Could this simple vitamin banish the pain of chemo?
If you or someone you love has been through grueling rounds of chemo, you know how awful the side effects can be.
But for many, the nausea, full-body exhaustion and hair loss isn’t all they have to deal with.
There’s another disabling chemo side effect, one that can cause burning, tingling, and shooting pains, especially in the fingers and toes. And the pain can continue long after chemo treatments are over.
It’s called chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy, and thank goodness not everyone who receives chemo will experience it. For those who do, however, it can certainly be the final straw after going through so much.
But some very promising research has discovered what may be a simple way to stop that nerve pain in its tracks and even prevent it!
At the University of Iowa, a team of researchers have been experimenting with how nicotinamide riboside (NR), a type of vitamin B3, can stop a debilitating kind of nerve pain that many chemo drugs can cause.
What the researchers did was to give female rats the chemotherapy drug paclitaxel, which is used to treat breast and ovarian cancer, at levels comparable to those prescribed for people. As expected, those who were administered the drug exhibited extreme sensitivity to having their feet touched.
But when the treated rats were also given NR daily for a week prior to getting the chemo drug, and for 24 days afterward, there was no such hypersensitivity to touch. And that effect continued for at least two weeks after the NR supplementation ended.
The researchers believe that the vitamin can increase the production in the cells of a substance called NAD+, which is known to help protect nerves from various types of damage. In fact, the NR supplements given to the rats in this study boosted their blood levels of this protective NAD+ by around 50 percent.
Chemo-induced nerve pain is much more than just an annoying side effect. For many, it’s made them completely immobile, confined to bed or a wheelchair — and it doesn’t seem to matter what their age is.
A recent study detailed the agony of several people suffering from it during cancer treatments. One 17-year-old boy on chemo became so disabled by “pins and needles” pain in his toes and feet that he needed help just getting to the bathroom.
And the drug the people were given in this study to try and treat that pain, pregabalin (a.k.a. Lyrica), is one that has its own awful list of side effects.
Plus that risky drug, other dangerous meds are prescribed to try and give patients some relief, including opioids. So, these new findings may not only help keep chemo patients pain-free, but off of some horribly dangerous drugs as well. Certainly those are the last things anyone being treated for cancer needs.
Unlike other B vitamins, which are easily found in lots of different foods, NR is only present in trace amounts in certain ones, like milk. But it’s easily available in various supplements.
And fortunately, even though NR is a type of niacin, it doesn’t appear to cause what’s called the “niacin flush,” a sunburn-like redness some people get from taking vitamin B supplements.
Despite the fact that no side effects have been reported from this type of B3, if you’re currently undergoing chemo or taking any Rx meds, be sure to check with your doctor before starting on an NR supplement.
“Nicotinamide riboside (vitamin B3) prevents nerve pain caused by cancer drugs” University of Iowa Health Care, February 23, 2017, eurekalert.org
