As a 3rd year student in the Naturopathic Medical Department at Bastyr, we take a class entitled “Diet and Nutrient Therapy”. During one of the lectures, while we were learning Niacin and Niacinamide treaments, our professor brought in a bottle of Niacin and passed it around the room. “If you are going to prescribe this to patients, you might as well have first hand experience of what it does, and what are the side effects from overdosing.”
A typical dose of Niacin is 16 mg/day for males and 14 mg/day for females. We took 1 capsule of 500 mg to see its effect. Timing of reactions are different for everyone: some students in my class took 20 minutes to have the characteristic skin flushing, while other students (like myself), took about 2 hours for effects to set in. What it felt like once it did finally set in was terrible! I literally felt like I had an Indian burn all over my body (Oh you know what that is, when someone puts their hands next to each other on your forearm and twists in 2 opposite directions)…yea. Ouch. I also felt REALLY HOT like my core temperature was about 150 degrees, and then rapidly cooled off to where I was freezing and couldn’t warm up.
Talk about needing to know these effects before prescribing this to a patient!
It was a great experience for warning a patient what my effects were so that they were not surprised if they had the same occurrence happen.
Niacin is typically used for hyperlipidemia/dyslipidemia and coronary artery disease conditions, while niacinamide primarily works as an anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory and can be used for osteoporosis, for example.
Please do not experiment with Niacin on your own to get the flushing without medical supervision, for high doses of Niacin can cause hepatotoxicity (liver malfunctioning).
As a 3rd year student in the Naturopathic Medical Department at Bastyr, we take a class entitled “Diet and Nutrient Therapy”. During one of the lectures, while we were learning Niacin and Niacinamide treaments, our professor brought in a bottle of Niacin and passed it around the room. “If you are going to prescribe this to patients, you might as well have first hand experience of what it does, and what are the side effects from overdosing.”
A typical dose of Niacin is 16 mg/day for males and 14 mg/day for females. We took 1 capsule of 500 mg to see its effect. Timing of reactions are different for everyone: some students in my class took 20 minutes to have the characteristic skin flushing, while other students (like myself), took about 2 hours for effects to set in. What it felt like once it did finally set in was terrible! I literally felt like I had an Indian burn all over my body (Oh you know what that is, when someone puts their hands next to each other on your forearm and twists in 2 opposite directions)…yea. Ouch. I also felt REALLY HOT like my core temperature was about 150 degrees, and then rapidly cooled off to where I was freezing and couldn’t warm up.
Talk about needing to know these effects before prescribing this to a patient!
It was a great experience for warning a patient what my effects were so that they were not surprised if they had the same occurrence happen.
Niacin is typically used for hyperlipidemia/dyslipidemia and coronary artery disease conditions, while niacinamide primarily works as an anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory and can be used for osteoporosis, for example.
Please do not experiment with Niacin on your own to get the flushing without medical supervision, for high doses of Niacin can cause hepatotoxicity (liver malfunctioning).