Oct 14, 2019:
Jo Stephenson Seriously.
The idea that time release niacin is harmful would make any competent MD laugh out loud.
In fact, if you do think it's harmful, Ask a real MD. That informed opinion trumps an untrained health store clerk.
1) Never mistake consensus for truth.
2) It took 300 years for "germ theory" to be accepted because people were sure diseases we caused by "foul humors".
3) The evidence that time-release niacin is harmful is where?
4) Pharma companies make time release and regular niacin. Doctor prescribe it. MD doctors not health store sale clerks.
5) Please read the c0ntraidictaiotnf on phrmecurical grade niacin. You will not find this alleged "harm" mentioned. Ever.
Hoffer, who discovered the therapeutic effects of Niacin and popularized it, had commented on this and it's been mentioned before in this group:
a) Time release niacin raises Cytochrome ("Liver") enzymes levels in the liver.
That's a sign it's working. Not a sign of "liver damage"
b) Cirrhosis of the liver (and other diseases) also raise liver enzymes.
With Cirrhosis, your liver is dying and it has to work harder and it abnormally
produces higher levels of Cytochrome ("Liver") enzymes.
The rate of cytochrome enzymes is rate-limited by Niacin, this is basic human biochemistry, so when there is an abundant and constant supply, of course there are more liver enzymes. This is very very different from the pathological case where there is disease.
So, please do not confuse higher Cytochrome enzyme levels with disease. They are good for you not harmful. IN fact some of them (Cytochrome P450-II variants CYP17 and CYP1B1 are highly implicated in reversing cancer (See Burk & Potter et al.)
Niacin
"as evidenced by high levels of transaminase enzymes, a sign of liver injury"
False.
You can expect to see higher levels of this enzyme when you upregulate its precursor which is niacin. For the record children have been treated with this for 40 years at the direction of Abram Hoffer who is an MD and a psychiatrist and director of a psychiatric hospital in Saskatchewan and wrote up his work coauthored by two time Nobel prize winner Linus Pauling who founded biochemistry and molecular biology and quantum chemistry.
Somehow, i'm not going to take your opinion over theirs. especially when you don't understand what it is your talking about.