I've been supplementing with both NMN and NR ... both work in ways that niacin won't.
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For the first time, a researcher at the University of Delaware College of Health Sciences in collaboration with a team at the National Institute on Aging, a division of the National Institutes of Health, has determined that the naturally occurring dietary supplement, nicotinamide riboside (NR), can enter the brain.
The discovery was made by Christopher Martens, assistant professor of kinesiology and applied physiology and director of the Delaware Center for Cognitive Aging Research, and Dr. Dimitrios Kapogiannis, a senior investigator at the National Institute on Aging. The finding is significant because it supports the idea that NR, upon reaching the brain, can alter the metabolism of relevant biological pathways involved in neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s. Their work, supported by an NIH grant, and in part by the Intramural Research Program of the NIH National Institute on Aging, was recently published in the journal Aging Cell.
Upon consumption, NR is readily converted into nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+), which is critical to cellular repair and the repair of damaged DNA.
“NAD+ is gradually lost as we get older or develop chronic diseases. Loss of NAD+ is linked to obesity and other negative lifestyle habits like smoking,” Martens said. “Because more NAD+ is needed to counteract those negative consequences, it’s more likely to be depleted in the face of negative lifestyle habits.”
Martens has been studying the compound since he was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Colorado Boulder. In an initial study, he found that levels of NAD+ could be boosted in the blood if people ingested NR, but it was not clear if it could reach other tissues in the body.
“We had some preliminary signs of efficacy, including lower blood pressure in people who had high blood pressure to begin with,” he said. “But until now, it was unknown whether NR reached targeted organs like the brain to have a real therapeutic effect.” |
