It's only been three days since I started taking NAD+, which grabbed the attention of my wife and me when we read about it in a TIME magazine piece, "Is an Anti-Aging pill on the Horizon?"
Anti-aging products from skin creams to chemical peels are part of a $250 billion industry, but scientists have yet to discover a longevity elixir that stands up to medical scrutiny. A group of researchers believe they’re getting closer, however, thanks to a compound called nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, or NAD+ for short.
“NAD+ is the closest we’ve gotten to a fountain of youth,” says David Sinclair, co-director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging at Harvard Medical School. “It’s one of the most important molecules for life to exist, and without it, you’re dead in 30 seconds.”
NAD+ is a molecule found in all living cells and is critical for regulating cellular aging and maintaining proper function of the whole body. Levels of NAD+ in people and animals diminish significantly over time, and researchers have found that re-upping NAD+ in older mice causes them to look and act younger, as well as live longer than expected. In a March 2017 study published in the journal Science, Sinclair and his colleagues put drops of a compound known to raise levels of NAD+ into the water for a group of mice.
Within a couple hours, the NAD+ levels in the mice had risen significantly. In about a week, signs of aging in the tissue and muscles of the older mice reversed to the point that researchers could no longer tell the difference between the tissues of a 2-year-old mouse and those of a 4-month-old one.
Well, that was enough to convince us to order some NAD+ from Life Extension. So this is our new hope for staving off aging as well and as long as possible.
I'm a big believer in the placebo effect.
So I'm going to say that NAD+ is making me feel more youthful and energetic. Hey, even if it isn't doing anything -- and I'm taking 500 mg a day, so it should be doing something -- I'll let science perform its future doubleblind experiments and bask for now in my belief that NAD+ is doing its thing for me.
This is the same attitude I had in 2011 when I started taking Astragalus, as described in "Do my telomeres look longer? (I'm taking astragalus)."
Hey, if I feel like my telomeres are longer, maybe they actually are. (Please compliment me on my pleasingly lengthy telomeres if you see me in person; that'll help with my placebo effect.) Dr. Oz is big on astragalus, for what that's worth.
Well, somewhere along the line I decided to stop taking astragalus. Which fits with a long-term trend of mine -- culling the herd of the supplements I take.
In 2008 I was taking 22 supplements, as listed in "Behold, my sacred supplements list." By 2011 I was down to nineteen. And as shown below, my 2018 list consists of sixteen supplements.
Acetyl-L-carnitine 620 mg
Align probiotic
Aspirin 81 mg
Bilberry extract 500 mg
Blueberry extract
Bone Restore
Celadrin 1050 mg
Co-Q-10 60 mg
Lutein 12 mg
MacuGuard ocular support
Melatonin 1 mg
Multi-vitamin ("Doctor's Choice for 50-Plus Men")
NAD+ cell regenerator 500 mg
Resveratrol 500 mg
Ultimate Omega 1380 mg
Vitamin D 400 IU
Our supplements cabinet is still chock fill, but I feel like the quality of what I've taking has improved now that I've gotten rid of some products with questionable benefits and focused more on products like Bone Restore and MacuGuard that have a better chance of benefitting specific parts of me (in these cases, my bones and eyes).
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