<<Disclaimer: Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>> Ron and Annmaureen, I'm still puzzling over this nicotine thing. Grace's blood tests showed her to be severely low in 1-N-methylnicotinimide which is what they use to test vitamin B3 levels in the urine. (Normal range - 3 to 17 mg, Grace's level- 1) Have either of you ever had this test? I'm wondering if the body was getting its niacin by breaking down nicotine. Friend chemists, could this be possible? Some things have been haunting me. I've been thinking of how Grace's amino acid tests suggested something not quite working right with B6 and thinking about her low B3 and thinking about the nicotine posts on this list, and thinking about the opiate excess theory's suggestions of problems with phenolic compounds and salicylates. I've also been thinking about all the mentions of autoimmune illness and remembering when I had ITP, the warnings to stay away from benzene and toluene. I have a copy of Geigy's Scientific Tables from my days of being a secretary at Vanderbilt Medical School, and an organic chemistry book by John McMurray that I have as a reference. (I never studied this stuff, because I was kicked out of college chemistry when I said I was allergic to benzene and couldn't test unknowns that smelled like benzene.) Anyway, I thought I'd look up these chemical structures and see if there is something about them in common. These books have nice Kekule structures drawn for all sorts of chemicals, but I was struck by the similarities I found in the following chemicals: (forgive crudity of ascii, please} H | H C OH \ / \\ / C C || | PHENOL C C / \ // \ H C H | H H | H C COOH \ // \ / C C | || NICOTINIC ACID (B3) C C / \\ / \ H N H CH2OH | HOCH2 C OH \ // \ / C C | || PYRIDOXINE (B6) C C / \\ / \ H N CH3 H O | || H C O--C--CH3 \ / \\ / C C || | ASPIRIN (SALICYLATE) C C / \ // \ H C COOH | H H N H \ // \ / C C CH3 | || | NICOTINE C C N H / \\ / \ / \ / H C C C--H | /| | H H C-----C--H /| | H H H H | H C H \ // \ / C C | || BENZENE C C / \\ / \ H C H | H H | H C CH3 \ / \\ / C C || | TOLUENE C C / \ // \ H C H | H Now, do you think the fact these things all look alike means anything? I'm no chemist, but these things resemble each other more than they resemble other diagrams in my Geigy and Organic Chemistry book. Coincidence? Or are some of our systems thrown into a biochemical tailspin by some of these similarities? (I tried to double check these diagrams, but if I missed a hydrogen atom or something, someone please correct me!) Two other facts I didn't know from Geigy: "During the roasting of coffee, considerable amounts of nicotinic acid are formed from trigonelline," and "Nicotinic acid but not nicotinimide has an inhibiting effect at high dosage on the synthesis of lipids, particularly cholesterol, but the mechanism of this effect is obscure; the primary action of nicotinic acid is possibly the liberation of free fatty acids blocked in the tissues." Maybe that's why I like coffee so much! And why getting off of cigarrettes leads to weight gain. Maybe? Still operating under the notion that real truth is simple and beautiful! Susan Owens