Nicotinamide Riboside (NR)

What is Nicotinamide Riboside (NR)?

Nicotinamide Riboside (NR) is a cellular nutrient designed to permeate the cell wall with ease and nourish the cell efficiently for boosting levels of NAD+, which is linked to potential health benefits regarding aging, brain health, heart disease risk and more. To work synergistically with NMN, they are both clinically proven effective precursor substance to promote the biosynthesis and production of NAD+, meaning that they serve as the “building block” to make the NAD+ molecule to delay aging.

Graph: The blue line shows a linear regression of the change in NAD+ given the change in NR, and the shaded area shows the 95% confidence interval of that regression.

2016 – The Effectiveness of Oral Administration of NR¹

A randomized, double-blind, three-arm crossover pharmacokinetic study in human subjects showed that NR raises NAD+ by as much as 2.7-fold in human blood with a single oral dose of 1000 mg.

2017 – Clinically Proven Effective Precursor of NAD+ Production²

Researchers at the University of Washington have completed a clinical trial with 140 participants showing that orally administered NR gives a dose dependent increase in NAD+ from 250-1000 mg/day plateauing at a 2-fold increase in NAD+ at day nine.

How does Nicotinamide Riboside (NR) work?

Nicotinamide Riboside (NR) is more effective to increase NAD+ levels in your body than supplementing with straight NAD+ itself as NR can enter the cell directly without requiring a breakdown and therefore less nutrients are loss in the transferal process.

What are the benefits of taking Nicotinamide Riboside (NR)?

2017 – Positive Effects on Vascular Functions and More³

Researchers have reported positive effects of NR on vascular endothelial function in healthy middle-aged and older adults, with multiple other studies are now underway assessing the effects of NR on muscle mitochondrial function, cognition, immune function, kidney function, traumatic brain injury, brown fat activity, lipid accumulation, energy metabolism, cardiovascular risk, body composition, and acetylcarnitine levels to come.

2018-2019 – Benefits of NR on Various Aspects

A paper on Cell Metabolism co-written by Prof. Shin-ichiro Imai of Washington University School of Medicine outlined some of these benefits, including modest increases in life span, as well as slowed Alzheimer’s progress, protection against diabetes complications, improved muscle endurance, and improved heart, liver and kidney health.

Nicotinamide Riboside (NR) supports:

Increase the NAD+ level in the body
Stimulate long-lived proteins SIRT1 and SIRT3 that elongate lifespan of important cells
Balance out cell fermentation and apoptosis
Repair damaged DNA
Generate more cell energy
Promote hydrogen transfer and ATP synthesis in boosting key metabolic processes
Resist inflammatory stress and mitochondrial activities
Citation 
  1. Trammell, S. A., Schmidt, M. S., Weidemann, B. J., Redpath, P., Jaksch, F., Dellinger, R. W., Li, Z., Abel, E. D., Migaud, M. E., & Brenner, C. (2016). Nicotinamide riboside is uniquely and orally bioavailable in mice and humans. Nature communications, 7, 12948. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms12948
  2. Airhart, S. E., Shireman, L. M., Risler, L. J., Anderson, G. D., Nagana Gowda, G. A., Raftery, D., Tian, R., Shen, D. D., & O’Brien, K. D. (2017). An open-label, non-randomized study of the pharmacokinetics of the nutritional supplement nicotinamide riboside (NR) and its effects on blood NAD+ levels in healthy volunteers. PloS one, 12(12), e0186459. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186459
  3. Heilbronn L. K. (2017). Clinical Trials Corner. Nutrition and healthy aging, 4(2), 193–194. https://doi.org/10.3233/NHA-170001