Niacin. Here's how to know if
you need more of it.
Hi. I'm Dr. Chris Masterjohn of
chrismasterjohnphd.com, and this is
Chris Masterjohn Lite, where the name of the game is
"Details? Shmeetails. Just tell me what works!"
And today we are going to talk about
signs that you might need more niacin.
I'm going to be doing some episodes
upcoming on how to get niacin from food.
And so if you fall into any of the
categories in here, you want to pay special
attention to the upcoming episodes.
So first of all niacin is important to repair damage to our
skin when it's exposed to normal amounts of sunlight.
So if you have a dermatitis that, any kind
of inflammation in the skin,
it could be as simple as reddening,
not the reddening that is a normal
response to the sun and goes away or
turns into a tan, but a persistent
reddening and inflammation in the skin
that is chronic and is related to normal
sun exposure and goes away when you're
not exposed to the sun. That could be a
sign that you need more niacin.
Anything with mental health that ranges
from depression in the simplest state to
paranoid, or suicidal, or aggressive
behavior, or even schizophrenia-like psychosis
with audio and visual hallucinations.
Anything on that spectrum could be a sign
that you need more niacin.
The way to know is that getting
more niacin through a supplement or
through food makes it go away. So there's
a lot of people who are depressed, a lot
of people who are schizophrenic, a lot of
people who are suicidal, and niacin
deficiency is not their problem, but if
it goes away quickly when you improve
the niacin content of your diet or when
you take niacin supplements, in those
cases it's a problem with niacin.
Any kind of persistent digestive disorder
could be related to niacin both because
niacin deficiency compromises your gut
and also because when your gut is
compromised you absorb less niacin from
your food. Based on what we know niacin
does in the body, and based on studies
with supplementation and correlations
with niacin status, we could also
suggest that we might see the following
in suboptimal niacin status: fatigue,
exercise intolerance or poor exercise
performance, accelerated aging,
especially aging of the skin, especially aging of
the skin in response to sunlight, cancer
and inflammation of the esophagus,
vulnerability to leukemia and skin cancer.
Another way to assess the
probability that you need more niacin is
to look at what risk factors you have
that might lead to a niacin deficiency.
Relying on a diet that is low in non-collagen
protein, especially if that diet
is high in whole grains, is a recipe for
suboptimal niacin status. Additionally, a
diet that is high in fat or a diet
that's high in sugar is another major
risk factor for having poor niacin status.
Any form of cellular damage
ranging from normal exposure to sunlight
to having a particularly damaging
disease state, anything on that spectrum
is going to consume niacin in repair
processes. So when we're exposed to
cellular damage whether it's from
something like sunlight, or it's from
something like a disease state, that's
likely to make us more likely to need
more niacin. Although a severe clinical
niacin deficiency is rarely seen in our
day, there are some populations who are
vulnerable to a clinical niacin
deficiency. These include alcoholics, HIV
and AIDS patients, people with carcinoid
tumors, which are tumors that make
serotonin, people with Crohn's disease or
another digestive disorder known as
megaduodenum, and people with a rare genetic
disease of tryptophan metabolism, or
tryptophan absorption rather, called
Hartnup disease. If any of these apply
to you, then those are signs that you
might need more niacin. But when it comes
down to it, decreasing niacin status is
associated with aging. It's also
associated with the degenerative
diseases that are most commonly to occur
in our society and that suggests that we should all
take an interest in how to boost our niacin status.
I've done a couple episodes on niacin
supplementation. Now I'm going to start
getting into in the next few episodes
Signing off, this is Chris Masterjohn of
chrismasterjohnphd.com.
This has been Chris Masterjohn Lite.