Grant’s “Niacin as Villain” Origin Story

Jump To: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6...as responses to Grant’s article here.

The Bread of Affliction

Due to yet another instance of failing to do proper due diligence, Grant didn’t know that Canada has mandatory flour fortification when he shifted from rice to bread for a stint. Over an 8-month period of daily consumption of 1/3 loaf of bread made from organic fortified (“enriched”) flour, he developed a dry & itchy scalp, along with severe dandruff. Thus began his vendetta against all things “niacin”.

Grant claims the offending agent in the flour was surely the niacin (niacinamide aka nicotinamide), yet he did not actually isolate the cause. He only figured out that it was the flour (one or more of the added ingredients in it are the likely culprit) that was causing his issues.

Ironing Out the Root Cause

If it wasn’t the niacin, which of the other ingredients could it have been?

It turns out that the iron source commonly used to fortify flours—ferric ammonium citrate—CAN accumulate in the system over time (called iron overload aka hemochromatosis). I discussed iron overload in regards to the “prison diet” in Part 1.

What signs are there that this was much more likely to be an iron overload accumulation problem, as opposed to a suddenly-appearing “niacinamide toxicity”?

Niacinamide side effects from high doses show up quickly and niacinamide is not assumed to accumulate over time. Research shows the half-lives of niacinamide and nicotinic acid in humans range anywhere from 1-4 hours. Keep this in mind.

Next, it took Grant 8 MONTHS of daily bread eating to get symptoms, and 5 MONTHS avoiding bread to fully recover—both of these signs point to a problem of chronic accumulation and subsequent detoxification upon removal.

When Grant changed from rice (~0.3 mg iron per 100 g cooked rice) to fortified flour bread (~3.5–4 mg iron per 100 g of prepared bread), his iron consumption from his starchy carb source went up by at least a factor of 10!

Grant’s “prison diet” had him eating red meat 2-3 times a day, every day for the previous 8-9 years. Adding on significant amounts of iron-fortified bread could easily cross an excessive intake threshold and accumulate over 8 months’ time.

Ferric ammonium citrate has skin rashes & itching as known side effects. Let’s not forget that it is also feeding ammonia into the system (aka the ammonium)!

Dry, itchy, flaky, rashy (urticaria) skin are all reported by people with iron overload aka hemochromatosis, and these symptoms generally improved with treatments that address the iron overload issue (diet adjustments, blood donations, supplements, etc.)

All that said, without Grant having done any iron labs around this event, we will never be sure.

It should be known that I offered multiple times to help facilitate Grant getting any blood tests he might have wanted. All he had to do was go across the border to a US LabCorp. Did he ever take me up on it? No, he did not. Not even once.

As for some of the other fortification suspects…it turns out that the folic acid used in fortification has skin rashes and itching as known side effects too! It also turns out that thiamine mononitrate used in fortification has skin rashes and itching as known side effects too!

The only thing Grant figured out was that it was the fortified flour causing him issues by eliminating it from his diet. He looked no further for a culprit than the niacinamide though (probably because it was the very first ingredient listed after wheat flour).

To be clear, I am entirely AGAINST niacinamide/nicotinamide in general, in food fortification and in supplements. The problem becomes when people confuse nicotinic acid aka flush niacin (good), with niacinamide/nicotinamide (bad). How do I know this happens? Because I made the same mistake previously!

Correcting Grant’s Nicotinic Acid Misconceptions…Again

Can this bad situation be made any worse? Sure, it can! Just start taking yet another acidic supplement such as nicotinic acid.

Acid/base (aka pH) issues in humans are far more complex than Grant realizes, considering nicotinic acid has been successfully studied in animals as a treatment for hyperchloremic metabolic ACIDosis.

Completely aside from the added risk of more calcium depletion

This will be addressed thoroughly below in my video.

I’ve had several reports now from people running into the classic symptoms of nicotinic acid toxicity.

Note that no reference is provided, just a “believe me” statement based on several emails.

Specifically, two people have reported developing dry skin and eczema like rashes. Another person has reported developing a dry scalp and dandruff. I fully expect in a year or so we’ll start seeing a lot more reports such as these.

Considering pellagra (niacin deficiency) includes dermatitis aka skin issues as one of its hallmark “four D’s” symptoms (dermatitis, diarrhea, dementia, and death if untreated), and we see the first three symptoms around us daily…I’m much more concerned about niacin deficiency than I am about a couple of negative skin reactions that would go away on their own quickly upon reducing or stopping the flush niacin.

On that note, we sold out of our first run of 1000 jars of Kelsey’s zinc + niacin salve in 4.5 months, because people realize that these two nutrients topically help the SKIN so much!

For those following, wait until the next article in this series where I show the very-well-known side effects of Grant’s own recommended calcium supplements, and the extremely concerning side effects that people are experiencing in FAR LESS than a year’s time.

Once again, some of these god damn supplements have the potential to ruin your health and the reputation of the low vA diet.

So very dramatic on his part! I have to say that a couple of skin issues—related to the dose-dependent detoxification processes that flush niacin aka nicotinic acid accelerates by increasing NAD+ production required for “vitamin” A detox better than anything else out there—that would go away quickly upon reducing or discontinuing it (which would be my exact suggestion to these folks if they reported this to me) are hardly “ruining health”.

As I mentioned previously, does Grant believe that people are entirely unable to separate the effects of their daily nutrition versus the effects of supplements? Both him and the people emailing him seem to be quite able to!

Hope Tipton additionally highlighted the risk of low calcium and also the associated risk of nicotinic acid and shared her concern in this guest author blog post: Nicotinic Acid: Good or Bad?.

Kelsey and I absolutely shredded every “concern” put forth in that dumpster fire of an article, using long-term studies with nicotinic acid in humans whenever available. I hope Grant takes the time to watch it and check the references, they’re all conveniently hyperlinked here.

Shortly after Hope published her post, another person, who’s progress on a low vA diet had seriously stalled for multiple years, emailed me saying that they had recently started supplementing with calcium and had made an almost immediate and huge improvement in their health. So, yes, there’s no question that some people have been running into a calcium deficiency.

I covered previously how Grant reported that he felt immediately better for days from taking one pill of zinc…so based on his logic from above, “there’s no question that some people have been running into a [zinc] deficiency” as well, right? One person’s anecdote—Grant’s or otherwise—is hardly a scientific study or an indicator of anything on a grand scale. On that note, what has Grant done to address the zinc deficiency concern in the nine years since his own zinc supplement experiment ended? It seems there is quite the double standard here!

Now, am I completely 100% against taking nicotinic acid? No, I’m not. There’s potentially some benefit to it.

Now everyone is thoroughly confused. There were several emails to Grant from people with a negative reaction…it would then follow that he would deem nicotinic acid as a “god damn supplement” that is “all risk with very little upside“, right?

Research-Proven Benefits of Nicotinic Acid

There are actually an insane number of benefits to crystalline, immediate-release nicotinic acid (aka flush niacin in capsules or powder). These are covered in this superbly-well-referenced article on Orthomolecular.org. As a reminder, just like with lactoferrin, Grant never personally experimented with nicotinic acid aka flush niacin (or at least he hasn’t shared that publicly).

What did I do differently than Grant in regards to nicotinic acid? Well, being that I lead from the front, I took it upon myself to test it out first. Also, I “trust but verify”…so even though I trusted Kelsey’s research and experience on the topic, I insisted on verifying it for myself.

I wanted to truly know flush niacin’s high-dose safety…so I ramped up over time to taking a full week of 15 GRAMS A DAY of flush niacin (5 grams, 3 times a day). One of the days of that week, I took 20 GRAMS. I had zero issues!

“But Dr. Smith, what about the papers that say nicotinic acid is liver toxic (hepatotoxic)?”

Kelsey dissects the only 8 case studies over ~70 years on specifically crystalline, immediate release flush niacin supposedly causing problems here on her Substack. These case studies have never been looked at critically until Kelsey did this. She did this research for herself initially, to see if the accusations were true. She discovered that they are definitely not. Yet, they are repeated ad nauseum as proof of “muh nicotinic acid is bad, mmmmkay?” all over the internet every day. 8 case studies in 70 years…this sounds extremely similar to proclaiming final judgements based on a couple emails!

But you really need to do the risk / benefit analysis on it. As with any supplement you first need to be very, very sure that you truly need it. Then you need to be especially sure that it’s not going to cause you harm in both the short and long term. For me, personally, the potential for harm from long term nicotinic acid use (such as dry skin, heart attacks and strokes) just far outweighs the possible benefits. Also messing with the body’s lipid metabolism is just a very bad idea IMO. Please use your own critical thinking and decide what’s right for you.

Grant and Hope, along with many others, have been completely misled by ONE pharma-funded study into believing that nicotinic acid is bad for the heart. We’ll get to that below. Let me first show everyone the real facts about nicotinic acid, aka flush niacin, and cardiovascular disease:

#1 - “Niacin-containing regimens are among the few treatments studied for dyslipidemia that have both elicited significant reductions in atherosclerotic progression (by angiography or imaging) and also significantly reduced (by approximately 90% vs control) the incidence of cardiovascular events in a single clinical trial.”

#2 - “Moreover, niacin has demonstrated beneficial effects on cardiovascular outcomes in several clinical trials.17–23” (reference #17, #18, #19, #20, #21, #22, #23)
[…]
After 6.5 years of follow-up, 3 g [as in GRAMS] daily of niacin [as nicotinic acid] decreased the risk of stroke, myocardial infarction and coronary revascularization by 24%, 26%, and 67%, respectively, compared with placebo, without showing an effect on mortality. [17] After the CDP ended, mortality was examined in a post-hoc analysis, and individuals who had initially been randomly allocated to niacin demonstrated a decrease in total mortality of 11% at 15 years of follow-up. [72]”

Nicotinic acid is, without a doubt, the very best thing out there to REDUCE cardiovascular disease risk, continuing to show positive effects in some people 9 years after they stopped taking it (!!!). Nothing else even comes close!

pHARMa Hates Nicotinic Acid

Now let’s get back to that ONE hot garbage 2PY & 4PY study that anti-niacin pearl-clutchers love to point to and say that “niacin metabolites” supposedly increase cardiovascular disease risks.

There is a very detailed clarification and debunking of that study towards the start of this article. That study simply did not and could not show the connections it claims to.

Next, we will look at any conflicts of interests on the part of that study’s funding and authors, particularly in regards to Dr. Hazen (this is critically important!):

Pfizer.
Roche.
Sanofi-Aventis Deutschland GmbH.
Procter & Gamble.
Zehna Therapeutics.
Cardiol Therapeutics.
Renovacor.

Can you say conflicts of interest?

What type of DRUG is Dr. Hazen developing with the Esperion pharmaceutical company?

Seems like this Esperion company should have been mentioned in the “Declaration of Interests” section above, doesn’t it?

Why would a pharmaceutical company producing a genetically engineered version of HDL want to go after lil’ ol’ nicotinic acid (aka niacin in the following quote)?:

From Understanding niacin formulations:
“Niacin is an important therapeutic option for the treatment of dyslipidemias and is the only agent currently available that favorably affects all components of the lipid profile to a significant degree. Niacin has consistently been shown to significantly reduce levels of total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, triglycerides, and lipoprotein (a), while having the ***greatest high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol-raising effects of all available agents***. Niacin has also been shown to significantly reduce coronary events and total mortality.“

The only way they can even begin to compete with the natural and healthy HDL cholesterol-raising ability of nicotinic acid is to literally put SYNTHETIC HDL into the body…and to create deceptive, pseudoscientific, smear “research studies”.

Now it should be fully realized that the 2PY and 4PY “study” is a pharma-designed-and-funded hit piece created by people making competing cardiovascular drugs…so they needed to bash good ol’ effective, unpatentable, inexpensive flush niacin somehow. Make sure to check those conflicts of interest, people!

This trash paper should be summarily discarded forever.

Wrapping This One Up

How do I help you to avoid the issues covered here today, dear reader?

I’m going to tell you to avoid all fortified foods and especially the forms of “vitamins & minerals” used in them (see Part 4 about how foods are now being fortified with calcium carbonate!).

Avoiding toxin accumulation and fixing stored/accumulated toxicity(s) is a major pillar of my life’s work. Iron overload, along with “vitamin” A toxicity and copper toxicity, are things I come across every single day in people. These issues should not be dismissed or ignored, particularly on very red-meat-heavy diets and/or when eating iron-fortified foods and/or when taking iron supplements. If you aren’t testing, then you really don’t know. It’s as simple as that.

How I teach people to avoid and/or solve issues with supplements (or foods):
Person: “It hurts when I do this.”
Me: “Well then, don’t do that.”
This is NOT a difficult concept. Life involves trying things. Some things go well, some don’t. Stop the things that don’t work for you, keep the things that do!

Don’t feel good on or don’t like a food? Don’t eat it.
Don’t feel good on a supplement? Take less or don’t take it at all (or try it again later)!
Maybe you aren’t sure if your reaction was the food or supplement or if it was something else entirely (stress, sleep, etc.)? Try it again after the issue has resolved, see if the same reaction occurs!

Finally, I’ll tell you that the pharma cartel HATES stuff that works. Flush niacin, aka nicotinic acid, provides the NAD+ gasoline to run your detox pathways better and cheaper than anything else out there. So, of course “they” will align trash “research” against it!

What do I do to counter “their” war on our health?

• I self-experiment first, with EVERYTHING.

• I present the research on things like flush niacin (see video above) and lactoferrin.

• I make the highest-quality and cleanest-ingredient supplements so people can get these amazing tools in their hands.

  • Thanks to Kelsey’s guidance, we now make the cleanest flush niacin capsules (25 mg and 500 mg) and zinc + niacin salve out there!

Kelsey and I are currently working on becoming the first company to bring pre-buffered flush niacin supplements to the market. This means we bypass any “acidity” concerns entirely, forever. We focus on finding (or creating!) solutions.

I’m out in the arena, skin-in-the-game, self-experimenting, listening to our clients & customers, finding solutions, and then making them available to people. What I’m not is an armchair-expert-blogger critiquing from the sidelines, leaving the real hard work to others.

To Be Continued in Part 6, Covering Grant’s (Disastrous) Supplement Recommendations…

Jump To: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6.