On the advice of my doctor, I started taking Niacin to bring up my HDL (good) cholesterol. Apparently, when you lose a lot of weight and change your diet your good cholesterol drops just like the bad stuff does. Vitamin B3, or Niacin, is a good way to bring up your good cholesterol. I went to Whole Foods and got some No Flush slow release niacin. The bottle cost a little over $20 but I figured it was worth it. I’ve been taking it now since late September. The bottle finally ran out and I didn’t want to spend that much on a supplement again so I went to the pharmacy and found a slow release niacin for only $8.
The reason you want to get a slow release, or no flush, niacin is that too much of it will cause your capillaries to enlarge and cause a lot more blood to flow very close to the skin and this causes it to become red, inflamed and painful. I knew this was a potential problem so I made it a point to slowly build up my intake over time. I eventually got up to 2000 mg per day so this is what I took when I got home with my new, cheaper, niacin.
This was one of the bigger mistakes of my life. See, there’s a difference between one companies slow release niacin and another’s. This didn’t occur to me until about a half hour after I’d taken the four tablets of the new stuff. I first noticed a difference when my face started to feel a little hot. Then, my lips started to feel swollen. My son told me that my entire face looked red and “a little purple”. That’s when the tingling started. It felt as if my entire face had fallen asleep and was now having to wake up by tingling and burning and swelling. To say it was scary would be an understatement.
Just as I began to really get concerned about this, the burning and tingling spread to my arms. In a panic, I lied down in bed and that’s when my wife helped me to figure out what was happening. I felt better when I realized it was a niacin flush and not something worse. However, I should have known that it can always get worse. As I lay in bed, the tingling, pain and burning quickly spread all over my body. It was absolute torture to go through this. The good thing is that it doesn’t last too long. The bad news is that before the flushing goes away, it starts to itch. At this point, I find myself stuck in the bed with pain, burning, tingling skin while itching like I’ve never itched before. I like to think that I have a semi-decent way with words but I can never express just how bad I felt. I proceeded to go through about three hours of some of the worst pain I’ve ever experienced except for a couple of kidney stones.
Eventually, I ended up falling to sleep for a few hours but it took until early evening to start to feel normal. Even after I woke up I had chills and my lips felt swollen. It was quite unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before. Given the choice between physical suffering like this or mental suffering, I’ll take the mental stuff any day of the week. Instead of Sunday, today was Samsaraday!
Except for this little mishap it’s been a pretty good weekend. We’re getting ready for snow to come soon and feeling winter roll in. Change is coming in a lot of ways over the next few weeks. The first change I’m making is going back to the $20 bottle of niacin. It’s worth every penny!
That scares me just reading it. Also makes me think I should visit the doctor. My plan was to see him after I drop the 100 pounds, but it never occurred to me I could have issues caused by weight loss. I don’t enjoy doctors much. That’s an understatement. Really glad your scare is over and all is well!!