Chromadex CEO Rob Fried appeared on the Optimal Performance Podcast to discuss NAD+ and Nicotinamide Riboside “NR” (FAQs) (Consumer Reviews). He shared some remarkable anecdotes about the impact of taking NR. Key quotes and podcast embedded:

KEY QUOTES:

On what Age NAD+ Begins to Decline

“We believe that the (NAD) decline begins in your mid-20s. You’re starting to see a decline in NAD and the processes by which we create NAD also become less effective beginning in your mid-20s.”

“There are some publications and some researchers that have said that your NAD levels decline in some tissue and in blood as much as 50% by the time you’re 40. And some have said even as much as another 50% decline from 40 to 60. So we see a steep decline.”

On the Impact of Taking NR and Elevating NAD+:

“…NAD declines under physical stress or with age…

“But the early (scientific) studies indicated that when we elevate NAD levels in animals it has a significant therapeutic benefit to all of the indications and diseases that we associate with a decline in NAD or aging.”

“The best way to elevate NAD that we know of today is to take Nicotinamide riboside (NR) which is the key ingredient in TRU Niagen.

“From a scientific standpoint, we know that if you take TRU Niagen it will in a very dramatic way elevate blood NAD levels. It will also elevate ATP levels and it will do so very safely without side effects.”

“There’s also some reference to a reduction in blood pressure and an improvement in fatty liver conditions as a result. There’s also a published study that indicates a lower inflammation level, blood inflammation levels. Those are the human clinical published studies.”

“There are dozens more pre-clinical studies, animal studies, that specifically relate to known diseases or conditions. But until the human studies on those conditions are published one cannot make that claim that it will have a therapeutic benefit for those known diseases.”

On how Quickly People are Impacted by NR

“We see that if people take it over a few weeks their levels plateau after about 2 weeks. Their NAD levels plateau after about 2 weeks. But you need to keep taking it to maintain that level. If you take it for a few months and then you stop taking it the NAD levels will gradually decline but slowly and not all the way back to the beginning. So there’s clearly some sort of restorative, therapeutic benefit in the engine of manufacturing NAD.”

“But I think it’s mostly because it takes that long for people to realize that it’s impacting them. I think it’s so subtle that it takes an amount of time for people to understand…..Sometimes it takes a few months for people to realize that they’re living differently. They’re outlook is a little bit different. They’re ambition level is a little bit different. They’re doing things that they sort of quietly stopped doing — and now they feel like doing again. So, that’s why we say 2-3 months.”

“But there are people that notice it dramatically after just a few weeks. Most people though are not so tuned in and they’re mostly looking for how they feel. And of course feeling is more impacted by transitive things like hormones or stimulants that might be in your food or coffee. That has a greater impact on your actual feeling in the short term. That’s why we say 3 months.”

On what NR Dosage CEO Rob Fried Takes Daily

“The FDA recommended dosage of TRU Niagen is 2 capsules or 300mg per day.”

“Personally I take more than that.

“But when I’m feeling any kind of physical stress, I’m traveling cross country OR there’s a time issue OR I’m healing OR there’s some procedure, I take more. I take much more.”

“While at Coachella, I took a very high dosage of TRU Niagen. And I was there the entire time, woke up the next day, couldn’t wait to get back out. It has a dramatic impact on the way your body processes sun radiation, exposure to the sun etc. So, if you think about what it’s doing it then ladders up to when to use it and how much to take.”

On What Time of Day to Take NR

“What Dr Brenner suggests is that it really doesn’t matter when you take it as long as you take it around the same time every day. Because NAD levels do impact the circadian rhythm and you do from time to time hear people when they first start taking it that they took it late at night and didn’t sleep well. But, in fact if you took it at the same time every day you’re going to sleep better and deeper you just have to try to be consistent with when you take it.”

On What Happens if you Stop Taking NR

“We show that when people stop taking it (NR) that NAD levels do not decline below what the initial levels were. In fact, there’s indication that it might actually be higher.”

Anecdote #1 – (A) Energy (B) Workout Levels (C) Recovery

“The most notable impact that you hear over and over again is feeling more energy. I like to think of TRU Niagen as a 3-month energy drink. If one takes TRU Niagen for a few months and they’re sensitive to their performance they begin to notice things that are perhaps subtle at first and then once you click in and you recognize then people are hooked for life.”

“For example, many times people see their workout levels gradually go up. That makes sense. You have higher levels of ATP. You’re also recovering quicker. So, people are seeing that they’re working out more often or they feel less sore after a workout — because this is about cell repair.”

Anecdote #2 – (A) Energy (B) Sleep (C) Inflammation

“I’ve been taking it for 5 years and I’ll say that I started noticing fairly dramatic things after 3 months. People who take it for a long time — it generally and often transitions from just “I feel more energy” and “I feel stronger” and “I feel healthier” and “I feel like I just slept really well for 2 nights” into very tangible specific things.”

“In my case, I had hurt my knee skiing about 10 years ago. And I always had pain walking up the steps and putting any pressure on it. And I noticed it was gone after 3 months. I noticed that I no longer was favoring the other leg. And I realized that it might very well be because of a reduction in inflammation there and also repairing. I also noticed that I was sleeping deeper — remembering my dreams. And I had long stopped having those kind of deep sleep. And of course NAD levels and inflammation levels are very related to how you sleep and how deep a sleep that you have.”

“And then I started to realize that I was living my life high energy. I like to work out — but I work out at 10:30 at night. I work out before I go to sleep. I’ll get on the bike at 10pm and finish at 11-11:30 6 days a week. That’s kind of an odd thing after a long, high energy day. It’s just the routine I developed just a few years ago. It’s probably just because I’m feeling strong. So that’s my own personal experience.”

Anecdote #3 – Energy

“But I have dozens of (anecdotal) examples. My own wife, after I’d been taking it for 2 or 3 years, she was skeptical about it or concerned that maybe it didn’t mix well with some other medications she was taking. But she saw that it was improving my outlook and my lifestyle. So she began to taking it.”

“So, she stated taking TRU Niagen 1.5 years ago. And then she’d been taking it for about 7 or 8 months. She joined a Bike-A-Thon, not a workout person, not a person who rides bikes. But she chose to join this event. She rode her bicycle from San Francisco to Los Angeles, having not really worked out very hard, a woman in her 50s. She’d been taking this thing for about 10 months, worked out for a couple of months prior to. That’s about 600 miles over an 8 day period. And she was completely fine. And this is largely because she had — she’s now a complete believer.”

“I have many other anecdotal stories about how people’s lives have changed or improved when they took this for several months.”

Anecdote #4 – Cognition

“Wherever you have a high concentration of cells in the body that’s where you’re likely to see a benefit to TRU Niagen. So, something like the gut OR the brain OR the heart. Theses are areas that we hear about therapeutic benefits….TRU Niagen, obviously we hear every day about cognitive benefits — for people who are concerned about retrieval or memory, we hear about it daily….

Anecdote #5 – (A) Energy (B) Workout Levels

“This weekend I had two. Somebody who I went to college with but had not heard from in 15 years emailed me a few months ago saying “I noticed you’re at this company, what is it?”. I told him about TRU Niagen and I sent him some samples. And I said why don’t you take it — but take it for a few months.”

“A month in, he sent me an email saying “I’ve been taking it for a month. I’m not sure I feel anything. But I noticed that my workout levels have increased and my wife says she’s noticing a difference in me”.

“Then he emailed me over the weekend and said “I’ve now been taking it for 2.5 months it’s a WOW for me. First of all, because of back pain and general exhaustion I stopped running years ago. But I was always an avid runner. I’m now running a 1.5 miles a day every day again and my times are coming down. Everybody tells me my body looks different. And I feel different. And it’s changing my outlook on my work and on my life.”

On NR and Cancer

“There are researchers that try to pick apart NR. We’ve refuted them. There is one argument that we’ve heard — that if all cells have NAD and you’re elevating NAD levels do cancer cells have NAD? Aren’t you promoting the strength of cancer cells? We’ve read that. But that’s been disproven.”

“There’s quite a bit of research that already shows that there’s nothing to it. And there’s no research which indicates that there is anything to it.”

“In fact, Brunie Felding, who is a researcher at Scripps Research Institute, who is a worldwide leading expert in mostly breast cancer but has also done a lot of work in brain cancer has done a great deal of research on NAD and NAD precursors. She’s just joined our scientific advisory board because she was partly outraged by anyone who would make such a claim. She’s shown that, in fact, there’s more cancer preventative qualities. Her thesis is that actually elevating NAD levels causes those cancer cells to self implode and avoid it in the first place.”

On Reasons for a Healthy 20 Year Old to Take NR

“They may not need to take it every day. But sometimes a 20 year old will stay out until 5am and over drink. You wonder, how come when you’re 20 years old, you get drunk or you party, you come home, you go to sleep and the next day you have the energy to go do it again.”

“What is the process by which the cells repair themselves so quickly that they’re able to dive right back into such a damaging behavior?”

“And the answer is it’s very NAD dependent. The NAD and repair enzymes go to work right away and they’re able to expel the ethanol alcohol out of the cells fairly quickly. Or sit in the sun for 8 straight hours on the beach. You know the sun is damaging these cells. They’re loading up with inflammation and radiation.

But when a 20 year old engages in that kind of behavior it would make sense to take quite a bit of TRU Niagen as a preventative to assist in the repair process. In terms of every day, I don’t think it’s vital for a 20 year old to supplement.”

On Athletes Taking NR

“Probably the biggest growth area at the company has been sports performance.”

“Last September I received a call from one of the great NFL teams. I flew in and met with the Head Coach an hour before they had a Thursday night game last year. He met with me, his trainer, chief medical officer and I brought in our two chief science officers — one is the co-head of neurology at Harvard Medical School and the other is the inventor Dr Charles Brenner.”

“And we met with them for an hour right before the game. And he was obsessed with understanding the mechanisms and science behind this ingredient he had been giving his players and noticing the benefits. So, we give a full hard science presentation to this coach. And ever since then every player gets it every day in the form of a shake. It’s a very high performing team. Brilliant coach. And since then we have dozens of NBA players who have contacted us. Tennis players. Baseball teams that we’ve begun supplying it to.”

“It helps recovery. It helps focus. It helps energy levels. Particularly for a player in your 30s it makes a lot of sense. We have full NSF certified for sport.”

On the Next Iteration of NR

“I think it can be…..We have a lab in Colorado staffed by very impressive men and women who are PHDs and lab technicians and researchers. And we’re extremely proud of them. Many of them are quite brilliant from all around the world.”

“They have already developed the next generation of NAD precursors (boosters) that we’re working on. At this point, it’s not clear if it’s best as a supplement or maybe even a straight drug….In the next 5- or 6 years I expect Chromadex to release the next version of it.”

“But, right now, NR is an actionable item that anybody interested in cell repair OR fighting off the effects of aging can do TODAY that has an impact….I view it as an on par with exercise and diet.”

On Why He’s Working at Chromadex

“With an ingredient like NR, hundreds of millions of people, indeed billions of people could possibly have their lives improved and benefited. That’s something that I’d like to be part of.

On Niacin

“There are other NAD precursors. Niacin is a precursor (NAD booster). But it’s not efficient. You’d have to take an awful lot of it to get a meaningful elevation in NAD. But it also has terrible side effects. Flushing is the main one. The best way to elevate your NAD levels, very efficiently, very safely is NR which is why we’re so excited about it the company and the prospects.

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