Over 30? How to Stop Your NAD Degrading Quickly

Over 30? How to Stop Your NAD Degrading Quickly By 50, we have half the NAD we did at 20; so what?

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My Longevity Experiment
August 05, 2024

Over 30? How to Stop Your NAD Degrading Quickly

How to boost NAD. how to stop CD38

By 50, we have half the NAD we did at 20; so what?

NAD or Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide has many functions, but has two major roles in the human body, they are:

  • It helps turn nutrients, essentially our food, into the type of fuel that our body can actually use, and

  • It also works as an aide molecule for proteins that regulate other vital cellular functions

NAD Decreases with Age

Unfortunately, our NAD levels degrease with age. NAD is a vital molecule that is found in every cell of our body, so how can we keep its levels high? This simple graph shows average NAD levels on the left and age along the bottom.

The blue shows that as we age our NAD levels drop, by the age of 50 we have half the levels that we did in our youth.

These three things will boost flagging NAD levels.

  • Exercise, raises NAD levels, some say that vigorous exercise such as HIIT is the best

  • NAD Boosters, such as NR and NMN

  • Diet, calorie restriction and fasting

NAD and Food

But what things in our diet can help up NAD levels? Foods that contain apigenin and quercetin have been shown to inhibit CD38 activity. CD38 is an NAD ace which is a protein that degrades or reduces our NAD.

Foods High in Apigenin

Some food does contain Apigenin, here is a list of the most common foods, although there are more; it is nice to see beer and red wine on the list and it has been said that dried forms allow better bioavailability:

  • Red wine

  • Beer

  • Parsley

  • Chamomile

  • Celery

  • Artichokes

  • Oregano

Foods High in Quercetin

Here are some of the foods that contain Quercetin, although Quercetin raises NAD slightly less that apigenin, these foods seem to the type that would be easy to introduce into your diet:

  • Apples

  • Honey

  • Raspberries

  • Red onions

  • Red grapes

  • Cherries

  • Citrus fruit

  • Leafy green vegetables

NAD Boosting Supplements

What dietary supplements can we use to keep out NAD levels high as we age?

This can be a two-pronged attack, increase NAD and reduce CD38, but how?

  • NAD Boosters such as NR or NMN, will up your NAD levels

  • CD38 inhibitors work the opposite way by blocking CD38, so our NAD levels should not be depleted as much

Quercetin, the most common dose is 500 mg per day, but some people take up to 1,000 mg per day. Quercetin supplements may also include other substances, such as vitamin C, which may help the body absorb the quercetin more effectively.

Apigenin, for anxiolytic effects, doses in the range of 3-10 milligrams per 1 kilogram of bodyweight are effective without sedation (the act of calming by use of a sedative). Higher doses induce sedation in addition to reductions in anxiety.

An analogy I like to use is that NAD is your right foot on the accelerator/gas pedal and CD38 is your left foot is on the brake. When we are young, we are only pressing with the right foot and getting lots of NAD and energy. But as we age not only do we take our right foot of the gas, but we start to press with our left CD38 foot.

By taking an NAD Booster like NMN and a CD38 inhibitor that contains Quercetin and/or Apigenin, we can go back to using plenty of gas and less brake.

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