Before we dive into NAD+, let’s clear up a common point of confusion. When researching NAD, you’ll likely come across terms like NAD+, NAD (without the “plus”), and even NADH. While these terms are often used interchangeably, they’re not exactly the same.
NAD refers to a molecule that plays a central role in cellular energy and repair. It exists in two forms: NAD+ and NADH. NAD+ is the active, oxidized form that fuels critical cellular processes, while NADH is the reduced form that NAD+ converts into after being used. Your cells constantly recycle NADH back into NAD+ to keep the cycle going and maintain balance.
If this all sounds a little complicated, don’t worry. All you really need to know is that NAD helps your body turn food into energy. NAD+ is the working form that powers important functions in your cells. NADH is the temporary form created after NAD+ has done its job. Your body constantly converts NADH back to NAD+ to keep your cells powered up.
With that cleared up, let’s get back to NAD+ since it’s the powerhouse everyone’s really talking about when they mention NAD and the driving force behind NAD therapy.
NAD+ (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide) is a molecule found in every cell of your body. It works as a coenzyme, assisting enzymes in carrying out the biochemical reactions and cellular processes that keep your body running smoothly.
Its primary job is converting food into usable fuel for your cells. NAD+ is essential for energy production — without it, your cells wouldn’t be able to generate the energy needed to power everything from muscle contractions to brain function.
But that’s not all; NAD+ does much more than produce energy.
NAD+ plays a critical role in regulating metabolic pathways that control how your cells process nutrients, respond to stress, and repair damage. It also supports immune function and activates proteins called sirtuins, which help repair DNA, regulate cellular stress, and influence longevity pathways.
We’ll go over these key functions in more detail next, but just know that NAD+ is far more than just another molecule in your body.
If your body is low on NAD+, your cells will struggle to produce the energy they need, leading to fatigue, slower metabolism, and impaired cellular repair. Over time, this can contribute to muscle weakness, cognitive decline, and an increased risk of age-related diseases.
Low NAD+ levels also mean your body is less equipped to handle oxidative stress and inflammation, both of which accelerate aging and damage at the cellular level.
Your body naturally produces NAD+, but several factors can cause levels to decline or disrupt its function. When this happens, it becomes harder for your body to maintain energy production, repair cells, and support overall health.
We’ll discuss the reasons behind these declines and what you can do to boost your NAD+ levels. But first, let’s take a closer look at the key functions NAD+ performs so you can better understand why maintaining optimal levels is essential for energy, youthful vigor, and healthy aging.
The Key Functions of NAD+ in Your Body
Now that we’ve covered what NAD+ is and why it matters, let’s break down the key functions it performs to keep your body running smoothly.
Energy Production and Metabolism
NAD+ levels can significantly impact your energy levels and metabolic health. That’s because NAD+ is essential for converting food into energy through a process called cellular respiration.
It works within your mitochondria (your cells’ power plants) as an electron transporter, helping transform carbohydrates, fats, and proteins into ATP—the energy currency your cells use to power virtually all activities. Without sufficient NAD+, this energy production process becomes inefficient, potentially leading to fatigue and metabolic issues.
NAD+ also plays a key role in glycolysis, the breakdown of glucose for energy, and in the citric acid cycle, which generates most of the body’s usable energy. Additionally, it supports fatty acid oxidation—the process of breaking down fats for fuel.
Sirtuin Activation and Longevity Pathways
One of the most fascinating roles of NAD+ is its function as a required cofactor for sirtuin activation. Sirtuins are a family of proteins that regulate cellular health, DNA repair, inflammation, and metabolic processes.
When sirtuin activity declines, you could experience low energy, brain fog, slower metabolism that leads to weight gain, poor skin elasticity resulting in fine lines and sagging, and increased inflammation that could lead to chronic health issues and faster overall aging.
If you want to remain youthful and healthy, sirtuins must be functioning properly, and they need NAD+ to be able to do that.
The connection between NAD+, sirtuins, and longevity has been studied extensively in recent years. Research suggests that declining NAD+ levels with age may contribute to reduced sirtuin activity, potentially accelerating aspects of the aging process.
Conversely, supporting optimal NAD+ levels through NAD+ therapy may help maintain sirtuin function as we age, resulting in more energy, clearer thinking, healthier skin, and better overall vitality.
DNA Repair and Maintenance
Your DNA takes a beating every day from things like pollution, chemicals, UV rays, poor lifestyle choices like a bad diet and smoking, and even natural internal processes in your body like cell division and oxidative stress. Your body has built-in repair systems to fix this damage, and NAD+ plays a key role in keeping these systems running smoothly.
NAD+ is crucial for activating enzymes called PARPs (Poly ADP-ribose polymerases), which act like sensors, detecting DNA damage and signaling your cells to start the repair process. Without enough NAD+, these repair systems can’t respond as effectively, allowing more damage to DNA to accumulate over time, which can lead to cellular aging and increased susceptibility to disease.
This connection is one reason NAD+ therapy is being explored for its potential to protect DNA integrity, support cellular health, and promote longevity.
Cellular Communication and Signaling
NAD+ plays a vital role in maintaining cellular balance by facilitating communication between the nucleus (which controls the cell) and the mitochondria (which produce energy). This communication ensures that your cells stay in sync and function efficiently.
In addition to this, NAD+ supports cellular signaling, which regulates essential processes like calcium balance (important for muscle contractions and nerve signaling), circadian rhythms (your body’s internal clock), and immune responses.
Since these processes affect nearly every system in your body, maintaining optimal NAD+ levels is critical for sustaining energy, supporting resilience, and promoting overall health.
Reasons NAD+ Levels Decline
The reasons NAD+ levels decline are similar to why other key regenerative agents that drive cellular health, like stem cells and peptides, decrease over time.
Some of these factors are within your control, but many are out of your hands, making it difficult to prevent NAD+ depletion without extra support.
Age is one of the most significant factors in NAD+ decline. Research shows that by age 50, most people have only about half the NAD+ levels they had in their youth. This happens because your body becomes less efficient at producing and recycling NAD+ over time, making it harder to keep up with the demands of cellular repair and energy production.
However, age is only one culprit. Many other factors can speed up NAD+ depletion, including:
- Poor diet (especially a lack of vitamin B3)
- Chronic stress
- Lack of sleep
- High blood pressure
- Insulin resistance
- Too much sun exposure
- Excessive alcohol consumption
- Exposure to environmental toxins like pollution and radiation
- Chronic inflammation (from obesity, infections, or autoimmune conditions)
All of these factors, especially when combined, place extra stress on your body, using up NAD+ faster than it can be replenished, resulting in lower energy, slower cellular repair, and increased vulnerability to age-related decline.
How To Boost NAD+ Levels
When your NAD+ levels decline, your cells lose the energy they need to function optimally, leading to fatigue, slower metabolism, and increased signs of aging. That’s why it’s important to take steps to maintain and replenish your NAD+ supply.
Here are some of the most effective ways to prevent premature NAD+ decline and give your levels
a lasting boost.
Lifestyle Approaches
As mentioned earlier, age isn’t the only reason NAD+ levels decline—certain lifestyle choices can also speed up this process.
To support your body’s natural NAD+ production and help prevent premature decline, here are a few lifestyle habits to adopt that can protect and replenish your NAD+ levels.
Exercise
Regular physical activity, particularly high-intensity interval training (HIIT), has been shown to boost NAD+ levels naturally. Exercise increases the activity of the NAMPT enzyme, which is crucial for NAD+ production.
Intermittent Fasting
Some research suggests that caloric restriction through intermittent fasting might help increase NAD+ levels by activating the SIRT1 gene, which plays a role in NAD+ metabolism.
Get Sun Exposure (Just Don’t Overdo It)
UV radiation can trigger DNA repair processes that utilize NAD+, potentially stimulating more production. However, you want to keep exposure moderate and always wear sunscreen, as excess UV exposure has the opposite effect, depleting NAD+ levels and causing oxidative damage that accelerates skin aging.
Include NAD+ Precursors in Your Diet
Vitamin B3 (niacin) and tryptophan are believed to provide the building blocks for NAD+. Filling your plate with foods rich in these nutrients may help support natural NAD+ production. Good sources include turkey, chicken, fish, mushrooms, green peas, and avocados.
NAD+ IV Therapy
While lifestyle approaches can help slow the decline of NAD+ and support healthy levels, they’re often not enough to significantly boost NAD+, especially as you age or if you’re dealing with health issues related to NAD+ depletion.
NAD+ IV therapy is considered the “gold standard” for rapidly restoring NAD+ levels. NAD+ IVs deliver 100% bioavailability by directly entering the bloodstream, avoiding the first-pass metabolism in the liver and digestive breakdown.
IV therapy offers several distinct advantages:
- Maximum Absorption: Direct delivery to the bloodstream means no loss through digestion
- Higher Dosing: IV therapy can safely deliver therapeutic doses that would be impossible to achieve through oral supplementation
- Faster Results: Many patients report feeling benefits during or shortly after their infusion
- Customized Treatment: Your medical provider can tailor the dosage to your specific health needs
- Comprehensive Support: IV treatments can be combined with other beneficial nutrients for synergistic effects
It is important to note that while one of the key advantages of IV NAD+ is that it has very high bioavailability, it’s still metabolized by tissues before being used intracellularly and doesn’t directly enter the mitochondria as intact NAD+.
NAD+ IV protocols vary but typically begin with a series of infusions over several days or weeks, followed by maintenance treatments at longer intervals. The initial series helps restore NAD+ to optimal levels, while maintenance infusions help sustain those levels over time.
NAD+ IV therapy isn’t something you can safely do at home. It should only be administered in a clinical setting by medical professionals trained in NAD+ therapy.
At Relieve Health, we have clinics nationwide that offer NAD+ IV therapy. Our clinics and staff are highly trained and experienced, ensuring safe administration, personalized care, and optimal results.
NAD+ Injections
Another effective way to boost NAD+ levels is through injections. While NAD+ infusions are often preferred for their rapid and high-dose delivery, many people opt for injections because they can be easily administered at home.
NAD+ injections are also commonly used as a maintenance approach after completing a series of IV treatments, helping to sustain elevated NAD+ levels over time.
Benefits of NAD+ injections include:
- Bypasses the digestive system entirely, allowing for higher bioavailability
- More efficient delivery to cells throughout the body
- Faster and more noticeable results (compared to oral supplements)
- Greater convenience than IV therapy, as injections can be self-administered at home with a prescription
NAD+ injections offer a balance of effectiveness and convenience, making them a popular choice for those looking to boost and maintain optimal NAD+ levels.
This option is also available at select Relive Health clinics, where we prescribe only the highest quality, carefully sourced NAD+ to ensure safety and effectiveness.
Benefits of NAD+ Therapy
The many crucial roles of NAD+ in the body explain why NAD+ therapy has become such a focus in regenerative medicine. Whether you choose an NAD+ IV infusion or NAD+ shot, boosting NAD+ has many benefits.
Clinical NAD+ therapy can potentially:
- Help slow the aging process
- Boost metabolism and aid in weight loss
- Improve mental clarity and brain function
- Help beat fatigue and increase energy levels
- Reduce harmful inflammation
- Help ease the intensity of daily stressors
With all these potential benefits, it’s easy to see why NAD+ therapy and NAD+ injections are gaining so much attention. When your body has the NAD+ it needs, you’re giving yourself the best possible foundation for long-term health and vitality.
What About Oral NAD+ Supplements?
Oral NAD+ supplements are the most accessible and convenient way to support NAD+ levels, but they differ significantly from NAD+ injections and IV infusions and may not be as effective.
For starters, oral NAD+ supplements typically contain NAD+ precursors like NMN (Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) or NR (Nicotinamide Riboside) rather than NAD+ itself. This matters because your body has to convert these precursors into NAD+ before they can be used, which adds an extra step that can limit the efficiency of absorption and utilization.
Additionally, bioavailability is another challenge. NAD+ is poorly absorbed through the digestive system. When taken orally, much of the NAD+ or its precursors are broken down in the stomach and liver before ever reaching the bloodstream, meaning only a fraction is available for your cells.
Bottom Line: Taking a high-quality NAD+ supplement is potentially better than nothing at all and might provide some benefits, particularly for maintaining levels after other treatments. However, oral NAD+ supplements don’t deliver the immediate and significant boost that many people are looking for.
Furthermore, while NAD+ injections and infusions require a little more time and commitment and might seem more costly, they offer far superior results, which makes them a much better return on your investment.
Where to Find Safe and Effective NAD+ IV Therapy and NAD+ Injections Near Me
There are many regenerative medicine clinics and online companies offering NAD+ therapy these days. But before spending your money, it’s important to know that not all NAD+ infusions and injections are the same.
Low-quality sources, improper dosages, and lack of medical oversight can lead to ineffective or unsafe results. To ensure safety and effectiveness, always look for licensed providers experienced in NAD+ who only source pharmaceutical-grade NAD+.
Additionally, NAD+ therapy isn’t one-size-fits-all. Be cautious of online offers that skip medical consultations or promote a “one-size-fits-all” approach. The most effective NAD+ plans are catered to your unique concerns and often combine multiple approaches.
At Relive Health, we source only the highest quality NAD+ and prioritize safety at every step. Our experienced healthcare providers carefully assess your unique situation to determine the correct dosage, frequency, and delivery method, ensuring a personalized plan that aligns with your specific health goals.
Check out our clinic locator to find a Relive Health clinic near you, and book your NAD+ therapy consultation today.
