Harvard Genetics Professor David Sinclair PhD, author of Lifespan, joined Kahn Academy last week to talk NAD and much more. Sinclair excels at discussing NAD, longevity, and science in easily accessible ways. The following are key quotes from his 40 minute interview with Sal Kahn (video embedded below):

What is NAD?

“NAD is this little molecule that cells use to carry out about 400 or more enzymatic reactions. It’s one of the most boring molecules — or at least it was until the 2000s.

But what my colleagues and I realized was that NAD levels also control the body’s survival networks. And the lower your NAD levels, we believe, the lower your defenses are.

And actually, as we get older — and certainly we know for sure in animals as they get older they have less NAD.

You can boost your NAD levels somewhat back up by doing exercise and skipping a meal maybe once a day. This is fairly well accepted.

But you can’t expect someone who’s in a hospital or who’s elderly or sick to go for a run easily or skip meals.

So, what we need are potentially NAD boosters.

This is a group of drugs I’m working on intensively And we’re hopeful that the same kind of things that we see in the lab in mice, some of them will happen in people. And we’ll probably know in the next year or two, or maybe sooner with the COVID-19 study.

But the kind of things we see when we raise NAD levels back up in old mice — there’s a lot of studies way beyond what my lab has done — but some of the things I know of from my lab are increased endurance. So old mice run farther. They have much better blood flow. They have better blood flow in the brain as well, not just their skeletal muscle. They’re resistant to heart attacks. They have less inflammation. Their respiration and their mitochondria get revved up like a young animal would. So there are lots of benefits that we can see in mice.

We have a longevity study that’s in progress that’s looking promising. I can’t say more just yet because people in my lab will kill me.

But these are the kind of things that hold out promise — that we can use some of these changes in animals to treat patients, and ultimately, if a drug gets on the market for a particular disease my personal hope is now that drug can be tested in many different areas, many different disease areas by doctors, and do their own clinical trials in their own particular area.

And, eventually, if everything goes well, we could have millions or tens of millions of people being treated with these drugs for not just diseases but eventually we’ll see that those people on the drug hopefully will be less prone to diseases and may even live longer.

NAD and COVID-19

“…So we’ve had a study in my lab for the last few years that shows that NAD depletion occurs, a lack of NAD occurs when there’s an infection.

That’s one bit of evidence.

But then there was another study, Charlie Brenner, a professor showed that patient samples actually have low NAD if they have bad COVID infection.

And then there are some case studies coming out of Cedars Sinai Hospital with patients that did remarkably well given an NAD booster cocktail.

So, all of that led me to look more and more into it.

And it turns out that my lab, and now Charlie’s lab has also shown that the virus is depleting NAD in the body. It does that for reasons we’re not really sure. But it might be part of the pathogenesis, as we call it, part of the problem the virus causes.

And so the hope, we’re testing this now, hopefully soon in patients, is that by getting that NAD depletion back up to normal that elderly people will have the energy and the immune system to be able to fight the virus.

And there’s another thing that’s interesting is that hyper inflammation where these severe cases actually succumb to over-inflammation, or the cytokine storm, that we know that if you have less NAD you get this hyperactivation.

And so, there’s another possible that NAD boosting could actually help people with a very extreme late stage form of COVID-19.

More on NAD Boosters

“…there are molecules you can give to a mouse. They’re called NAD precursors. These are the building blocks of NAD.

And we know from mouse and some human studies that I’ve been involved in that they will raise NAD levels in the body. And the hope is that by doing that we’ll get those sirtuin defenses back up to where they used to be when you were young.

So, you can take pills. That’s sufficient. Some people do injections. I don’t know if they work or not — but I hear about them.

But based on the literature, we’re right on the cusp of learning what these NAD boosters are capable of doing in people. And, many of them are natural molecules — so that piques peoples’ interest as well.

NAD and Neuroprotection

“…in mice there are a couple of ways that NAD seems to work. It will raise the levels or activity of a set of genes which we call sirtuins — and many of those have been shown to be neuroprotective, again in mice.

….there’s a lot of data from other labs in particular, a little bit from mine, that you’ll get neuroprotection in a variety of diseases from sirtuin activity from Parkinson’s through to Alzheimer’s.

And the second thing that happens, that I mentioned earlier, is that the mice get more blood flow in their brain, and we tracked that down to the lining of blood vessels actually become more youthful and grow, in a healthy way, nothing dangerous that we can tell.

And that makes me think there might be a chance to use these so-called NAD boosting molecules to treat vascular dementia, which is a very pernicious and common disease, actually with not much you can do.

So, I think there’s lot of reason to go and explore NAD boosters in neurodegenerative diseases.

I haven’t done any myself in humans. I’m aware that there are some studies. There’s one in Parkinson’s. There’s one I believe it was also in ALS which I know is not neurodegenerative, central but peripheral.

There are that I’ve more particularly worked on are muscle wasting diseases, and also immunity.

Summary of Sinclair’s Work:

“…These molecules that I work on, and other scientists, they could be applied to probably a hundred different diseases that are applied to aging, and some not. Sometimes these are just the ability to boost the energy and the repair systems of even sick young people. So, that’s also important to realize that this research isn’t just about keeping older people around. It’s about boosting the body’s natural defenses against disease and disability and promoting healing.”

RELATED:

  • Why Does Dr Sinclair Take NMN over NR? See HERE.
  • FAQs on taking NAD boosting vitamin supplement Nicotinamide Riboside (NR) can be found HERE.
  • NR supplementation may have helped sufferers of these diseases & conditions (Consumer Reviews)

FOLLOW us on Twitter @RaisingNAD