There’s a chemical in every cell of our body, that’s vital for processes within the cell and for cell-to-cell communication. It’s called nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (abbreviated as NAD or NAD+).
The problem for older people is that as we age, the levels of this important chemical decline.
A study reported in “Antioxidants & Redox Signaling”, typical of other studies, indicated that “Increasing evidence has suggested that NAD+ deficiency is a common central pathological factor in a number of diseases and aging.”
An article in “Translational Medicine of Aging” states that: “NAD+ depletion has been associated with hallmarks of aging and may underlie a wide-range of age-related diseases, such as metabolic disorders, cancer and neurodegenerative diseases. Emerging evidence implicates that elevation of NAD+ levels may slow or even reverse the aspects of aging and also delay the progression of age-related diseases.”
How to boost levels?
One way to boost your declining NAD levels could be through your diet and eating habits.
In an article in the “Independent” newspaper, Harvard Professor David Sinclair says that “I think the most important thing for increasing healthspan, if there’s just one thing I could say, it would be to eat less often.” He also suggests fasting frequently, explaining that “Fasting is helpful in combating ageing because it boosts NAD+ levels, which ultimately makes the body’s “repair genes” more active. Ultimately, any stressors such as exercise, fasting, and cold/heat stress increase your NAD+ levels, which in turn keep sirtuins, a class of proteins that regulate gene expression and repair DNA damage, functioning properly.”
But for many of us, we’d ideally like to keep the NAD levels up by taking a supplement, and fortunately there is such a supplement. It’s called Nicotinamide Riboside, and it stimulates the creation of NAD.
A recent article in Nature Communications reported that: “The primary finding of this study is that oral supplementation with 1000 mg per day of Nicotinamide Riboside is a well-tolerated and effective strategy for stimulating NAD+ metabolism in healthy middle-aged and older humans.”
Link to my post “Vitamins and Supplements”