False headlines & the truth about vitamins and minerals, niacin....

Today's Post: Tuesday, 3-27-2012

Most doctors know little about supplements including vitamins and minerals and are too busy to find out more unless they somehow get updated by their patients or other doctors who know more.

Some doctors have studied supplements and find they can get superior results with patients by using the indicated supplements. Since the supplements cost less than drugs and have virtually no side effects that harm quality of life, far more of their patients actually take the supplements than take many drugs.

The drug companies don’t like the competition from those supplements that do work but have none of the side effects most of their drugs do and the supplements cost less.

(Some drugs do important things and do them fast that supplements cannot do. And, for some things the drugs are the better choice. Then too some supplements may not be that effective.

But the drug companies appear to be deliberately misinforming doctors and the media and thus many of the rest of us about supplements that do work.)

So you may have seen headlines like “Vitamins are a waste of money or dangerous” AND “Vitamin E causes Prostate Cancer.”

But the truth is far different. Very different!

1. Most vitamins and minerals are beneficial and some are spectacularly beneficial.

There a few vitamins and minerals that do have side effects in doses that are too large. But if you know what level is safe on those few, those same vitamins and minerals can benefit you.

This makes the headline, “Vitamins are a waste of money or dangerous” false & I think deliberately misleading.

2. We know 4 things about vitamin E and prostate cancer. The headline as quoted, “Vitamin E causes Prostate Cancer" is completely false. And the other 3 things help prevent prostate cancer! (The study did not test real vitamin E but a poor artificial copy that was not real vitamin E!)

We covered vitamin E the first week in this series, on Tuesday, 3-13-2012.

We covered vitamin D3 last week, on Tuesday, 3-20-2012.


This week we cover one of the two vitamin supplements that are spectacularly beneficial. It's niacin.

Niacin has several health benefits.as a vitamin. So does the related compound, niacinamide, aka nicotinamide. Niacinamide does not have the important heart protective benefits of the niacin form of vitamin B3 however.

The Wikipedia article I saw said that niacin among other things helped your body repair damaged DNA. That’s likely to add to your cancer protection. And, by doing this for the inside of your blood vessels, the endothelium, this may also help prevent heart disease.

Taking extra niacin is so beneficial it has been found to reduce the death rate from all causes.

Increasing HDL and lowering triglycerides reduces the small particle LDL that is one of the major causes of heart disease if not the number one cause. Doing either is heart protective. Doing both at the same time is very protective.

Because small particle LDL is harmful; oxidized LDL is harmful, and all LDL that has excess sugars attached to it is very harmful, it’s desirable to have low LDL and dangerous to have LDL much over 120.

The ideal would be to have something that increases HDL, lowers triglycerides, and lowers LDL too and was safe if taken properly.

NIACIN does exactly that! Taking niacin does every one of these things.

Niacin produces a flushing sensation if you take enough on an empty stomach or a partially full one. It feels like and can look like a case of instant but temporary sunburn. You often feel a bit warm even in a cool or cold room.

This effect is from temporarily opening up your capillaries including those just under the skin,

This not only does no harm but may provide extra blood flow to your heart.

But it can be bothersome and cause onlookers to wonder something is wrong with you.

It’s temporary and you can explain to onlookers that it is both temporary and safe and you know why it’s happening.

But if it gets intense it can be a distraction to you or the work you do. So, it’s usually a good idea to minimize it.

We’ll cover that in detail as the last part of this post.

But one of niacin’s most important benefits it is that it and related actions can provide strong heart disease prevention.

And, best of all it can do so for the majority of people who get little benefit from statin drugs.

Few lay people and unfortunately most doctors know this; but it’s been found that for those people, taking niacin is more protective than taking statin drugs.

That’s really important since it can mean avoiding the side effect risks in taking statins AND deliver better heart protection too.

When the Berkeley Heart Lab had their own website, I discovered that in most of the genetic types their very sophisticated heart risk test found that:

while the overall average is that 3 or 4 people out of every 100 people who take statins escape a heart attack,

for most people, only 1 person out of 100 who takes statin drugs escapes a heart attack.

the remaining minority genetic type gets dramatically better protection from statins. My memory is that in that group, 41 people out of 100 taking likely would escape a heart attack.

But the Berkeley Heart lab test costs about $700. So even some doctors who knew about this information may have been reluctant to check this first due to that high cost.

More recently, the cardiologist, Dr Arthur Agatson, who authored the South Beach Diet, wrote an article saying there is a now a $150 test that can tell you and your doctor whether or not you are in the minority that get strong benefits from statin drugs or the majority who very likely would not. The Berkeley Heart Lab found everyone else got better protection from niacin!

So, since niacin is a better option for most people, by actual research test, than statins, how can you get that heart attack and heart disease prevention with niacin without bad problems with flushing?

If you have dreadful heart risk readings on your LDL, HDL, and triglycerides AND are unwilling to make the lifestyle upgrades to reverse that or have just had a heart attack, your doctor may prescribe 1500 mg a day or more of time release niacin. That avoids the flushing as the release is so gradual.

That level of intake of niacin can be hard enough on your liver, that you might need to discontinue the niacin or scale the dose back after giving your liver a break. And, most doctors have been trained to check your liver function tests regularly to find this early if it happens to you. (Statins do this also in some cases.)

The other way to prevent heart disease with niacin is to take far less but add other ways to protect your heart. These include specific lifestyle upgrades.

My own blood tests show that approach does work. By taking 300 mg a day of niacin just after my breakfast and just after my lunch AND doing these other things, I dropped my LDL cholesterol from 130 to readings like 73. My HDL which was in between 50 & 65 is now between 85 & 96. And, my triglycerides which were about 120 are now readings below 50 such as 41 & 46.

I eat a big breakfast and both the oatmeal breakfast I eat and the breakfast with lentils I eat are high in fiber. And rarely get any niacin flush after breakfast. My lunches are a bit lighter and about one time out of six or so, I’ll get some flushing.

(I get my 300 mg tablets of niacin at Whole Foods in their Whole Foods brand. Because I do get flushing occasionally and my test results, I’m quite confident the niacin is actually in the supplements!)

But that’s far from the only reason I can get those results with so little niacin.

Here are just some of the things I do in addition.

Sterol supplements and foods high in them lower LDL cholesterol. I take 3 tablets a day of Natrol’s Cholesterol Balance, a beta sitosterol supplement. I also eat pecans and walnuts and broccoli florets which also contain some sterols.

(When I went from 300 mg a day of niacin to taking it twice a day and began taking sterols, my LDL went from 130 to 106.)

Eating foods high in soluble fiber such as lentils, pinto beans, oatmeal, and apples and apple sauce also lowers LDL. These are my staple foods! I eat oatmeal every other breakfast and lentils the rest of the time. I eat pinto beans as all or part of my dinner about 5 or 6 times a week. And, I eat apple sauce as a snack most days each week. That and my regular exercise are why my LDL was 130 instead of well over 160 at first.

More recently, I began eating turmeric in curry powder a few evenings a week and taking curcumin both with black pepper each evening. (That’s protective against many cancers and Alzheimer’s disease.) But I found out that this also dropped my LDL from just over 100 to just over 70 -- about 106 to 73.

I didn’t know my turmeric intake was causing this effect until I read this was an effect of turmeric in Dr Dean Ornish’s book, Spectrum.

(To protect my liver, I also drink alcohol more moderately than I did when I was younger and take the supplement milk thistle.)

To avoid my LDL being the dangerous small particle kind, I also completely avoid foods that contain trans fats and hydrogenated oils which increase them. And, I get regular, vigorous exercise which reduces them.

The boiled whole eggs I eat for breakfast every other day and the wheat germ I have with my oatmeal the other days are high in choline. I take lecithin which is high in choline. That extra choline helps my HDL stay high. So does my regular vigorous exercise. And so does my daily, moderate intake of red wine. In addition, I eat blueberries and nuts and take bilberry supplements and chromium supplements. Each of those tends to increase your HDL and has other health benefits.

Lastly, to stay healthy and far less fat, I drink no soft drinks, eat virtually no foods made from refined grains, eat zero high fructose corn syrup, and have cut back my sugar intake in steps until I eat less than 10 % of what the average American eats.

I also eat some onions, use only extra virgin olive oil, take omega 3 supplements, and eat wild caught salmon two or three times a week.

That why my triglycerides are below 50 and my small particle LDL is so low in part.

The average American does the opposite and often has triglycerides well over 150 and far higher heart attack risk because of it. (We now know that soft drinks, sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and refined grain foods increase triglycerides a lot and therefore increase heart attack risk besides helping to make you fat. That’s new information.)

These lifestyle upgrades dramatically increase my heart attack protection. By doing them, I can get great protection from 600 mg a day of niacin while the people who do not, may get only moderate protection from five times that much niacin.

Research found that in people who already have heart disease and have taken enough statins to get LDL readings well under 100, adding niacin was ineffective in getting better protection.

But that’s like locking the barn door after the horse was stolen! Had many of these same people been taking niacin years before and dong many of these lifestyle upgrades, most of them would not have the heart disease to begin with.

So, in conclusion, taking niacin supplements along with the right lifestyle upgrades can give you very good heart attack prevention. And you can do it without much flushing.