This topic is lockedMy personal experience with Nicotinamide Mononucleotide
I was first bitten in 2006 by the anti-aging bug after reading Ray Kurzweil’s Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever. I started up a vitamin supplement regimen including taking Resveratrol, eating healthier, attending the gym more regularly, and trended towards a generally healthier lifestyle. I have tried to keep current on all the latest anti-aging trends.
I still recall reading and bookmarking the Dec. 19, 2013, Harvard Medical School article, A New—and Reversible—Cause of Aging. In the article Dr. David Sinclair explains that, as we age, the levels of Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide (NAD+) in our body drop substantially. He discovered that a natural substance found in our cells, Nicotinamide MonoNucleotide (NMN), when added to cells, increased the level of NAD+ and actually reversed the cell’s biological age.
At that time Sigma- Aldrich had NMN for sale at $1,700 per gram. Correlating from the dose that Dr. Sinclair had fed his mice for 1 week, I would need 7.5 grams per day for 8 months. That worked out to $3M at Sigma Aldrich pricing. A group of 7 of us decided that we would volunteer ourselves to begin a medically supervised program of supplementing with NMN. We scoured labs far and wide for better pricing. We finally received a batch of 99.1% purity NMN in the spring of 2015.
I began taking Nicotinamide Mononucleotide (NMN) on July 15, 2015 and took my last dose of NMN for our first test program on April 7, 2016. I took a 3,400mg of NMN dose twice daily. I took my morning dose at around 7:00am and my evening dose at around 6:30pm. I did not drink any caffeine during the 3-hour period prior to dosing, but I could have caffeine 20 minutes after dosing. I weighed myself each morning as soon as I woke up. I experienced no side effects either physically or medically at any time while taking NMN. I did not change my eating habits or workout routine or frequency.
When I first started taking NMN, I immediately noticed a slight increase in energy. My weight beginning to drop within a couple of days. Within weeks I felt that I was shedding belly fat and noticed a visible flattening of my tummy. At about 3 weeks I noticed that the arthritis in my knuckles had started to clear up. Within the first month I noticed that I was sleeping much more soundly, sleeping about an hour longer and waking up really refreshed and clear-minded. By 3 months all the arthritis had cleared up body-wide including my shoulder, elbows, knees and right hip. When I began I weighed 215.9 lbs. On January 7, 2016, I recorded my lowest weight of 196.8, a loss of 19.1 lbs. At that time, I also noticed an increase in strength, endurance and muscle size. By the end of the program I weighed 208 and I believe that I had lost around 20 lbs. of fat and replaced it with around 12 lbs. of muscle.
About midway through the program, my neighbors were stopping me and commenting that I was looking healthier, younger, more energetic, buff, really good, etc. One of the more interesting comments was that I was moving like a much younger person. After that comment I focused on my walking mechanics. I realized that I was walking with much straighter posture, with shoulders back, chest out and a looser, more fluid and quicker stride, as all my joints were now more flexible and pain free. Physically, I felt like my body did 20 years earlier. I had an interesting conversation with a cosmetic surgeon friend, who said that he could make a 70-year-old look like a 50-year-old, but he couldn’t make them move like a 50-year-old. I now believe that NMN can make one move like a much younger person.
In early January 2015, I went to see my doctor for my annual physical checkup with full bloodwork. When I went back in for results, the first question my doctor asked me was what I had been doing differently. I asked why. She said that my bloodwork had come back much improved from the previous year. She pointed out that my kidney function/efficiency/health had improved dramatically:
BUN dropping from 14 to 7.
Hgb A1C number had improved from being a pre-diabetic 6.0 to non-diabetic 5.6.
Total cholesterol had improved from 167 to 154.
Triglycerides had improved from 147 to 108. My LDL/HDL ratio had improved from 3.54 to 2.3.
Cardiac risk had always been low but had dropped from a 1.92 to a 1.26. (Population average is 3.03 to 5.37).
Testosterone had increased from 247 to 335.
C-reactive protein had dropped from 0.7 to 0.3.
Tumor Necrosis Factor Alpha had dropped from a 1.8 to a 1.4.
Interleukin-6 Plasma had dropped from a 1.2 to less than 0.7.
These last three tests were all measurements of inflammation levels in my body. As increased inflammation is tied to aging and a decrease in general health, I was pleased to see my inflammation levels being reduced. As a chronological 60-year old male, I was pleased to see that my biological age had dropped from 70 to 44.
I finally confessed that I had been taking NMN, an anti-aging dietary supplement discovered by Dr. Sinclair from Harvard Medical school. Her comment was that she sees all sorts of patients that are taking the latest anti-aging pills or potions and they usually comment that they feel great or younger or more energetic and so on. She says that, over all the years, this is the first time that she has seen the claimed benefits/results show up in the bloodwork. Her other comment was that the improvements didn’t just exhibit in one part of the body but appeared to be system-wide. Her final comment was that it appeared that I had the bloodwork of a much younger and healthier person. I definitely felt like I had a much younger and healthier body.
After we completed an 8-month NMN program, our medical supervisor wanted us to quit for a one-year period to monitor us for any adverse reactions. The first thing that I can report is that it was not physically addicting and there were no withdrawal issues at all. About a month later I noticed that I was beginning to feel my age again. My joints were stiffening, and a tinge of arthritis was back. But even after the full year of no NMN, my arthritis had not returned to its pre-NMN level. My next annual physical, in August 2017, showed that the improvement to my kidneys was still holding. Results were:
My cholesterol numbers stayed at the improved levels.
Cardiac risk returned to my baseline number.
Testosterone continued to increase.
C-reactive protein, Tumor Necrosis factor and Interleukin-6 numbers had all returned to my baseline number.
And my biological age which had started at 70, dropped to 44 had gone up to 76.
HgbA1c number had gone back to 6.4, slightly higher than my original baseline.
My doctor wanted to immediately put me on Metformin to control my HgbA1c. I told her that I was planning on starting up my NMN again and asked if we could test again in 3 months to see if the NMN controlled my HgbA1c. She reluctantly agreed.
In summary, some of the benefits appeared to be lasting, while others went away after I stopped taking NMN. Overall, I felt my initial experience with NMN was very positive with no downside risk. Therefore, I started up again on Sept. 22, 2017, but experimented with a reduced NMN regimen of 1,600 mg twice per day.
On Dec. 7, after almost 3 months on the 1,600mg twice-per-day NMN regimen, I went in for blood tests. My doctor was very pleased to see that my previous HgbA1c reading of 6.4 had reduced to a 5.8. She commented that if my HgbA1c came back up to 6.0, or if I quit taking NMN, then I would have to get started on Metformin immediately.
In addition to the good HgbA1c news, every arthritic joint was once again pain-free. My biological age dropped from 76 to 45. My inflammation markers all improved:
C-reactive protein dropped from 0.9 to 0.49.
Tumor Necrosis Factor Alpha dropped from 1.9 to 1.2
Interleukin-6 plasma dropped from 1.2 to 0.9.
As a result of my most recent set of blood tests coming in almost identical to those I had after my initial full dose NMN regimen, I decided to scale the dose back even further. In late December, I began a 750 mg twice per day dosage and will be going in at the end of April for my next full blood panel. Physically, I still feel the same benefits as I did on the higher dose, but only the blood work will truly tell me what is going on inside.
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