[BurtonFan2012]

a family member suggested having a megadose of niacin to help with the schizophrenia. I just started some new meds so i said i'll see how it goes. I dont want to have to take more tablets wether they are meds, poison, vitamins, whatever. but i mean if niacin 'fixed' schizophrenia wouldn't doctors (esp. public health people) prefer to give that to patients? I am very skeptical because i already get huge amounts of b-vits each day (like 300% GDA) would that not have at least made an impact? Has anyone actually tried this niacin? I just find it impossible to believe. makes no sense. thanks

The only thing I know of is that schizophrenics aren't as susceptible to the niacin "flush" after taking large dosages. As far as I know, I haven't read anything about it curing/treating sz. Where did you read this? Maybe the person made a loose connection, themselves, between an insensitivity to niacin & thought it had a positive cause-effect relationship.

[Inedible]

It looks interesting, but the dosage required to make it work is so high ... I can't imagine. I've felt like my skin was crawling just from 500 mg tablets. And that much vitamin C? Most people would be on the toilet all the time.

A quick Google search gave me this:

Originally Posted by http://www.doctoryourself.com/review_hoffer_B3.html

But the truth will out eventually. Three years later, I first saw niacin work on somebody else. He was a bona-fide, properly-diagnosed, utterly-incurable, State-hospitalized schizophrenic patient. I did not see niacin work in the hospital, of course; the only vitamins given there are what you can filter out of your “Jell-O” and your “Tang.” No, the patient was a fellow whose parents were desperate enough try anything, even nutrition. Perhaps this was because their son was so unmanageably violent that he was kicked out of the asylum and sent to live with them. On a good day, his Mom and Dad somehow got him to take 3,000 milligrams of niacin and 10,000 mg of vitamin C. Formally a hyperactive insomniac, he responded by sleeping for 18 hours the first night and becoming surprisingly normal within days. I’d seen him before, and I saw him after. I’d talked to his parents during the whole process. It was an astounding improvement.

Sometime afterward, I tried niacin to see if it would help my own touch of sleeplessness. I found it worked nicely, and it only took a little to do so, perhaps 100 milligrams at most. Any more and I would experience a warm “flush.” But then I found that when I ate junk food or sugar in quantity, I could hold 500 mg or more without flushing a bit. And when I took all that niacin, instead of flipping out, I was calm. In Vitamin B-3 and Schizophrenia, Dr. Hoffer explains why this is so:

1) As a rule, the more ill you are, the more niacin you can hold without flushing. In other words, if you need it, you physiologically soak up a lot of niacin. Where does it all go? Well, a good bit of it goes into making nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, or NAD. NAD is just about the most important coenzyme in your body. It is made from niacin, as its name implies.

2) Niacin is also works in your body as an antihistamine. Many persons showing psychotic behavior suffer from cerebral allergies. They need more niacin in order to cope with eating inappropriate foods. They also need to stop eating those inappropriate foods, chief among which are the ones they may crave the most: junk food and sugar.

3) There is a chemical found in quantity in the bodies of schizophrenic persons. It is an indole called adrenochrome. Adrenochrome (which is oxidized adrenalin) has an almost LSD-like effect on the body. That might well explain their behavior. Niacin serves to reduce the body’s production of this toxic material.

That Dr. Hoffer can compress a lifetime of research experience into one readable and surprisingly short book is a tribute to how clearly he teaches both layman and physician the essentials of niacin treatment. I have taught nutritional biochemistry to high school, undergraduate, and chiropractic students. To most, it is not an especially gripping subject. But when even a basic working knowledge of niacin chemistry can profoundly change psychotic patients for the better, it becomes very interesting very quickly.

Dr. Hoffer has treated thousands and thousands of such patients for nearly half a century. At 83, he still is in actively practicing orthomolecular (megavitamin) psychiatry. He has seen medical fads come and go. What he sees now is what he’s always seen: that very sick people get well on vitamin B-3.

Originally Posted by http://www.foodforthebrain.org/conte...d_Content=1638

The use of ‘megadoses’ of niacin was first tried by Drs Humphrey Osmond and Abram Hoffer in 1951. So impressed were they with the results in acute schizophrenics that, in 1953, they ran the first double-blind therapeutic trials in the history of psychiatry. Their first two trials showed significant improvement giving at least 3gs (3,000mg) a day, compared to placebos. They also found that chronic schizophrenics, not first-time sufferers but long-term inpatients, showed little improvement. The results of six double blind controlled trials showed that the natural recovery rate was doubled. Later they found that even chronic patients, treated for several years with niacin in combination with other nutrients, often recovered.

Hoffer’s discovery was, however, side-lined partly due to some studies which gave niacin to long-term schizophrenic patients who had been on medication for several years and failed to respond to niacin in the short-term.

Since then, Dr Hoffer published ten-year follow-ups on schizophrenics treated with niacin, compared to those not treated with niacin. In the niacin patients there were substantially fewer admissions, days in hospital and suicides. He continued to treat acute schizophrenics with niacin, plus other nutrients, including vitamin C, folic acid and essential fats, and reported a high recovery rate in acute schizophrenics who follow his nutritional programme. Over his long career Dr Hoffer recorded 4,000 cases and published double-blind trials. He was convinced that his approach was a major breakthrough in the treatment of mental illness.

[Gr3tta]

most "extra" large doses of vitamins and minerals just wind up being cleaned out in your urine. of course a "normal" dose is different for everyone.
paying attention to diet can have an effect on mental health symptoms, but it doesn't, in anything i've ever found, truly cure anything.
you could ask your doctor if it is safe for you to try it, if you are interested? but i wouldn't hold high expectations for results.

[costello]

I'm with Shay and Gr3tta. I've heard people dx'd with sz are less likely to get the niacin flush, but I doubt it will help with sz.

I suppose if your problem was caused by niacin deficiency it might help. But I'm skeptical.

I looked into niacin at one time. I can't remember the details but there was some risk with very high doses I think. Normally I'd say, "Can't hurt to try!" But with niacin I'd say, read up on it and stay within safe limits.

Good luck. Let us know how it works out for you.

[BurtonFan2012]

thanks for the replies everyone, i am still skeptical. thanks for your input x

[newtus]

wtf is a niacin flush

[costello]

Originally Posted by newtus

wtf is a niacin flush

Niacin makes people turn red.

[newtus]

i still dont know what niacin is.

but ok. good enough for me.

can i get it at the grocery store?
or ebay?

It's one of the B vitamins, I think B6 but don't quote me on that. It's available at most grocery & drug stores in the vitamin/medicine section.

[costello]

Originally Posted by Shayatanica

It's one of the B vitamins, I think B6 but don't quote me on that. It's available at most grocery & drug stores in the vitamin/medicine section.

Niacin is available in the vitamin section of any grocery store or drug store, but it's all the non flush kind. I had to go to some effort to locate the kind that makes you flush.

It made me flush, but it made my son flush too. I honestly can't remember the significance of that. People with sz are less likely to flush I remember, but so are relatives of people dx'd with sz.

Whenever I read of some vitamin or supplement or diet change that might help I get hopeful. Then it never comes to much of anything. As BurtonFan said, if it made a huge difference for a significant number of people, it would be all over the internet.