Niacin (vitamin B3) can be extremely helpful for anxiety. Let’s talk about what niacin is, how to dose it and signs that it might be helpful for you.
Hi everyone tonight i want to talk with you about vitamin d3 or otherwise known as niacin and how it can be useful for anxiety and signs that you might benefit from niacin for your anxiety and what kind of niacin you might consider taking and how to dose it so one of the things to know about niacin is it’s a form of a b vitamin and our b vitamins are really
Important in that they help your brain make mood stabilizing chemicals like serotonin and dopamine your b vitamins are antioxidants they help you make your sex hormones like estrogen and testosterone they’re also important in making your stress hormones like cortisol your body uses b vitamins almost everywhere there’s a reaction that happens in fact i’m going to
Tell you a story and then we’ll get into more detail about niacin when i was in my very first day of biochemistry in medical school the teacher came in and he had these two huge chalkboards and the chalkboards were hooked together and two people were rolling them in and on the chalkboards were a huge biochemistry map and it was incredibly large and incredibly
Overwhelming and we were all just looking at it in awe and the teacher kind of smirked and said you’re going to be memorizing all of these pathways by the time you graduate and one interesting thing is that if you stand up and you walk to those chalkboards and you look at the chemical reactions b vitamins are all over the place including niacin and so niacin
Helps you with metabolizing it helps you with hormones it helps you with your neurotransmitters and it’s also good for balancing cholesterol we’ve seen in the research that niacin is really important in helping stabilize your mood so if you deal with depression or anxiety niacin could be a part of it and here’s some signs of niacin deficiency and so as you’re
Listening to this or watching this video just kind of do a self-reflection and see if any of these resonate with you uh so some signs of niacin deficiency are depression brain fog not feeling kind of crisp or clear getting headaches is actually a really common sign of niacin or b3 deficiency feeling like your anxiety is accompanied by kind of restlessness we talk
About the eight types of anxiety and one of the common types of anxiety that can come from niacin or vitamin deficiency is nerve or neurological anxiety where you might feel numbness or tingling in your fingers or your feet or even in your face or anywhere in your body and so that could be a sign of niacin deficiency and so taking niacin can be really helpful
In fact the rda for niacin is to take between 14 or 18 milligrams every single day and so if you’re not getting that in you can be struggling from symptoms of deficiency but also the more that you’re putting demand on your body the more your body may need and so what we want to talk about is how to supplement with niacin and what form is best and so you may
Have heard that if you take niacin that you may get flushes of heat and that’s true and so niacin if you just take straight up niacin people often feel like they’re having a hot flash where your chest may feel hot your face may get red and blotchy you may feel like you’re kind of claustrophobic or even itchy and so a better form of niacin if you don’t want to
Deal with all those side effects is called niacinamide niacinamide is easy to find at the health food store and it works just as well if you’re aiming to support your biochemical pathways to reduce your anxiety you can also get niacin in your diet to eating beets and fish and eggs and milk and peanuts and broccoli all of those foods contain niacin and so the
Other reason that you might benefit from niacin is if you have a genetic mutation where your body easily overmethylates or if you have overdone it on your methylation so if you take too much methyl folate which is a type of b vitamin or if you take too much methylcobalamin if you find that you’re getting incredibly anxious taking niacin again in the form of
Niacinamide can actually pretty quickly antidote that and here’s a story i had a woman come into my office this was many years ago she had bipolar disorder and when she slipped into mania it was mostly characterized by her feeling incredibly anxious and having insomnia so she went to a well-intended doctor who’s like well b vitamins are really good for sleep so
Let’s put you on a b vitamin iv and what ended up happening is that the mania got much much worse and she stopped sleeping and she ended up in the hospital so what we did is we looked at her genetic testing and we identified that she really struggles taking things like methyl folate or methylcobalamin b vitamins and when she ended up taking them in the future
If she felt a little bit anxious she could take niacin and ended up antidoting it and felt quite a lot more like herself this individual dosed it around 50 milligrams and it’s all about individualizing it for you but that’s what was really helpful for her so today we’ve been just having a quick little conversation about niacin for anxiety niacin is really good
For just stabilizing your mood balancing your hormones and it’s an easy to find inexpensive over the counter option and generally speaking you want to get the niacinamide form unless you’re really ready for that flush a heat detox reaction but otherwise it can be really helpful b vitamins great for the brain and so if you have any questions let me know i’m
Going to save the video and there’ll be links to resources if you want to read more about this they’ll be there for you this has been dr nicole and i’m glad that you’re here and if you have any other questions let me know i’ll talk to you later bye loves
Transcribed from video
Niacin Vitamin B3 for Anxiety By Dr. Nicole Cain ND MA