I'm enjoying this thread. My only experience with niacin is from about 10 years ago when a routine blood test showed my total cholesterol had zoomed to near 300, and my TSH reading was way elevated. My GP put me on synthroid and we retested months later, and everything was still out of whack. I had been researching in the meantime and asked her about Armour thyroid, but she would have nothing to do with it, and said I needed to see an endocrinologist.

Fast forward, saw the endo who said Armour thyroid was dangerous and she would never prescribe it, but was RABID to put me on statins ASAP. However my research had already made me completely anti-statin and we had some huge fights, but I had also read that niacin could help with cholesterol and might I try that?

So grudgingly she "allowed" me to take niacin though constantly swore that is was pretty much cr*p compared to statins. I took niacin for about 6 months with no obvious improvements in anything (after 10 years I'm afraid I can no longer remember what dose I was on) and cholesterol still in the 296 range.

Around that time I finally found a holistic nurse-practitioner willing to prescribe Armour, and in one month my total cholesterol (290+ for a few years at that point) dropped to 191 within 4 weeks - with HDL, LDL, trigs all good. At that point I stopped the niacin, having developed some vague fears of it - I think now due to reading about the trials of extended release niacin where over 50% of the patients developed liver toxicity.

Anyway, I have not even thought about niacin from that day to this until reading this thread - but I got the kindle copy of the book mentioned in the first post just this afternoon and have begun reading it.

So far very interesting reading, but I'm still a tad leery since I've read so many other books and articles about other vitamins/amino acids, etc. that claim to be "the way, the truth and the life" for optimal health if taken as claimed. I've tried some of them and none have ever done squat for me, just as niacin never did in the past (again, though, no clue now what my dose was), so I'm wondering what it might do for me now.