Tag: vitamin B3

Is Niacin REALLY a Vitamin – Book Excerpt of the Week

Is Niacin REALLY a Vitamin – Book Excerpt of the Week

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Last week we said NIACIN was the Captain America of the Energy Drink Ingredient Avengers – one of the BEST energy drink ingredients – because it participates in numerous reactions to form ATP (the chemical form of energy) in the human body. But is niacin really a vitamin?

Vitamins are essential to life and, by definition, something we need to get from the diet because we can’t make on our own. Did you know the human body can MAKE niacin? As this book excerpt explains, tryptophan and protein are the key ingredients for this magic.

Niacin is still considered a vitamin because we can make some but we can’t make enough to survive and thrive.

The amount of niacin our bodies can make in a day from the amino acid tryptophan is not the full amount we’d need in a day, but it helps. Moreover, our bodies cannot make tryptophan: it is an ESSENTIAL amino acid, meaning we have to get from the diet.

STAY TUNED every Monday for more book excerpts and the science behind energy drink ingredients.  Stay tuned for next week’s book excerpt as we continue our page-by-page exploration through the Energy Drink Guide.

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What Niacin Does – Book Excerpt of the Week 

What Niacin Does – Book Excerpt of the Week 

greeneyedguide

Niacin is my FAVORITE vitamin! Niacin doesn’t “give you energy” like caffeine, but if caffeine is the Iron Man of Energy Drink Ingredient Avengers then Niacin is Captain America.

Niacin is like that person everyone wants at their party. It participates in hundreds of reactions and thus is welcome all over the body.

The body loves niacin so much it creates a little bit on its own, just in case you don’t get enough from the diet.

Corn loves niacin so much, there’s a protein in corn that has niacin on lockdown.

In previous book excerpt posts, we proposed that if B-vitamins were all superheroes and you were assembling your dream squad for an energy drink, you’d want riboflavin and thiamin in the mix.

Thiamin is a crucial part of how the body turns glucose into energy.

Riboflavin feeds a giant beast of a reaction in the body which leads to the release of huge amounts of energy.

Thiamin and riboflavin are great, but niacin is even better. Here are two strong reasons why:

1.Niacin is even better than thiamin and riboflavin because of the sheer number of reactions in which it participates. Niacin is part of over 200 reactions in the body, most of them involving the production of ENERGY.

2.Niacin helps with the first step of alcohol metabolism. This is the step where ethanol is converted to acetaldehyde via the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase. Niacin is a coenzyme, which means it’s a key part of the enzyme or machine that completes this reaction. This reaction/conversion is partly why booze depletes your B-vitamin stores and thus why energy drinks with caffeine, milk thistle and NIACIN are good HANGOVER REMEDIES! [For more info, see this post I wrote about energy drinks and hangovers on BroBible for more]

To learn more about niacin and the other B-vitamins, stay tuned for next week’s book excerpt as we continue our page-by-page exploration through the Energy Drink Guide.

 

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5 Quick Facts About VoloVitamins: ingredients, food science, and caffeine

5 Quick Facts About VoloVitamins: ingredients, food science, and caffeine

greeneyedguide
VoloVitamins is an energy supplement that comes in a powder. For this quick review, I share five quick facts about the energy supplement from a food scientist perspective.
  1. Vitamin B12 is the number-one most common energy drink ingredient (caffeine is third!) [Source, Caffeine Informer and Innova Market Insights’ Database]   and VoloVitamins has over 41,000% of the Daily Value of vitamin B12!

    caffeine informer top 5 ingredients
    Source: https://www.caffeineinformer.com/energy-drink-ingredients
  2. For most B-vitamins, you don’t have to worry about ingesting too much because you’ll just pee out the excess. This is NOT TRUE for vitamin B6 and niacin aka vitamin B3, which CAN give you upleasant symptoms if you have too much. The vitamin B6 in VoloVitamins is not high enough to cause any of these symptoms, but the amount of niacin is high enough to cause “niacin flush” in some people.
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  3. VoloVitamis contains 17 different fruits in powder form. Since the overall amount of the whole serving isn’t very big, it’s safe to assume the amount of each fruit is miniscule. That means VoloVitamins is not a replacement for whole fruit in the diet and does not provide sufficient amounts of fruit polyphenols and antioxidants to make any health claims. But fruit powders add flavor.
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  4. The caffeine content is not stated outright on the product but it’s compared to a cup of green tea. Comparisions like this are always tricky because it’s not a standard reference: an 8 ounce cup of green tea may have a little at 12 mg or as much as 48 mg caffeine according to the Caffeine Informer database.
    For VoloVitamins, the caffeine comes from guarana extract and green tea extract.
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  5. VoloVitamins conains NO artificial flavors or sweeteners. The color comes from grape seed extract. The sweetness comes from the natural sweetener stevia. Malic and citric acid also contribute some sourness to the taste, though they serve multiple roles in this formula: they are not just added for taste.

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Get your copy of my book on the science behind energy drink ingredients, available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.

“ARE YOU A MONSTER OR A ROCK STAR: A GUIDE TO ENERGY DRINKS – HOW THEY WORK, WHY THEY WORK, HOW TO USE THEM SAFELY”

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Niacin as Riboflavin’s Cooler Older Brother – Book Excerpt of the Week

Niacin as Riboflavin’s Cooler Older Brother – Book Excerpt of the Week

greeneyedguide

Riboflavin and niacin are both popular energy drink ingredients but in many ways one outshines the other. Niacin is like riboflavin’s cooler older brother. The two are similar, but niacin has more style to its game. Let’s start with how the two get into the body:

✔Niacin can walk into any room it wants but riboflavin needs help. Riboflavin has to be consumed with food because stomach acids need to free it from a protein it’s usually attched to. Niacin can pass through the walls of the stomach and intestines as effortlessly as perfume spreading through a small room (passive diffusion).

✔Riboflavin has to wait til it reaches the small intestine to get absorbed, but Niacin gets absorbed in the stomach too, as if it has a VIP Pass to cut the line and get into the club (the bloodstream) sooner.

✔Niacin is absorbed faster and more efficiently (% absorption-wise) than riboflavin.

✔Niacin is like that person EVERYONE wants at their party, and this will be even MORE apparent when we get to WHAT NIACIN DOES in next week’s book excerpt.

Get your copy of my book on the science behind energy drink ingredients, available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.

“ARE YOU A MONSTER OR A ROCK STAR: A GUIDE TO ENERGY DRINKS – HOW THEY WORK, WHY THEY WORK, HOW TO USE THEM SAFELY”

Let’s connect!