Source: Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, September 30, 2005

 Niacin (Vitamin B3) Lowers High Cholesterol Safely

OMNS - There is a safe, inexpensive, nonprescription, convenient and effective way to reduce high cholesterol levels and reduce heart disease risk: niacin. Niacin is a water-soluble B-complex vitamin, vitamin B-3. One of niacin's unique properties is its ability to help you naturally relax and to fall asleep more rapidly at night. It is well established that niacin helps reduce harmful cholesterol levels in the bloodstream. Niacin is one of the best substances for elevating high density lipoprotein cholesterol (the "good cholesterol) and so decreases the ratio of the total cholesterol over high density cholesterol.

The finding that niacin lowered cholesterol was soon confirmed by Parsons, Achor, Berge, McKenzie and Barker (1956) and Parsons (1961, 1961a, 1962) at the Mayo Clinic, which launched niacin on its way as a hypocholesterolemic substance. Since then it has been found to be a normalizing agent, meaning it elevates high density lipoprotein cholesterol, decreases low density and very low density lipoprotein cholesterol and lowers triglycerides. Grundy, Mok, Zechs and Berman (1981) found it lowered cholesterol by 22 percent and triglycerides by 52 percent and wrote, "To our knowledge, no other single agent has such potential for lowering both cholesterol and triglycerides."

Elevated cholesterol levels are associated with increased risk of developing coronary disease. In addition to niacin, a typical diet generally recommended by orthomolecular physicians will tend to keep cholesterol levels down in most people. This diet can be described as a high fiber, sugar-free diet which is rich in complex polysaccharides such as vegetables and whole grains.

With adequately high doses of niacin, it is possible to lower cholesterol levels even with no alteration in diet. E. Boyle, then working with the National Institutes of Health in Washington, D.C., quickly became interested in niacin. He began to follow a series of patients using 3 grams (3,000 milligrams) of niacin per day. He reported his conclusions in a document prepared for physicians involved in Alcoholics Anonymous by Bill W (1968). In this report, Boyle reported that he had kept 160 coronary patients on niacin for ten years. Only six died, against a statistical expectation that 62 would have died with conventional care. He stated, "From the strictly medical viewpoint I believe all patients taking niacin would survive longer and enjoy life much more." His prediction came true when the National Coronary Drug Study was evaluated by Canner recently. But Boyle's data spoke for itself. Continuous use of niacin will decrease mortality and prolong life.

Niacin Combined With Other Drugs Which Lower Cholesterol

Familial hypercholesterolemia is an inherited disease in which plasma cholesterol levels are very high. Illingworth, Phillipson, Rapp and Connor (1981) described a series of 13 patients treated with Colestipol 10 grams twice daily and later 15 grams twice daily. Their cholesterol levels ranged from 345 to 524 and triglycerides from 70 to 232. When this drug plus diet did not decease cholesterol levels below 270 mg/100 mL they were given niacin, starting with 250 mg three times daily and increasing it every two to four weeks until a final dose of 3 to 8 grams per day was reached. To reduce the niacin "flush," patients took aspirin (120 to 180 mg) with each dose for four to six weeks. At these dosage levels of niacin they found no abnormal liver function test results. This combination of drugs normalized blood cholesterol and lipid levels. They concluded, "In most patients with heterozygous familial hypercholesterolemia, combined drug therapy with a bile acid sequestrant and n! icotinic acid (niacin) results in a normal or near normal lipid profile. Long term use of such a regimen affords the potential for preventing, or even reversing, the premature development of atherosclerosis that occurs so frequently in this group of patients."

Fortunately, niacin does not decrease cholesterol to dangerously low levels. Cheraskin and Ringsdorf (1982) reviewed some of the evidence which links very low cholesterol levels to an increased incidence of cancer and greater mortality in general.

Niacin usually causes a flush when beginning treatment. The flush can be uncomfortable, but it is not dangerous. In order to slowly acclimate the body to niacin and minimize the flush, the following steps can be taken:

Anyone interested in this approach might go to a discount store and buy a bottle of 100 mg niacin tablets and a bottle of 1000 mg vitamin C tablets.

One should expect to begin by taking 1000 mg of vitamin C and 50 mg of niacin three times a day, preferably after each meal. Niacin tablets are scored and a 100 mg tablet is easily broken along the score to produce two 50 mg half-tablets of niacin.

After three or four days, the niacin dosage is increased  to 100 mg three times a day. One might continue increasing the niacin by 50 mg or 100 mg every three or four days until the dosage of 1000 mg of niacin and 1000 mg of vitamin C are taken three times a day.

It normally takes about three months on the higher dosage of niacin and vitamin C for cholesterol levels to stabilize at lower levels. How much does taking 3000 mg of niacin and vitamin C cost? These two vitamins can be purchased for a total cost of about 50 cents a day.

Continuous use of niacin can be expected to reliably decrease mortality and prolong life.

Remember:

There is not even one death per year from vitamins. Pharmaceutical drugs, properly prescribed and taken as directed, kill over 100,000 Americans annually. Hospital errors kill still more.

Restoring health must be done nutritionally, not pharmacologically. All cells in all persons are made exclusively from what we drink and eat. Not one cell is made out of drugs.

Adding drugs to a sick body to cure it is like adding poison to a polluted lake to clean it. Killing microorganisms, or masking the cause of symptoms is no more than a temporary answer in either case.

Nutrient therapy increases individual resistance to disease; drug therapy generally lowers resistance to disease.

What is Orthomolecular Medicine?

Linus Pauling defined orthomolecular medicine as "the treatment of disease by the provision of the optimum molecular environment, especially the optimum concentrations of substances normally present in the human body." Orthomolecular medicine uses safe, effective nutritional therapy to fight illness. For more information: http://www.orthomolecular.org

Take the Orthomolecular Quiz at http://www.orthomolecular.org/quiz/index.shtml

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Editorial Review Board:

Abram Hoffer, M.D., Ph.D.

Harold D. Foster, Ph.D.

Bradford Weeks, M.D.

Carolyn Dean, M.D., N.D.

Erik Paterson, M.D.

Thomas Levy, M.D., J.D.

For complete reference citations, please contact Andrew W. Saul, OMNS Editor, by email to  [email protected] .