Does anyone have experience or knowledge of Niaspan raising blood sugar levels. Is this something the endocrinologist should take into consideration when diagnosing Type 2 in someone?
I took Niaspan for almost a year before I came across a study that said it could increase insulin resistance and thus increase blood glucose. Before convincing the doctors to switch to something besides Niaspan, I was on three different types of diabetes meds at the max dosage of each and my A1C was 8.8%.
I haven’t had another A1C since, but I know my fasting average has dropped from 220mg/dl down to 160mg/dl and still dropping now that I have motivation again. Best of all, the other side effects of Niaspan are gone too.
If you aren’t familiar with bloodsugar101.com and the associated update blog, take a look. The information is out there and your doctors aren’t reading it. I discovered the hard way that you have to.
Make no mistake Niacin has been shown to raise the blood sugars of diabetics. Here is what I posted on another forum on this topic:
I have to give you some caution on the use of niacin in large quantities for raising HDL in diabetics. What I found was the basic studies were done by the infamous Scott Grundy, an leading character in the cholesterol mafia. His first study indicated that niacin raised blood sugars for diabetics, but he redid the study and although he had somewhat of a disaster of results, he still declared it safe for diabetics. You can find that article here (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12123399).
Here is what he found. In a controlled study, diabetics were given either no niacin, a 1000 mg/day or 1500 mg/day. Doctors were told to increase medication if needed to control blood sugar. Despite increased medication, the HbA1c of the diabetics degraded in a statistically significant and proportional way. Apparently some of the patients had to go on insulin during the trial. And this study concluded that the medication was safe for diabetics. You can make your own conclusions.