What Causes High Niacin Levels?

Have you ever gotten a high niacin level on a blood test?

Niacin (vitamin B3) is an extremely important vitamin. It’s involved in so many different reactions in the body, including the production of serotonin, the production of ATP energy in the mitochondria, and so on. It’s absolutely essential.

If niacin levels are too low, that usually means you’ve got a problem with your diet. You’re consuming too many processed foods devoid of nutrients like B3.

But what does it mean if your blood level of niacin is high? What causes that?

[I will note here that many of you may have never even had a chance to get a niacin blood test in the first place—or any B vitamin testing at all, for that matter. It’s definitely worth it. Ask your doctor, or let us help you.]

If you do a Google search on that question, you won’t find too much information out there. You’ll find plenty on the results of consuming too much niacin, but you won’t find very much on the causes because, frankly, no one really knows very much about that. Doctors will generally attribute it to consuming too much supplemental niacin through a multivitamin, b-complex, etc. But sometimes niacin levels are high even in those not consuming any supplemental niacin. Why would that be?

In my experience—and this is purely based on my own clinical experience coupled with my awareness of certain key principles and mechanisms—high niacin levels in the blood may sometimes be indicative of a problem with methylation.

Methylation, for the uninitiated, is the process whereby your body attaches carbon atoms to various different things in your body. This process allows you to regulate neurotransmitter levels (affecting your mood), histamine levels, creatine levels, DNA expression, and so much more.

In my clinical experience, elevated niacin on a blood test is often correlated with an elevated homocysteine level (a pretty good marker of defective methylation) or other markers of impaired methylation. It’s a pretty consistent correlation, in my experience, and the thing is—it makes sense.

Niacin and the rest of the methylation-essential vitamins and minerals work together. You’ve got to have sufficient levels of all of these nutrients to actually methylate properly, produce energy in the mitochondria properly, and so on. So if one of those nutrients is deficient in the diet, the rest will not be used properly, and they can build up, unused, in the blood.

Similarly, if you have a genetic defect impairing your ability to properly use these nutrients for the process of methylation, niacin (and potentially some other nutrients—more on that later) will build up in the blood, as that defective enzyme functions as a bottleneck for the usage of all of these vitamins synergistically.

Also, excess niacin is gotten rid of by being methylated itself. So if your methylation is not working properly, theoretically speaking, niacin could build up in the blood because your body is not able to properly get rid of that mild excess.

The point here is: A blood excess of niacin—or many other nutrients, for that matter—often can mean your body simply is not able to use those nutrients correctly. That can be due to a deficiency of another nutrient or, as is often the case, a genetic defect in one of the enzymes used for processing those nutrients—such as in the process of methylation. MTHFR is a good example of that, but so are so many other genes involved in methylation and other enzymatic processes. Let us help you figure things out.