Two coffees before you feel like yourself, and it did not used to be like that. Jet lag costs you a week now. You have done the reading on NAD and you bought a bottle. Check whether it contains the molecule itself or a precursor, and whether the two cofactors that pathway needs are in there at all.
NAD+ is the molecule your cells spend to make energy, and the amount you carry falls with age. That is the whole reason this aisle exists. But read the first line of the panel and most bottles do not sell NAD+ at all. They sell a precursor, a raw material your body has to convert first, usually nicotinamide riboside or NMN. Of the 31 labels we read, 28 print a precursor. Three print NAD+ itself.
The rest of the panel is what precursor-only bottles leave out. Sirtuins, the enzymes that spend NAD+, are the ones trans-resveratrol has been studied on. CD38, the enzyme that consumes it, is the one flavonoids such as quercetin have been studied against. 21 of the 31 print no polyphenol at all. Nine pair a precursor with a stilbene. Only four print a quercetin dose, and one of those four reaches 250 mg.
Then there is what the panel hides. 7 of the 31 park part of the formula inside a proprietary blend, and one of the best known bottles prints four longevity compounds on the front while the panel delivers 10 mg, 5 mg and less than half a milligram of them. Salt weight is the other trick: a precursor listed as a hydrogen malate carries the weight of the salt inside the number you read. One formula of 31 printed all three actives in plain numbers.
Took an NAD+ supplement for a year and felt nothing? Read the first line of the panel.Most of the disappointment here starts before the dose. If the panel says nicotinamide riboside or NMN, you bought a raw material and a conversion step. If there is no polyphenol printed under it, the cofactors are missing too. Read the first three lines, then read the milligrams. If those numbers sit inside a blend, that is your answer.