Hi all, an update on my experiences with niacin. When I first took the niacin (about a month and a half ago), I did so with 300 mg, and had a flush that lasted about one hour. The next day, my POIS was reduced to about 15-20%. So that was promising.
But, I thought that a one-hour flush seemed a little bit long. So, in subsequent attempts, I only took 100 mg or 200 mg. This still produced a full flush, but one that didn't last as long. However, with these, I found that my POIS-reduction was not as significant. So that made me think that maybe the niacin wasn't working for me.
But then, on Friday night, I decided to try 300 mg again. This time, I had an O about 2 hours after taking the niacin, and then the next day, my POIS was reduced to about 15-20% again.
This makes me think that perhaps simply 'experiencing the flush' may not be the sole factor to consider -- one can achieve the flush with lower doses (100 mg/200 mg), but it may be that that the higher (300 mg) dose may be doing other things as well. (E.g., perhaps, using up greater stores of histamine, so that one has a less-strong histamine reaction in response to O.)
So, I think this could be an important thing to consider: 'achieving a flush vs. not achieving a flush' is not the only thing going on, and so we should not focus just on that. Rather, a flush could simply be an outward sign of something else that the niacin is doing, and while a lower dose may still achieve the flush, it may not be as effective at doing that 'something else.'
And, it could be the case that if that 'something else' is something like using histamine stores (or something similar), it could be that the niacin could still have that same effect, even if one built up a tolerance to the flush-effect. In this case, it might be possible that taking niacin every day could be helpful for POIS, even if that lessened the effect of the flush in particular.
What do others think?
