Niacin, the real story

[kwackster]

Just finished reading this book, and already have niacin (in powdered form) on order.
Due to growing medication shortages the search for alternatives is growing, and besides many other health benefits niacin can completely replace statins, and this while being both safe & cheap.
At least some of you on this forum might benefit also from this little nugget of health-related knowledge.

Niacin, the real story

Niacin (vitamin B3) is a small molecule-made of only 14 atoms-smaller even than the simplest sugar, but this one molecule has profound effects on health: it plays a role in over 500 reactions in the body.
Many illnesses are caused by too little niacin, and many illnesses can be cured with mega doses of niacin.
The authors are advocates of orthomolecular (nutrition-based) medicine, supporting an approach to wellness that involves substances that naturally occur in the human body, such as niacin.
This book makes the case for the widespread use of niacin for the prevention and treatment of health problems.

* How to take niacin, with detailed recommendations on forms and therapeutic doses
* Accurate information on niacin side effects and safety
* Using niacin for arthritis, children's learning and behavioral disorders, mental illness, cardiovascular disease, and other conditions

Download the book here:

https://annas-archive.org/md5/521f4b85a ... 69f88746d6

[Twobit]

Thanks for posting this, kwackster .

[sammy the blade]

I took some of that and broke out in a heat rash. They called it the niacin rush. What's up with that?

[kwackster]

That niacin rush or flush is just the capillaries in your skin having a thorough "bleed through", and according to the book this is actually a good thing, although the feeling itself isn't very pleasant (your skin can even get itchy for a while)

The doctor also says that healthy people seem to experience that flush effect much sooner and with lower doses compared to people with niacin deficits and certain ailments.
They need more niacin to experience that flush, sometimes for longer, and then there seem to be health conditions (like for instance schizophrenia) which the doctor calls "niacin dependant", and sufferers need much higher doses for even longer.

[whippersnapper]

We used to take it to get the "flush" back in high school when we worked out in the weight room.I don't remember what the benefits, if any, were supposed to be for lifting weights.
It will give you that warm fuzzy feeling. I never minded it. Probably similar to my wife having one of her hot flashes.

[whippersnapper]

I think they have no flush Niacin now if the feeling freaks you out but to be honest Niacin is the one vitamin/supplement that actually lets you know it is actually doing something...

[kwackster]

Plus no-flush niacin seems to work differently in the human body when compared to standard flushing niacin accoding to the doctor.
And that flush goes away in one or two weeks, provided you keep taking the niacin.
When you stop and start again the flush will also be back for a short while.

[jerryk25]

Although I eat B complex . . .
I don't think Niacin as a specific would be approved by my Doctor.

I remember TV ads about something being sold "with Niacin " back in the 1960's
but I forget the commercial.

[jerryk25]

Hah !. . . .

I just read my Nissin Cup-A-Noodles Chicken ramen noodle soup
and the ingredients listed in order by volume,
The first ingredient is "Enriched Wheat Flour, Niacin, reduced iron, thiamine, mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid. . etc
then a long list of monosodium whatnot food chemicals,
then palm oil, carrot flake, corn, green cabbage juice, rendered chicken fat.

I don't think there is more Niacin than carrots or chicken fat.

but that in the enriched flour, the most added vitamin is Niacin.

[kwackster]

Foreword of the book

Niacin raises good cholesterol (HDL) more than any known pharmaceutical, while simultaneously lowering total cholesterol, triglycerides, and the most pathogenic form of cholesterol-associated lipoprotein (VLDL).
This wide array of generally clinically desirable chemical adjustments is undeniable based on precise biochemical measures.
Niacin (extended release formula, Niaspan) has been shown to reduce disease progression in four other clinical trials as well.
Good medical doctors will prescribe niacin for reducing cardiovascular disease risk and provide a description of how to use it.
Niacin is frequently the gold standard control used for basic research experiments using animal models of atherosclerosis.
In clinical trials, when niacin has been compared to other marketed drugs it has led to most undesirable effects for business, but most therapeutically beneficial effects for the fortunate patients.
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) kills more individuals than any other disease, accordingly, there is tremendous drive in the pharmaceutical industry to make drugs.
Merck and Schering Plough convinced doctors to spend 21 billion dollars over seven years selling Zetia (ezetimibe).
Ultimately however, clinical trials would thereafter reveal that Zetia actually increases cardiovascular events, making mean arterial walls thicker !
Thus, it is no longer a good business idea for the pharmaceutical industry to compare drugs to niacin head to head.
Immediate release (IR) niacin works just as well as prescription extended release (ER) niacin, but it costs approximately fifteen dollars a day to obtain 3 grams, while IR niacin costs just fifty cents.
ER niacin causes less of a flush response initially, but with regular usage, IR niacin results in little to no flush at all, while all of the benefits are still reaped.
While the benefits of niacin for treating CVD are undeniable given the rigorously precise biochemical measures, there has been more controversy over the benefits of niacin for treating schizophrenia and behavioral disorders.

Sixty years ago, Dr. Abram Hoffer entered this scene at the all-time height of psychiatry equivocation when he first proposed with Dr. Humphry Osmond to try much higher doses of vitamin B3 for treating what resembled the dementias seen just a decade prior in the pellagra epidemics of the 1940s.
Sigmund Freudian-based psychotherapy was all the rage at this time in the early 1950s.
“Refrigerator moms” (emotionally unresponsive mothers) were given as the causal explanation for schizophrenia. Abram and Osmond results were stunningly effective in the cure rate for schizophrenia (even more so than today’s best medicine used for treating schizophrenia).
Nonetheless, poorly understood drugs are repeatedly marketed to suffering schizophrenics, while an increasing variety of other newly defined mental and behavioral disorders are defined.
This book, Niacin: The Real Story, relates niacin to descriptions of the three main psychotic disorders: bipolar disorder (characterized by dramatic mood swings), schizophrenias (characterized by perceptual hallucinations and delusions), and schizoaffective disorders (characterized by periods of both of these).
As illustrated above with the Zetia example, it has gotten so rare that anyone addresses the most important question anymore: “What works best ?”
It is such a simple question.
Instead, too much research today proceeds primarily from a for-profit motive.
It is also so rare to have someone who was around to witness the historical transformation of medical motives from a “health-and-improvement motive” to a “much-increased profit motive,” as Abram Hoffer and Harold Foster did.

The profit machine ultimately consumed the spirit or focus of many a well-intentioned doctor, but Abram persisted in weathering the storm, risking his stature among his peers to maintain the premise of his work, always addressing the question: “What works best ?”
With an open mind and an incredible work ethic, Abram continued following the most recent research right up until the end.
There is so much more to the story of niacin than its success in treating CVD.
Firstly, there are other distinct molecular versions of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) precursor besides niacin that are also covered in this book.
Secondly, there are so many observations that would remain hidden from modern medical education if it were not for the work of the author of this book, Dr. Andrew Saul.
Abram Hoffer’s experiences treating patients with high doses of niacin or niacinamide were almost too numerous to tell.

Even today, niacin, functioning as a precursor to NAD, perennially excites and simulates modern discovery in molecular biology and pharmacology research.
One of the most amazing mice used by scientists for twenty-plus years has been the Slow Wallerian Degeneration (W1dS) mouse.
Wallerian degeneration is the process of neuronal degeneration that occurs after physical insult to the neuron via razor excision or crushing of axons, all in a petri dish.
Normal neurons completely degenerate within twenty-four hours of damage; however, the WldS mouse resists degeneration.
Amazingly, WldS neurons survive for over two weeks, all without a nucleus, while still being able to be excited for at least a week !
Eventually the gene was mapped and determined to involve triplication of the NAD-synthesizing enzyme encoded by NMNAT1 (Nicotinamide mononucleotide adenylyltransferase 1), where NAD itself could in part substitute for the neuroprotective activity conferred by this fortunate genetic mutation.
Further research realized a role for the NAD-dependent pathways frequently involving histone deacetylase enzyme Sirt1 in Wallerian degeneration, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, and others in our best animal models available for studying human disease.
This same Sirtl enzyme was previously identified as being critical to conferring caloric restriction (CR) dependent increases in lifespan, where CR is the only proven approach shown to consistently extend life�span in all animal models.
However, with the genome(s) sequenced at the end of the shining day of the molecular biology revolution, the most important question remains: “What works best ?”
To this day, it would appear that niacin ranks among the highest in this regard.

Based on sheer historical observation, pellagra was the most devastating nutritional deficiency epidemic ever reported in the United States of America.
This epidemic deficiency was in large part the result of modern developments in food refining, when technological advancements enabled mass milling and the produc�tion and introduction of white rice and white flour to large populations of people.
The pellagra epidemics followed, and then the golden age of vitamin discovery began.
We realize from this history that modern human beings are simply most susceptible to niacin (and vitamin B, beriberi) deficiencies.
Thus, it simply makes sense that we would most likely benefit from higher dose application of niacin during stress or disease situations, which are well known to actively deplete NAD.
Once niacin is transformed to NAD inside the cell, it is used in more biochemical reactions than any other vitamin-derived cofactor (over 450).
This surely factors into the molecular basis for its varied physiological activities.
Does it not therefore come as little surprise that niacin works to provide relief for so many conditions ?
Unfortunately, as Abram Hoffer once said, “Niacin works so good that nobody believes it.” always want to believe, but sometimes it is hard to believe—the fact is, there truly are so many situations where increased NAD is what we need to allow our body’s endogenous chemistry to catch up to the insults inflicted on it—whether it is too much consumption of sugar or alcohol, too much stress, too much fat, and ad infinitum.
In basic scientific research, there are many experiments that obviously can never be performed on human beings. We have to learn the tragic way.
This involves simple observational analysis, with the most medically significant lessons arising in urgent response to wars rather than through the standard biomedical scientific method.
Abram and Harold lived through such wars and worked with the victims, and reported with Andrew Saul on many of these most important examples of treatment with high dose niacin.
Their lessons are veritable timeless treasures.

Aside from their research, reports of high-dose niacin treatment do not exist in the standard medical education literature.
In this book, you will finally observe firsthand examples of the results of clinical niacin use as it has never been told before.
It is an invaluable resource for everyone interested in maintaining optimal health.

W. Todd Penberthy, Ph.D.
Research Professor, University of Central Florida
Department of Molecular Biology and Microbiology

[kwackster]

Preface

Many people have no idea how many illnesses are caused by too little niacin, and practically no one realizes just how many illnesses can be cured with megadoses of niacin.
It is the authors’ intent to change that.
Our objective is to provide a reader-friendly, problem-solving book.
This book is not nearly so much about the niacin molecule as it is about what can be done with a lot of niacin molecules.
Therefore, this book concentrates on niacin’s clinical benefits in a number of health conditions.
These conditions, successfully treated by pioneering niacin researcher Abram Hoffer, M.D., Ph.D., are based on his more than fifty years of medical practice.
Dr. Hoffer, whose capacity for work continually astounded me, began this book at the age of ninety-one. Unfortunately, he died before it was completed.
Medical geographer and professor Harry Foster, our coauthor and long-time collaborator, also suffered untimely death dur￾ing the early stages of writing this work.
So, if you wonder why this book is not thicker and more comprehensive, there you have your main reasons.
This is most certainly not a textbook.
However, standing on the shoulders of these two giants of nutritional science, I have endeavored to add to and complete the existing manuscript without altering Abram’s and Harry’s voices: Harry, the medical theorist and scholar, and Abram, the experienced and courageous physician and researcher.
(You often will find Dr. Hoffer’s voice in this book, in first person, with the initials AH following in parentheses.) The other voice is mine (AWS), that of the teacher, raconteur, and parent.
I am honored beyond measure to have worked for years with Dr. Hoffer and Dr. Foster.
I think Abram Hoffer and Harry Foster were, and will ever be, regarded as two of the great medical innovators of the modern era.
Dr. Hoffer was the world authority on niacin.
This constitutes his final work, of which he said, simply: “This book is designed primarily for cli￾nicians and the public who want to learn more and more about niacin and its wonderful properties.”
I hope this handbook may prove to be a significant part of his legacy, and of real help to all readers.

—Andrew W. Saul
November 2011

[kwackster]

Introduction: Why Should You Read This Book ?

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice there is.

—YOGI BERRA

In "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions", Thomas Kuhn! says that advances in science do not occur in an evolutionary or straight-line manner. Instead, such steps take place in a series of violent revolutions sepa￾rated by long periods of relative peace.
During dramatic uprisings, “one conceptual world view replaces another.”
These intellectual revolts are not random events.
They are promoted by the discovery of significant anomalies: emergent facts that the ruling dominant theory and its supporters fail to adequately explain.
These “exceptions to the rule” are the termites of scientific theory.
As they multiply, they become more and more difficult to ignore.
The newly infected ruling theory weakens until it eventually collapses.
A paradigm shift occurs as another takes its place.
While the drug-based pharmaceutical industry continues to control con￾ventional medicine, its support structure is increasingly termite riddled.
Weaknesses are being illustrated by new highly critical books, with titles such as Deadly Medicine*, Overdo$ed America, and Death by Modern Medicine*.
Of course, the drug-based approach to health will not be abandoned any time soon unless society has a viable alternative, waiting, like an understudy, in the wings.
There it must be quietly attracting its own, more open-minded supporters.
The authors of this book are members of one such group: advocates of orthomolecular (nutrition-based) medicine. They support an approach to human wellness that involves the use, not of drugs, but of substances that naturally occur in the human body.
Niacin is one of these, and as such seems destined to eventually play a significant role in the upcoming, inevitable medical paradigm shift.
It is impossible here to show all the advantages society will gain by switching to nutrition-based medicine.
However, this initial chapter provides a variety of examples drawn from several specific categories of wellness. The remainder of the book seeks to examine, in much more detail, the case that can be made for the far more
widespread use of one such nutrient, niacin, for the prevention and treatment of health issues.
By eating diets that are deficient in essential nutrients, many individu￾als trigger their own chronic degenerative diseases later in life. It has been known for millennia that the basis for health is good nutrition.
Orthomol￾ecular medicine, a description coined in 1968 by Linus Pauling,® goes further.
Pauling describes a medical modality that uses nutrients and normal (that is, “ortho”) constituents of the body in specific optimum quantities as the dominant treatment.
Such health-nutritional relationships have been comprehensively explored most recently by Hoffer and Saul in Orthomol￾ecular Medicine for Everyone: Megavitamin Therapeutics for Families and Physicians’.
It has been further recognized that individuals are unique in their daily requirements for vitamins, minerals, or protein.8 For each nutrient, at least 2.5 percent will need higher levels than the rest of the population.
There are about three dozen nutrients.
Doing the math, it becomes apparent that most people are deficient in something—even if they consume USRDA (United States Recommended Dietary Allowance) nutrient levels every day.
We are all different, and you are a bit different every day.
Illness, medications, age, variations in diet, fatigue, and stress are among the many factors that today can make you different from the you of yesterday. It has been said that you are what you eat.

“Orthomolecular” means the right or the correct molecule.
The name was coined by Linus Pauling in 1968.
Conventional pharmaceuticals tend to be “toximolecular.”
Vitamins and insulin are examples of orthomolecular therapeutic substances.
Chemotherapy would be an example of a toximolecular therapy.

This very orthomolecular concept is true.
But, in a deeper way, you are what you absorb.
To illustrate, as Hof￾fer and Saul point out:

"In regard to nutrients, there may be a problem with absorption in the intestine.
Thus with pernicious anemia, specific areas in the gut that normally absorb vitamin B12, are lacking, or after the vitamin is absorbed it may not be combined effectively into its coenzyme, or it may be wasted or held too tenaciously by some organ system, thus depriving other parts of the body."

We need all the nutrients all the time, in the same way that an aircraft needs all its wheels and wings.
Roger Williams has described a basic concept called the “orchestra principal.”
Just as it is impossible to claim that one instrument in an orchestra is more important than another, so to maintain health, all the nutrients required by the body must be available to ensure well-being.
Though impossible to outline the enormous number of illnesses that can develop as a result of nutritional imbalance, we can illustrate the principle.
It seems likely that calcium and selenium deficiencies promote many cancers,!! excess aluminum and inadequate magnesium and calcium are linked to Alzheimer’s disease, and a lack of sulfur is associated with osteoarthritis. Certainly there are many other wellknown nutrition-illness connections as well.
As will be seen from the remainder of this book, niacin plays an espe￾cially significant role in orthomolecular medicine.
Inevitably, its use will increase as the medical paradigm shift occurs.
Orthomolecular treatments are typically far less expensive than drug-based conventional protocols.
Embracing orthomolecular treatments will make prevention and treatment available to the poor.
If this statement might seem overly ambitious, we might consider this: a single orange may cost one dollar.
It would provide about 50 milligrams (mg) of vitamin C.
A bottle of 100 tablets of vitamin C, 500 mg each, costs about five dollars.
In terms of vitamin content, the orange gives you 50 mg per dollar.
The supplement gives you 10,000 mg per dollar.
There are of course other nutritional factors and advantages to eating oranges, such as sugars, taste, bioflavinoids, and fiber.
However, one cannot easily deny, at least in terms of vitamin C, that the supplement is 200 times cheaper, costing about half a cent for the amount of vitamin C in a one-dollar orange.
Even if your oranges could cost only one-tenth as much, an impossible ten cents each, the supplement is still twenty times cheaper.
The same is true for niacin.
Niacin supplements cost approximately five dollars for 100 tablets of 250 mg each.
That works out to be about 5,000 mg niacin per dollar.
Healthy foods naturally containing significant amounts of niacin cost far more.
Once again, the many nutritional advantages of eating kidneys, liver, whole-grain bread, nuts, and green leafy vegetables are considerable and undeniable. In terms of niacin con￾tent, however, there is no competition. Several dollars’ worth of these foods provides only tens of milligrams of niacin.
Niacin-fortified foods such as breakfast cereals, white bread, and pasta are slightly cheaper niacin sources, but not much.
Interestingly, the fact that milled grains have any niacin at all is due to niacin being added to them in the man￾ufacturing process.
Adding niacin to foods is a form of low-dose sup￾plementation.
The USRDA, which is far too low, is less than 18 mg.
Yet bodily need for niacin varies with activity, body size, and illness.
!+ About half of all Americans will not get even the RDA amount of niacin from their diets.
Niacin’s special importance is indicated in that the US RDA for niacin, which again we say is a very low figure, is actually twenty or more times higher than the RDA for other B vitamins.
Twenty teaspoons will not clean up after a hurricane much faster than one will.
We think that a lack of sufficient niacin is a real and continuing public health problem.