You can safely treat high cholesterol with changes to your diet and lifestyle, but it can prove dangerous to self-medicate with over-the-counter remedies such as inositol hexanicotinate. Little is known about the safety or effectiveness of inositol hexanicotinate, a form of niacin. High doses of regular niacin, which require a prescription, prove helpful in improving cholesterol, but pose serious side effects. Talk to your doctor before taking niacin in any form.
Niacin
Your diet includes niacin from foods such as beets, peanuts and yeast. Other foods in your diet include tryptophan, an enzyme that converts to niacin in your bloodstream. If your diet includes beef, poultry, eggs, milk or fortified breakfast cereals, you probably get enough niacin -- 14 mg to 16 mg -- in your daily diet to maintain the health of your hair, skin and eyes. Niacin from your diet also helps you convert carbohydrates to sugar and metabolize proteins and fats, as well as make stress and sex hormones and improve liver and nervous system function. Doctors may prescribe niacin in doses of 500 mg to 3,000 mg a day to treat cholesterol.
Inositol Hexanicotinate
You can purchase two types of niacin without a prescription: niacinamide and inositol hexanicotinate. Both may advertise themselves as no-flush niacin, less likely than prescribed niacin to cause skin flushes that make your face and chest turn red, itch and burn. You should not take either niacinamide or inositol hexanicotinate to treat cholesterol. Niacinamide, better studied than inositol hexanicotinate, proves ineffective in reducing the amount of lipids in your bloodstream. Current but unpublished studies may find that inositol hexanicotinate successfully treats cholesterol. But until -- unless -- science supports its use, you gamble with your health if you take inositol hexanicotinate.
Side Effects
Both niacin and niacinamide, if taken in amounts of more than 100 mg a day, put you at risk for serious side effects. Inositol hexanicotinate, available in doses of 250 mg to 500 mg, may as well. Side effects include irregular heartbeat, gout, stomach ulcers, vision loss and liver damage. Persons with type 2 diabetes should not take any form of niacin without a doctor's supervision because it can cause dangerous elevations in blood sugar levels. Niacin may also worsen symptoms of kidney disease. Persons in a National Institutes of Health study who took 2,000 mg of niacin daily suffered more than twice as many strokes as persons in the study who did not take niacin. The study ended in May 2011, 18 months earlier than planned.
Considerations
If you want to try home remedies for treating cholesterol, consider changing your diet rather than taking inositol hexanicotinate. Triglycerides, one of three types of lipids that make up your total cholesterol, prove especially responsive to diet and exercise. You can lower your triglycerides by 50 percent if you follow a low-fat, low-sugar diet and engage in moderate physical activity at least 150 minutes a week, according to a scientific statement released in April 2011 by the American Heart Association. It also helps to lose weight, stop smoking and limit consumption of alcohol to no more than two drinks a day.
References
- University of Maryland Medical Center; Vitamin B 3 (Niacin); June 18, 2009
- Medline Plus: Niacin and Niacinamide (Vitamin B3)
- National Institutes of Health: NIH Halts Clinical Trial on Combination Cholesterol Treatment; May 26, 2011
- CBC News; Niacin Trial For Heart Disease Stopped Early; May 27, 2011
- American Heart Association; Diet, Lifestyle Changes Can Significantly Reduce Triglyceride; April 18 2011
- MayoClinic.com; High Cholesterol : Lifestyle and Home Remedies; June 1, 2010
