Large amounts of niacin, also known as vitamin B-3, can cause skin flushes, a condition that makes your face and chest turn red as well as burn and tingle. A variety of foods in your diet contain niacin, but only in small amounts. If you take niacin supplement to treat conditions such as high cholesterol, arthritis or hardening of the arteries, you may experience skin flushes.
Sources of Niacin
Foods rich in niacin include beets, brewer's yeast, beef liver, peanuts and tuna. Tryptophan, an amino acid, also converts to niacin in your bloodstream. Sources of tryptophan include chicken, turkey, eggs, poultry, eggs, cheese, nuts and pumpkin seeds. Fortified breakfast cereals may also include niacin. A healthy diet provides about 14 mg to 16 mg of niacin daily, and niacin deficiencies prove rare. Skin flushes most commonly occur if you take more than 100 mg of niacin daily.
Dietary Niacin
Niacin in your diet helps you convert carbohydrates to fuel in your bloodstream and to metabolize fats and proteins. Dietary niacin also helps improve the health of your skin, hair and eyes; helps your body make stress and sex hormones; and promotes healthy liver function. You will unlikely obtain enough niacin from your diet to suffer from skin flushes. A 3 oz. serving of tuna, a rich source of niacin, contains about 11.3 mg of niacin. To obtain 100 mg --- the amount likely to produce skin flushes --- you would need to eat 26 oz., or more than 1 1/2 lbs, of tuna in a day.
Prescription and Over-the-Counter Niacin
Skin flushes prove a common side effect of prescription-strength niacin, used for 50 years to treat conditions such as high cholesterol. A doctor may prescribe niacin in amounts of 500 mg to 2,000 mg a day. To prevent or alleviate flush, gradually increase your dose of niacin, take an aspirin 30 minutes before a scheduled dose or take a timed-release formula.
You can purchase niacin without a prescription. No-flush supplements that are available at drugstores are formulated differently than timed-release niacin prescribed by doctors and thus may not work effectively to improve cholesterol levels.
Considerations
High doses of niacin pose serious health risks, including stomach ulcers and liver damage. Timed-release formulas of niacin increase your risk of sustaining liver damage. If you take more than 100 mg of niacin daily, you should get your liver checked periodically. The National Institutes of Health ended a niacin study prematurely, in May 2011, when participants in the study who took 2,000 mg of niacin a day to treat cholesterol suffered more than twice as many strokes as persons who did not take niacin supplements.
References
- Medline Plus: Niacin and Niacinamide (Vitamin B3)
- University of Maryland Medical Center; Vitamin B 3 (Niacin); June 18, 2009
- University of Maryland Medical Center: Tryptophan -- Overview; Patrika Tsai, M.D.; Feb. 27, 2008
- United States Department of Agriculture Nutrient Database: Fish, Tuna, Light, Canned in Water
- National Institutes of Health: NIH Halts Clinical Trial on Combination Cholesterol Treatment; May 26, 2011
