can drop blood sugars quickly... other than yes, RP has often recommended niacinamide.