the-psoriasis-treatment

Niacin is also known as vitamin B3, or nicotinic acid. It is an essential vitamin whose deficiency leads to pellagra. In large doses of 1 to 3 g per day it has several effects on blood lipids, including an increase in HDL cholesterol and a marked decreased in fasting triglycerides. Niacin is also a powerful antioxidant. Among niacin’s other effects, when taken in large doses of 1 to 3 g per day, is an acute elevation in growth hormone secretion . This is a delayed effect, frequently occurring 3 to 5 hours after taking niacin. This effect is independent of exercise. It is important to note that large doses of 1 to 3 g of niacin are completely unnatural, and cannot be achieved by eating foods rich in niacin. For example, one would have to eat a toxic amount of beef liver (e.g., 15 lbs) to get even close to 1 g of niacin. Beef liver is one of the richest natural sources of niacin. Unless we find out something completely unexpected about the diet of our Paleolithic ancestors in the fu...

Many people assume that growth hormone secretion drops with age in a somewhat linear fashion, as implied by this diagram . This assumption probably stems from attempts to model growth hormone variations with linear regression algorithms. This assumption is wrong. Actual plots of growth hormone secretion patterns, with age on the horizontal axes, tell a different story. See, for example, the graphs below, from professionalmuscle.com. They match the graphs one sees in empirical academic papers. The graphs below (click to enlarge) are particularly good at highlighting some interesting patterns of variation. On the left side, bar charts show secretion patterns grouped by age ranges during a 24 h period (at the top), during wake time (at the middle), and during sleep (at the bottom). On the right side is the actual data used to build the bar charts. As you can see from the graphs on the right side, the drop in growth hormone secretion follows a pattern that looks a lot more like an exponent...

Niacin is a very interesting vitamin. It is also known as vitamin B 3 , or nicotinic acid. It is an essential vitamin whose deficiency leads to a dreadful disease known as pellagra . In large doses of 1 to 3 g per day it has several effects on blood lipids, including these: it increases HDL cholesterol, decreases triglycerides, and decreases Lp(a) . Given that this is essentially a reversal of the metabolic syndrome, for those who are on their way to developing it, niacin must really do something good for our body. Niacin is also a powerful antioxidant. The lipid modification effects of niacin are so consistent across a broad spectrum of the population that some companies that commercialize niacin-based products guarantee some measure of those effects. The graphs below (click to enlarge) are from Arizona Pharmaceuticals, a company that commercializes an instant-release niacin formulation called Nialor (see: arizonapharmaceuticals.com). The graphs show the peak effects on HDL cholestero...

HDL cholesterol levels are a rough measure of HDL particle quantity in the blood. They actually tell us next to nothing about HDL particle type, although HDL cholesterol increases are usually associated with increases in LDL particle size. This a good thing, since small-dense LDL particles are associated with increased cardiovascular disease. Most blood lipid panels reviewed by family doctors with patients give information about HDL status through measures of HDL cholesterol, provided in one of the standard units (e.g., mg/dl). Study after study shows that HDL cholesterol levels, although imprecise, are a much better predictor of cardiovascular disease than LDL or total cholesterol levels. How high should be one’s HDL cholesterol? The answer to this question is somewhat dependent on each individual’s health profile, but most data suggest that a level greater than 60  mg/dl (1.55 mmol/l) is close to optimal for most people . The figure below (from Eckardstein, 2008; full refere...