NAD+ is vital to entire body functions. It is found in the brain, muscle, skin, liver, pancreas, and fat. In all of these factors, the levels of NAD+ is thought to decrease with age.
Not to get too science-y, but the NAD and mitochondria is where you see this benefit:
- The NAD+/NADH ratio affects the cellular redox state (anaerobic glycolysis and oxidative phosphorylation). When this decreases, your cells cannot generate ATP well.
- ATP is the energy of your cell.
There is no chart of “normal” NAD levels in your body. It changes based on age and the unit of measurement, and can vary within tissue types (i.e. brain vs. muscle vs. liver).
So what is normal? What is our endpoint? If you are low in Vitamin D — which we can easily measure in the blood — and we know the range of “normal,” then you know you need to supplement to get your levels back into a healthy range. We know when your Vitamin D is low, it can exacerbate many medical issues; therefore, there’s a clear benefit.
NAD is trickier. Most studies are still done in “experimental” models (i.e. in yeast or mice). We don’t know if there is a “normal” range. Is it different for men and women? Does the normal level change with age? Is there an optimal level? Is that optimal level different for different people? How does better NAD manifest — better endurance? Sleep? Blood pressure? Skin quality? Is there too much that would cause toxicity in some other way? This is the nature of biohacking. We are on the forefront of science.
When trying to put a number on it, current research shows:
- Intracellular NAD levels range from 10 – 1000 μM
- Total NAD concentrations range between 0.3-0.4μmol/g
- Levels vary by tissue type — fat, brain, muscle, and liver
- In general, most experimental studies show a decline in NAD with age
We found a company that is doing the only commercial testing for NAD levels using blood spot testing. Before offering it to our clients, we used the NAD tests on ourselves. Did it correlate with age? Did doing treatments change the numbers?
And it did. See our NAD therapy options and Biohackr Benchmark program here.
This is still new science. We are testing, treating, and correlating to try to bring “normals” to this.
