The Forgotten Vitamin That Can Help vs Cancer

When it comes to eating vs cancer, usually the talk is about macros, for example: Eat To Beat Cancer

Indeed, whole books have been written on that, such as The Cancer Code − by Dr. William Fung

However, today we’re going to talk about an important (and vastly underrated) micronutrient:

Why niacin is extra nice

Niacin, also known as vitamin B3, is (like all vitamins) essential to health (part of the definition of “vitamin” is that we would literally die without it).

But most people have only a vague idea of what most vitamins do, with a common level of knowledge probably being something like:

• Vitamin A: good for the eyes
• Vitamin B1: is this for energy?
• Vitamin B2: who knows
• Vitamin B3: it is a mystery
• Vitamin B4: is this a real vitamin?
• Vitamin B5: energy?
• Vitamin B6: energy?
• Vitamin B7: good for skin, hair, & nails
• Vitamin B8: this isn’t a real vitamin
• Vitamin B9: something to do with pregnancy
• Vitamin B10: why so many B-vitamins?
• Vitamin B11: come on, this is too many
• Vitamin B12: energy!
• Vitamin C: skin!
• Vitamin D: bones!
• Vitamin E: skin!
• … (unlikely people think about the possibilities for vitamins F-J)
• Vitamin K: babies need this one, right?

And to quickly address those without getting too side-tracked: no, there are no vitamins B4, B8, B10, or B11, and all of the rest of them while the guesses were right, they had other important uses too.

You can learn a lot more here: Which B Vitamins? It Makes A Difference

In that article, we listed some of vitamin B3’s top things to know about:

• Function: aids metabolism, supports skin, nerves, and cholesterol levels
• Forms: niacin (nicotinic acid), niacinamide (nicotinamide), inositol hexanicotinate (flush-free niacin)
• Example foods: whole grains, peanuts (literally the best nut for this)

And now, researchers (Dr. Gloria Urgoiti et al.) tested high-dose controlled-release niacin (vitamin B3) alongside standard glioblastoma (a very common form of cancer) treatment and found very encouraging results!

In numbers:

• The participants: patients aged 18–75 with newly diagnosed glioblastoma received standard treatment plus controlled-release niacin
• The safety: the maximum tolerated dose was found to be 2,000mg/day. At 2,500mg/day, dose-limiting toxicities occurred, including severe thrombocytopenia and elevated bilirubin levels. The most common side effect was flushing, reported in 10 of 15 Phase I participants, with most cases being mild.
• The results: among the first wave of evaluable patients, 82.3% remained free of disease progression at 6 months (progression-free survival at six months, or “PFS-6M”).
• How that compares: historical studies of standard treatment report a six-month progression-free survival rate of about 53.9%.

So, that’s quite a difference!

As to how it works, the answer is, put very simply:

❝Niacin treatment rejuvenates immune cells so they can do what they are supposed to do, attack and kill the cancer cells❞

~ Dr. V. Wee Wong, co-author on the study

You can read the paper in full, here: A phase I-II study of niacin in patients with newly diagnosed glioblastoma: safety and interim phase II analysis

Want to learn more?

As for why you might want to favor getting this from food if you can, then while the title says “vitamins”, the following book discusses an assortment of vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients; the “other nutrients” category including amino acids (branched chain and essential), prebiotics and probiotics, and triglycerides of various kinds:

Eat Your Vitamins – by Mascha Davis, RDN ← see our review, here

Take care!