Could NAD IVs Be Bad For You (& How To Boost NAD Naturally), With Dr. Nichola Conlon

**Ben Greenfield** (0:00)
My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Boundless Life Podcast. I think a lot of people don't really realize what an NAD supplement actually is.

**Dr. Nichola Conlon** (0:11)
An important point to make is that NAD is naturally found in every single cell in our body anyway. There's two main things to remember when it comes to NAD that it's important for. The first thing is energy production in our mitochondria. And the second thing is for cellular maintenance and repair. That's general rule of thumb. High NAD, lots of energy, lots of repair. Low NAD, less energy, less repair. That's like how you can remember it in the most simplest terms.

**Ben Greenfield** (0:37)
Welcome to the Boundless Life with me, your host, Ben Greenfield. I'm a personal trainer, exercise physiologist and nutritionist, and I'm passionate about helping you discover unparalleled levels of health, fitness, longevity and beyond.
My guest on today's podcast is Dr. Nichola Conlon. She's a molecular biologist who specializes in the study of cellular aging. She had a career in drug development, and then she founded a company called Nuchido, which specializes in anti-aging, rejuvenation, and health span by boosting NAD levels. So, all the show notes are gonna be at bengreenfieldlife.com/nadplus, like P-L-U-S, bengreenfieldlife.com/nadplus. Here we go. All right, Nichola, so I took NAD today, and like a lot of people, I thought I was taking NAD, but if you look at the label, it doesn't actually say NAD. It's got like a lot of these products, we'll say like nicotinamide, I think nicotinamide, or is it niacinamide?

**Dr. Nichola Conlon** (1:51)
The niacinamide and nicotinamide are actually structurally the same thing.

**Ben Greenfield** (1:55)
All right, good, so I'm not confused that. Some people say one thing and some say another.
I think a lot of people don't really realize like what an NAD supplement actually is or how they're designed. And you're kind of the goat with this stuff. You're a molecular biologist who studies aging and knows a lot about NAD. So I eventually want to get into this idea of why a supplement says like NAD a lot of times on the front of it. But then if you look at the label, that's actually not listed as an ingredient. But before we even get into that, I would love for you to describe why people might want to think about NAD in the first place in terms of what it does in the body, like how the body produces it and recycles it. Cause I know there's some pretty complex pathways, but of anybody, you could probably explain them.

**Dr. Nichola Conlon** (2:51)
Yeah, I mean, that's a great question. First of all, what you said about people having their NAD and then looking and going, but this has got no NAD in it. Like, where's my NAD and getting really confused. That's probably one of the most common questions that I get. But the other thing is, you know, about what NAD actually is. So an important point to make is that NAD is naturally found in every single cell in our body anyway. So this is not something that we're trying to artificially add or boost or anything like that. It's something that's naturally in our cells. And it's involved in many different reactions in our body, over around 300 different reactions. But what I always say to people is, there's two main things to remember when it comes to NAD that it's important for. The first thing is energy production in our mitochondria. So NAD is part of the Krebs cycle that literally helps to take the energy out of our food and turn it into ATP, which is the energy currency of our cell. So without NAD, we wouldn't be able to perform that critical act of respiration in our bodies.
And the second thing that it's really important for is for cellular maintenance and repair. So aside from its role in energy production, NAD also acts as a fuel for a lot of the repair enzymes and pathways in our cells.
So constantly our cells are getting damaged. They're having to make sure that this damage is repaired. And a lot of the different processes that repair this damage actually rely on NAD as a fuel to power this repair. So that's general rule of thumb, high NAD, lots of energy, lots of repair, low NAD, less energy, less repair. That's like how you can remember it in the most simplest terms.

**Ben Greenfield** (4:37)
Okay. So if NAD is part of the Krebs cycle, and by the way, as a part of the Krebs cycle, would you call it an enzyme, a cofactor, a protein? What's the proper terminology?