You might not have heard of NR (nicotinamide riboside) – but this is the #1 nutrient you want to know if your goal is healthy ageing.

Age often leads to disease, but that doesn’t have to be the case. The goal is to improve our healthspan as well as our lifespan! That means reversing or at least slowing down the process of ageing. This might sound like science fiction, but the cutting-edge research suggests it might be more achievable than we think.

One of the compounds that is being closely examined right now is NAD+. Let’s take a look at what NAD is all about, why we want to boost it and how NR is the key supernutrient to achieve that.

What is NAD+?

NAD+ stands for nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide. This compound is found in every single cell of your body. If you run out of it, you die! It is a critical co-enzyme for living because it helps to process nutrients and form ATP – energy for our cells.

From a longevity point of view, it also boosts the three major anti-ageing pathways:

• Sirtuins

• mTOR

• AMPK

(stay tuned for more info about these pathways and why they are so amazing!)

What does this mean? Well the research shows that when these pathways are activated by NAD, the organism becomes healthier, disease-resistant and they live longer. The opposite also occurs if those pathways are turned down – you become sicker, more prone to disease, and your lifespan shortens.

NAD+ and ageing

Once you’re over 40, NAD levels decline by up to 50%, and continue to drop as you age further. The interesting thing is many of the factors that deplete levels are actually lifestyle related! For example, NAD drops with:

• Intense exercise

• Inflammation (hello, inflammaging!)

• Immune stress

• Sleep disruption

• Overeating

• Alcohol consumption

• An imbalanced diet

This leads to symptoms including chronic fatigue, decreased brain function, obesity and accelerated ageing. So we definitely want to ensure we maintain our levels, particularly once you hit your 40s!

How to support your NAD levels naturally

The first step is to address any lifestyle factors that could accelerate depletion. That includes:

• Improving your sleep

• Eating a wholefood-rich diet

• Reducing highly processed foods and added sugars

• Moderating alcohol intake

• Maintaining a moderate intensity exercise regime

• Addressing underlying causes of inflammation

You can also support NAD levels by consuming specific foods that are rich in B vitamins. Unfortunately, you can’t get enough NAD through the diet alone to maintain your levels once they start to decline.

In previous generations, we would have higher levels as those lifestyle factors wouldn’t be an issue, so we’d stay healthier for longer. But even the healthiest person these days can’t completely avoid things like inflammation, stress and disrupted sleep.

That means that supplementation is needed to address this shortfall.

NAD+ SUPPLEMENTS

NAD supplements and infusions are becoming more popular – and they can be incredibly pricey. But NAD is too big to get through the cell membranes. The way we can get around that is by using a precursor that can enter the cells and convert into NAD.

And that’s where we start to look at NR.

NR can increase NAD levels by 40-50%, and it has published human trials that show benefits. It also has an abundance of safety data to back it up. Stay tuned for future articles where I’ll explore these findings in more detail – but needless to say, it has incredible benefits when it comes to anti-ageing!

That’s why I’ve formulated my own innovative supplement designed to support healthy ageing – and I’m so excited to share it with you! Learn more about Energy Glow NR here.

Susie Garden

I help women feeling stressed, flat and older than they’d like regain their youthful energy and glow using a proven method so their natural beauty and confidence shines through.