Kevin Kirkpatrick
Admin · 13 May at 15:57 ·
Hello to all. I'm going to be posting several posts on the topic of Anxiety. I've been reading Dr Proussky's excellent book on the topic while staying up late at night with baby Ruby. There are of course many physiological causes of anxiety, such as hyper/hypothyroidism, atrial fibrillation, organic brain disorders like dementia, hormone imbalances etc. These should be ruled out FIRST. Dr Proussky mentions the vast majority of anxiety diagnoses are made by a primary physician and do not qualify for the 4 main diagnoses: General Anxiety Disorder, OCD, Panic Disorder, Social Anxiety disorder. These doctors often prescribe addictive benzodiazepines like Xanax or Klonopin, or SSRI's drugs which often don't work well. I am all about finding a natural cure for anxiety and will be discussing some of the orthomolecular ways to tackle anxiety.
B3 is, of course, the superstar for anxiety, and its a great place to start. Let's look at some of the mechanisms of action behind why it is so effective for anxiety (depression too)
1. Correction of subclinical Pellagra: this is probably the main benefit. Pellagra is the deficiency disease that is related to b3 deficiency like scurvy is to C deficiency. Pellagra leads to dementia, diarrhea, dermatitis, and death-in the severe form. Dr Hoffer long ago postulated that most mental disease is subclinical pellagra. Let's consider irritable bowel syndrome, which features both intestinal issues, AND anxiety. Could b3 be the answer for both? Frank pellagra is rare in the US, due to teeny amounts of b3 in flour, and a high protein diet than in the past. The body converts some tryptophan from meat protein, into b3 (IF there is enough b6!) Just like how anxiety and neurological disorders are the first sign of b12 deficiency, so too will anxiety often be the first sign of b3 dependency. Linus Pauling speculated that some folk may have enough niacin in the bloodstream, but NOT in the CSF, so they don't get pellagra, but do get anxiety or depression. (same issues with b12 and C btw) Bottom line is that some of us NEED more b3 than others. Early studies Hoffer and others did found that Schizophrenics excreted fewer metabolites of niacinamide than healthy people did, that means these folks NEEDED more to be healthy. Sometimes very very much more. Why is this? What does niacin do? It is a cofactor in 200 enzymes all about energy production that will not work optimally without enough. It also is a direct part of the electron transfer chain and part of the antioxidant defense system as it recycles glutathione. It does so much, that we die without it, but long before we get to that point, the body will funnel what little it has to survival things, like keeping the heart beating, and maybe enzymes related to mood get less. Bottom line is that sub clinical pellagra, like sub clinical scurvy, is all to common. Luckily, its so easy and cheap to treat.
for anxiety or stress, a good place to start is 500 mg of niacinamide 3x per day. Also helpful to take with 12000 or more mg of C plus,mag and b complex and a good multimineral. One can go up to 4500 or even 6000 mg of niacinamide per day, but I prefer people to switch to Niacin once past 3000 mg per day.
There is so much more to say on this topic, this post is just scratching the surface. But let me encourage you that this is such an effective therapy for so many people with anxiety. It is also very effective to wean people off of benzo's or illicit drugs. The image below shows how Niacin (as NAD+) is critical for pyruvate dehydrogenase, the gatekeeper enzyme in the krebs cycle from which we get all our energy