I have a secret.
I recently wrote about Nicotinamide Riboside.
But I omitted the fact that I have been taking Niagen for over a month now.
It would have been irresponsible to mention it in that article. When major research scientists find a substance that is celebrated as the fountain of youth, it is easy to be skeptical. But it is just as easy to get overly excited.
It’s easy to confuse the signals from your body with the signals from your hopes.
Given the strange and confusing results I had, it was important I didn’t share them in the previous article.
I wanted you to form your own opinion, given the facts available about Nicotinamide Riboside, without being influenced by my mind-blowing experience. Perhaps even try NR yourself.
If you haven’t read the previous article I wrote about Nicotinamide Riboside, check it out. Because there are spoilers ahead.
About Niagen
Nicotinamide Riboside (NR or Niagen) is thought to be the most effective NAD+ precursor to support mitochondrial health. Niagen is found in some foods, but in small amounts. A publicly traded company called ChromaDex (CDCX) has patented a hugely innovative process for the bulk manufacture of Nicotinamide Riboside. They manufacture NR in its raw form under the trademark, Niagen.
Supplement companies are able to purchase the raw material from ChromaDex and license the name, Niagen, so they can encapsulate the raw material and market it as they wish.
What differentiates retail versions of Niagen is how they’re handled at the time of encapsulation.
Some companies add fillers and preservatives. Some companies don’t. Some use vegetarian capsules. Some don’t. Some use third party testing for purity and some don’t.
Live Cell Research Niagen
I started using Live Cell Research Niagen because I purchased from the company before.
Live Cell Research also makes a nootropic stack called Cerastim that I take every day and am very happy with. Their Niagen has no additives or stabilizers such as magnesium stearate, an animal bi-product. Their capsules are vegetable cellulose.
Live Cell Research also uses independent labs for third-party testing.
The final factor of course is price. Live Cell Research offers a deal on three bottles that comes out to $39 a bottle. There’s a thread on longecity.org putting together a group buy, but the price is only a few bucks cheaper, requires a purchase of six bottles and is taking a while for the deal to come together.
So I went with the the Live Cell Research deal.
My Experience with Niagen
I started taking Live Cell Research Niagen just over a month ago. I was taking 250mg upon waking, as directed.
For the first four days, I didn’t notice anything.
So I decided to up the dose. I went from 250mg in the morning to 250mg in the morning and 250mg before bed. 500mg a day total.
That first night, I had a little trouble falling asleep, but nothing major.
The next day, I woke up naturally. It was 6am. That’s weird, I thought. I had only gotten 6 hours of sleep but I felt fine. I jumped out of bed and into the shower. I’m not a morning person but I occasionally wake up early feeling good, so didn’t think twice about it.
The following day, the same thing happened.
That evening I fell asleep just fine. And the next morning, I woke up early feeling great again.
I sat in bed thinking about how nice it felt to wake up early feeling refreshed. I had vivid memories of a strange dream involving a hotel with endless corridors and it was like I went from having this intense dream to drifting out of it and into my bed. It was like the dream was just a memory, not a jarring ordeal struggling to pull me back in. It was like at the end of Inception when Leo drifts out of the dreamscape and is peacefully sitting in first class.
It reminded me of something else other than Inception. It reminded me of what it was like to wake up as a small child. To wake up naturally and full of energy. To jump out of bed and dart to the den to watch cartoons.
That’s when I began to wonder if Niagen was working. I was extremely skeptical. I had no reason to believe this was the type of supplement that you either feel is working or you don’t. As opposed to caffeine or bacopa extract. And if you did read my previous article about Nicotinamide Riboside, you know I was initially skeptical about human dosing. (The reason I upped the dose to 500mg/day in the first place.)
So I decided to call my friend, Kevin, a pretty serious weightlifting enthusiast, who I knew was also taking Niagen. I didn’t want to bias him with my experience so I casually asked him what he thought of Niagen. He said that his recovery time from the gym had improved. I asked him if he noticed anything else. He said that he was needing less sleep and having vivid dreams that were easy to remember. Then I asked him how long it took for that to start happening. He said it started immediately after he upped his dose to 500mg.
Wow.
That freaked me out.
I continued taking Niagen for a week and experienced those amazing mornings every single day.
So then I decided it was time to test this.
I decided to go off of Niagen for a week.
By the next morning, the effect was gone. I woke up groggy and foggy, feeling like I was still half dreaming. After a week of bliss, this felt horrible.
I continued this way for the week and within a few days, I just got used to waking up groggy as the status quo.
After a week, I started taking Niagen again. By the next day, it was back to waking up rested like a baby. I’ve been taking Niagen ever since and I highly recommend it.
You can learn more about Niagen on the Live Cell Research Website.