Forget Ozempic — an under-the-radar antiaging supplement is the next hot commodity in Hollywood

NAD supplements promise to replenish your body’s natural supply of a critical molecule called nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD). It’s one major component of healthy bodies. We create it ourselves.

“NAD coenzymes are the central catalysts of all living things,” Charles Brenner, a biochemist who studies NAD, told Business Insider. “They underlie the conversion of protein, fat, and carbohydrate into energy. They underlie the conversion of everything that we eat into everything that we do and everything that we are. They are required for our cells to generate energy.”

NAD is life-and-death important. Without the proper vitamins and minerals for creating it, people develop diarrhea, brain issues, red, scaly skin, and eventually waste away and die. With high levels of it, you may feel just a little sharper, more well-rested, and energetic. In short: Young.

As we age, our bodies become less efficient at doing many things, including producing NAD. So while your average 20-year-old can generate more than enough NAD from food and activity, most 60- or 70-year-olds might benefit from a booster. Whether it does anything for health influencers, athletes, and wellness buffs in their 30s, 40s, and 50s remains to be seen.

The problem is, many NAD-boosting supplements don’t work. You need to know a lot about your chosen product — and yourself — to understand how successful any “boost” will turn out.

There are several different ways to boost NAD — but some of the most popular ones don’t work

But if you want to boost your NAD levels, there’s no point in taking NAD as a supplement. The NAD molecule is just too big to be taken up by our cells.

“It’s pretty useless,” Dr. Sabine Donnai, a physician who has been testing out formulations of NAD boosters for her patients at the posh Viavi longevity clinic in London, told Business Insider. She’s discovered, through blood tests, that NAD supplements and IVs don’t work much at all.

Independent experts like Dr. Shin-ichiro Imai, a professor of developmental biology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis who’s been studying NAD for decades, agree with Donnai.

“Unfortunately, NAD itself is not as effective as other compounds,” he said. “It’s big and it cannot actually easily go into cells. And also, if you take NAD orally, your gut bacteria basically consume NAD completely.”

That’s why most scientists say it’s far more effective to take NAD precursors — the stuff that our bodies use to create NAD. That includes nicotinamide riboside, nicotinamide mononeucleotide, nicotinic acid, and niacinamide. (For those in the know, that’s NR, NMN, niacin, and NAM.)

How to boost your NAD without an IV drip

NAD+ is booming in popularity.

In London, Sonnai’s longevity clinic serves wealthy clients who want to maximize their longevity or improve ailing health. She estimates that about 30% of them may be recommended some kind of NAD-boosting regimen at some point.

While she believes it can help rejuvenate patients with aging-related diseases or other illnesses, she worries people who don’t actually need any supplemental NAD could overdo it. We don’t know what kinds of problems that might cause.

“I would personally never advise anybody to take anything at all until you’ve measured whether you actually need it,” she said.

Dr. Shalender Bhasin, who is conducting some of the biggest ongoing clinical trials of NAD boosters at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, says research so far has only tested compounds like NMN on a few hundred people.

“I would say they’re relatively safe at the doses that have been used, and they can raise energy levels in the blood and some tissues, but not in all tissues,” he said. One that hasn’t been reliably boosted yet in humans is muscle.

Patients with diabetes, kidney disease, and Alzheimer’s are just some of the populations he thinks might be able to benefit from NAD boosting, some day.

“We are really early in the first inning,” he said.