More on niacin: No flush, no good

Several readers wrote in wanting to know more about why we don't recommend no-flush niacin products. A little bit of background will help us explain.

The term niacin comes from nicotinic acid vitamin, but it's used to refer to both nicotinic acid and a closely related molecule, nicotinamide. Both nicotinic acid and nicotinamide are necessary to prevent pellagra, a disease that causes skin inflammation, diarrhea, and dementia. After they were first discovered in the 1930s, nicotinic acid and nicotinamide were known for a time as the pellagra-preventing vitamins.