Here’s what Dr. Charles Brenner, who discovered Nicotinamide Riboside “NR” (FAQs) (Reviews) as an NAD boosting vitamin said on a 2021 podcast:

At the 5 minute mark of the video podcast below:

“I’m cautious.

I try not to get ahead of my skis.

Because I don’t think that aging is one thing.

NAD isn’t even one thing — it’s four things.

So I don’t like to make outlandish claims that we we can’t prove.

What we see in the laboratory is we see very powerful effects of NR
in animal models, in mouse and rat models.

So, we see protection against heart failure.

We see protection against neurodegeneration.

We see protection against alcoholic conditions in animals.

We see better exercise functions.

So forth and so on.

And that is what’s called hypothesis generating.

So then we can go into human beings.

And in human beings we’ve seen anti-inflammatory effects of NR.

We’ve seen NR in a combination of supplements accelerate time to recovery from COVID…

HOST:

That’s the thing that I find so…

A lot of times — and I know because you especially are very very anti making claims of it being a magic pill or you don’t like when someone says it’s anti-aging or aging in reverse because it’s not…

DR. Brenner:

It’s not evidence-based.

HOST:

I mean the thing is that’s how it’s being sold.

That’s how people understand it.

So, that’s like simple.

It’s like the simplest way to understand it.

DR. Brenner:

I would say that legitimately — protection of NR in different tissues protects cellular and tissue function, enhances resiliency, repair.

…Now with age and metabolic challenges — and you don’t have to be really old — you could be a 22 year old football player and feel like NR supplementation gives you an edge and allows you to repair after all of this contact, and protects against the effects of the sport…

When you’re eating food, your food is being broken down into these NAD precursors.

You’re using those precursors to rebuild the NAD supply.

Supplementing with the vitamin precursors basically enhances that process.

But it’s true that there’s NR in milk.

But really the source of NAD precursors in food is really NAD.

So it’s a cycle of life.

Living things have NAD in it.

They also have macronutrients, protein, fat, and carbohydrate.

They have micronutrients.

Everything gets broken down.

Everything gets rebuilt.

The rebuilding process is metabolism

NAD is critical for metabolism.

And NAD gets challenged by metabolic stress.

So the use case for NAD precursor vitamins is that it allows you to keep your NAD stores full, resistant to these challenges — which even include things like coronavirus infection.

We’ve shown in the laboratory that that attacks the NAD system”

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