(warner's NMN report #1)
As noted elsewhere, I switched from 250 mg/d NR to 375 mg/d sublingual NMN (3 x 125 mg, morning/aft/night) a few weeks ago. Around the one month mark, I’ll return and report results for the params I’m tracking, but thought it best to discuss one issue that has arisen before it has a significant effect on results.
That issue is an apparent slight decrease in appetite (likely corresponding to reports by others of increased “energy”). We (wife and I) have a pretty well-defined meal and snack routine, with nutrition (cal.s, macronutrients, minerals, etc.) tracked in spreadsheets, and with very few places where eating is discretionary. The latter would include such things as the odd small piece of chocolate, the amount of peanut butter spread on toast, the exact amount of potato used with the brunch stir-fry, the size of snacks used to offset excess energy expended with lawn projects, etc. I also control weight long-term by adding or removing ½ nutrition bar when weight is below or above a target range (near high end of normal BMI).
So what I’ve noticed lately is that the slightly decreased appetite is starting to affect my discretionary eating, easily reducing calorie intake by as much as 100 cal/d, which, for me, can result in roughly 10 lb* weight loss (fat and muscle) over the long run (other factors remaining unchanged). (Which is also why the plus/minus ½ nutrition bar works to keep weight in a desired range.)
My first response to this was to resist eating any less, so as not to confound the experiment.
But on further reflection, I let my appetite rule (reducing calories a bit) -- the theory being that the NAD boost from NMN will allow me to live at a somewhat lower weight, without upping the risk that elderly folks otherwise have when their weights are below the high-end of normal BMI (i.e., increased frailty, bone loss, reduced disease resistance, etc.).
In other words, I may be able to live safely at a weight more appropriate for a younger adult.
So, as is often the case with diet/supplement schemes, the simplest explanation for any weight loss ends up being a small change in appetite and corresponding calorie intake. Other possibilities include reduction in inflammation, reduction in glycogen stores (as seen w/ reduced carb intake), or a shift from fat to muscle mass (as seen w/ testosterone). However, these would result in a different pattern of fat and muscle loss, which I can detect, given enough data. For example, a shift from fat to muscle mass (for someone remaining in energy balance) would result in the loss of about 3 lb of fat for every 1 lb of muscle gained (because the ratio of maintenance energies for fat and lean mass remains near 3:1 over a wide range of conditions). That’s quite different from losing both fat and muscle mass with calorie restriction, and can be easily distinguished if one is monitoring both weight and fat mass. So, given enough data, perhaps I’ll be able to eventually say something about the nature of any weight loss in response to the NMN.
As might have been expected, this suggests that many of the benefits reported with NMN supplementation (in otherwise normal subjects) are related to weight reduction triggered by reduced appetite. Hopefully, though, there’s more to it than that (else I’d have to increase calorie intake to maintain weight), and I’ll be able to maintain better health at a lower weight (i.e., w/o increased frailty-like risks w/ advancing age).
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* I lose/gain about 0.4 lb of lean mass and 0.6 lb of fat for each lb of wt loss/gain, and with maintenance energies of about 14 cal/lb of lean mass and 4.5 cal/lb of fat at a moderate activity level, so wt loss (x) per 100 calories should be about,
100 cal/d = (x lb)(0.4 lean lb/lb)(14 cal/lb/d) + (x lb)(0.6 fat lb/lb)(4.5 cal/lb/d)
x = 12 lb of combined lean and fat mass
which will vary with the activity level being maintained (weight maintained with less activity, for example, is actually easier to lose with calorie reduction than it is for a more active person, a surprise to many).
Edited by warner, 30 July 2018 - 12:31 PM.
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