What is NAD+ and Why Is It Important?
Written by Leslie K. Hughes
Medically-reviewed by Dr. Monique White-Dominguez
Chances are good you’ve heard of NAD+. It has recently hit the scene with booming popularity and people are loving how it makes them look and feel.
But, what is NAD+? What is this miracle that people are raving about and why is it important?
Today we are giving you the low-down on NAD+ and why you may want more of it in your life.
What is NAD+?
NAD stands for nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide. Since no one wants to say that mouthful, it’s thankfully referred to as NAD+. It is a coenzyme that lives in every cell of your body, and it is vital to the metabolic processes that happen in the human body.
NAD+ is used for many different things, including:
Repairing DNA
Repairing cells
Energy metabolism
Regulating circadian rhythm
Research has shown that this coenzyme has the power to do a lot more for our bodies than we previously knew, which is the reason why NAD+ has become such a hot topic. It works to convert food into energy as well as protect our bodies from disease and aging.
Why is NAD+ important?
NAD+ is critical to the body’s metabolic processes – it is what gives our cells energy. If your NAD+ levels are low, then you risk your cell health and their ability to do their job.
Unfortunately, studies show that levels of NAD+ in our bodies decrease as we age. This may be a reason for age-related issues and diseases that many people suffer from including:
Diabetes
Fatigue
Weakness
Blindness
Hearing loss
Low blood sugar
Seizures
Kidney disease
Heart failure
High blood pressure
Alzheimer’s disease
Parkinson’s disease
Depression
And more
How does NAD+ work?
NAD+ acts as a messenger that carries electrons from one molecule to another. Doing this allows your body to carry out some of the metabolic processes we mentioned above.
So, in essence, NAD+ is a battery that fuels your body’s energy. NAD+ refers to the oxidized form of NAD, which simply means that it has lost or transferred an electron to another molecule.
NADH refers to the form of NAD that has received the transferred electron and is ready to take it to the next molecule. NAD molecules switch back and forth between the + and the H as they shuffle electrons around.
The number of NAD+ versus the number of NADH is an important ratio. As we age, the number of NAD+ decreases and the number of NADH increases.
How to increase NAD+ levels
As you can see from above, NAD+ is crucial to our bodies. Without enough NAD+ in our system, we run the risk of all kinds of issues.
Thus, if you are aging or are low in NAD+ for other reasons, you want to consider ways in which you can increase your NAD+ levels. Since you can’t reverse aging or your body’s declining production of NAD+, it’s important to start incorporating some things in your life that can help to slow down how quickly your body uses this vital coenzyme.
By becoming healthier, you are putting your body in a stronger place to avoid things like disease and stress. Here are ways that you can work on becoming healthier to slow down your body’s usage of NAD+.
1. Lower stress levels
It’s no secret that stress is a buzzkill for anything and everything in your life and that it does some serious damage. Not only does stress pose risks to your mental health, but it also does to your physical health, including potentially speeding up the NAD+ decline in your body. Thus, to keep your NAD+ levels higher, it is important that you reduce your stress as much as possible.
2. Regular exercise
Movement is one of the best ways to increase your NAD+ levels naturally. Exercise works to slow down the aging process by boosting the DNA-rebuilding proteins in the body. In addition to that, regular exercise helps keep you strong and at a healthy weight.
3. Eating well
A healthy diet is important to all functions of the human body, especially the increase of NAD+ levels. Ensuring that you eat whole, unprocessed food is important as well as fasting. This doesn’t have to be days of fasting, but rather you can even reap the benefits from intermittent fasting for 12-14 hours.
4. NAD+ supplementation
If your body is struggling to keep NAD+ levels high, then you may want to turn to supplementation. Sameday Health offers an NAD+ IV that may provide the following benefits:
Slow cognitive decline
Increase energy
Boost metabolism
Regenerate cells
Slow aging
Reduce inflammation
IV drips are the best way to get NAD+ supplementation because you will feel the results more quickly. This is because the IV drip goes right into your bloodstream, unlike a capsule that first has to pass through your digestive tract.
5. Reducing toxins
Toxin overload in the body can lead to a wide range of problems thanks to the damage that toxins can have on the mitochondria of your cells, which is where energy for the body is made. So, in order to keep your NAD+ levels high, it is important to reduce toxins as much as possible and potentially even cut them out completely.
Some of the biggest toxins for your body include:
Caffeine
Too much bread
Soda
Processed sugar
Processed meat
Alcohol
Stress
Too much screen time
