0:00 Let's talk about some of the key roles in the body of nascin. So one of the biggest roles is this right here energy production and energy in the body is called ATP adenosine triphosphate. I'll show you some of the biochemistry of that in a moment. There are also some mechanisms of nascin um with different types of proteins where where it protects and repairs the DNA. So the as the DNA is damaged which happens during regular maintenance and metabolism nasin one of its key roles is to not only shield it but to help repair it. Skin health. We know that niacin helps us um tolerate UV exposure. If you're low in vitamin B3,
0:46 you're going to sunburn more readily. You're going to sunburn easier. So it it plays a role in skin health. And there are a number of of really good studies on taking niainamide, a form of vitamin B3, uh reducing skin cancer recurrence and also uh potentially reducing skin cancer altogether. We know it plays a role in immune cell function, how the immune cells work. We know it plays a major role in digestive health. As we said before, the digestive tract becomes inflamed and deteriorates without adequate nosin. Cholesterol metabolism. Now, I'm not a big fan of of of many doctors like look at cholesterol and panic and if they call, you know, if your cholesterol is above 200, they're going to call it high and try to medicate you. I don't believe in all of that. You can check out my video on the
1:32 on the cholesterol myth. But what regardless of of my feelings about cholesterol and health, nascin is one of the few nutrients that can increase what doctors call your HDL. It can lower your what doctors call LDL or your bad cholesterol which again I'm not I don't subscribe to these thoughts but I'm sharing knowledge with you and it can also reduce your triglycerides. So nascin has the ability to do all three. We know that it plays a role in hormone signaling. There are a number of of aspects to this but one of it is through um something called second messenger regulation uh where nasin helps to control calcium influx uh where hormones are docking to cells
2:18 and trying to communicate. We also know that it devels with development and protects the nervous system. There are a number of antioxidant functions or anti-inflammatory functions around nerve tissue that nascin plays a role in. So as you think about what its functions are, that gives you kind of a better context for why people develop the symptoms that they do develop. And this is just a general image as you can kind of see here that NAD this is nascin when you hear that word all and all these people online right now are hawking NAD products as if it's the the next coming of Jesus uh from an anti-aging p perspective. And I and I would argue this. Um,
3:03 well, one, don't listen to them because most of them are just trying to sell you a bottle of pills without context. But there's no such thing as anti-aging. Anti-aging is a marketing ploy, a marketing term that's designed to get people to buy stuff. I don't like the name anti-aging. I like the term graceful aging because you cannot stop aging. the the very um the very thing that ages us is the very thing we require to be alive is called the oxygen paradox. And oxygen we need it to survive. We can't make energy without it. And but as we use it, it basically it rusts us
3:49 internally. So it creates a metabolic rust, if you will, that causes the aging process to occur. Now, you can't stop that. That isn't not going to happen. But what you can do is you can appropriately minimize it because a lot of people have accelerated aging because they have bad choices, bad behaviors, like smoking, for example. If you ever look at a cigarette smoker, they look older than the average person who's the same age who doesn't smoke. And it's because uh of of free radical damage. So as they get more and more free radicals, they're burning through more nutrients uh and they're causing an accelerated oxidation in their body that is aging them more quickly. And so they are not aging uh gracefully, they are aging rapidly. We see the same thing in people
4:35 with chemotherapy, people on multiple medications. We see the same thing in people with ultrarocessed food, high processed food diets where they have an accelerated aging process. So, we're not going to we're not going to beat age, but we can appropriately age and understand that niacin or vitamin B3 or NAD plays a role in that, a very very important critical role and it affects all of your tissues. As you can see here, you have NAD present in all of these organs for a purpose, right? So, every tissue in your body requires NAD. We can get NAD elevation. It's like we build NAD. Our body can recycle NAD better when we exercise. So those of you not exercising, what happens to your NAD
5:21 concentrations? They will drop. Um, we can do it through diet. There are many foods, we'll talk about those foods shortly, that contain vitamin B3 and vitamin B, part of the vitamin B3 family of nutrients. And then you can supplement with NAD boosters. But ultimately, um, if you're supplementing with a bunch of NAD boosters and you're not exercising and your diet sucks, then this is not going to save you, right? And I we'll talk specifically about when you should consider supplementation, but to just go take supplement supplements and then neglect your body, sorry folks, that's not going to work. You can't, it's not a passive, your body, your health is not passive. You have to take an active role in it. Okay?
6:07 um wanted to talk a little bit about this diagram here. So these are some more of just think about where where NAD comes from. NAD the NAD economy or the vitamin B3 economy. So one way we get it is through tryptophan. It's what's called the denovo pathway. It's where we can turn tryptophan into NAD. Um and that that process is is equivalent of s at 60 to one. So for every 60 milligrams of of uh of tryptophan we can get one niacin or one NAD. Then we can take nicotinic acid which is which is in our food by the way. This is you know if you've ever taken a a vitamin B3 and you've had a flush like if you ever took a vitamin B3 supplement
6:52 you experience what's called the nascin flush. um that's usually at higher doses 100 milligrams plus but you can get nicotinic acid also from fruit but nasin and nicotinic acid are are synonymous they're the same thing and so our bodies can convert nicotinic acid into NAD and then there's the the um NAD boosters nicotenomide um and then nicotenomide ribboucleotide and then NMN N um which are these two are commonly being sold right now as as major NAD boosters. These two are supplements. Now you can buy nicotenomide in the form of a supplement too. It's sometimes called niainomide. It's the same thing. But our body can take these three and convert
7:39 them into NAD. So then we have this what we call a systemic pool. So through all these channels we build up um our NAD pool. Now just so you know tryptophan represents only about 3% of this. It's not a large quantity of this but from the systemic pool we use the NAD to do different things. And one of the things we do are what are called redux reactions. This is all about how we break our food down and turn it into energy. It's a very very nasin dependent process and we'll talk a little bit more and I'll show you some of the chemistry behind that. Then there's the effect on what are called certuins which basically these are compounds that regulate DNA repair and regulate the genesis of mitochondria and the healthy function of
8:25 mitochondria. And then we have what are called PARPS and CD38s and these are DNA repairing and immune signaling molecules that are NAD dependent. And so what happens is you if you want to maintain this nice pool to to process through these functions basically you get good DNA good healing good repair good mitochondrial function and good energy production then you have to maintain enough NAD through dietary consumption but also through lifestyle and behavioral choices. So you see to maintain the economy supplementation strategies target this pathway to outpace age related consumption. We're going to talk about the association between how you age uh and n and uh NAD deterioration.
9:11 Now if we look at NAD um this this was a a research study or rather review um NAD acts as an important co-actor and substrate for multiple biological processes as I've just shown you energy production DNA repair gene expression calcium dependent secondary messenger systems and immuno regulatory um component. Most studies indicate that NAD precursors like NAM, NR, and nicotenomide, monucleotide, and to a lesser extent, NAD and NADH had a favorable outcome on several age related disorders associated with the accumulation of chronic oxidative stress inflammation impaired mitochondrial function. Here's the
9:57 takeaway here. We can use these supplements to help support our body to regulate this inflammation. But what we can do that's I would argue is much more effective effective than supplementation is we could identify what we're doing that's driving our inflammation. Now if you've watched my show for any great length of time I talk about this uh frequently. There are four triggers of inflammation in people's choices and behaviors. One is what you eat. It's your food. Number two, it's your exposure to chemicals, environmental chemicals, good and bad. If you're exposed to a ton of pesticides
10:42 through eating junk food, um that's not good. Your body is going to burn through more NAD. It's going to burn through more nasin to try to protect you from what you're doing, from your choice in your diet. Number three, microbial factors. um microbial factors have to do with bacteria, virus, yeast, uh and fungus. You know, generally your microbiome plays a major role in how your body reacts and responds. And so there's a lot of things that affect people's microbes, if you're exposed to pesticides, if you're drinking chlorinated water, if you're take if you have a history of taking antibiotics, if you're on drugs that damage the GI tract, like these are all things that can influence and affect microbial balance in your body. And then the fourth would be nutritional deficiency.
11:31 So in this case, we're talking about nutritional deficiency in niacin or vitamin B3, which is an essential nutrient. You can have other nutritional deficiencies that that can accelerate inflammation or reduce the capacity to heal. But if you're being poisoned by these top three things, you can take all the NAD boosters you want, it's not going to do much to help you overcome the fact that you're driving inflammation up with your choices. So, if you really want the best of both worlds is get your choices under control, understand what they need to be so that you're um you're setting yourself up for success. Now, I want to show you this diagram on the biochemistry for those of you that like the biochemistry. I know a lot of doctors watch the show to learn and so
12:16 for those of you maybe that are treating patients, doctors, nurses, etc. It's just a you probably remember if you go back and open your biochemistry textbook, this is just a little crash course, but glycolysis, this is the breakdown of glucose that occurs in the cell. So you can see here glucose and there are several different biochemical pathways, but this one right here in the middle is NAD dependent. That's vitamin B3. It's NAD dependent. You can't do this conversion without vitamin B3. Um, and so part of what happens is this vitamin B3, this oxidized version of vitamin B3 pulls a hydrogen out. That's what this H is. It's a hydrogen that it contains a couple of electrons. This is ultimately this is how we're going to make energy is we're we're basically as we strip our food down, as we strip that
13:02 glucose down, we're harvesting electrons off of that. And then we have this NAD which is like a taxi cab. It picks that electron up. It picks up that extra electron and it's going to take it over to your mitochondria where you can start generating energy. You can see here we have the fermentation energy process as well where we convert pyuvate to lactate. That is a NAD creating process. And then we can break pyuvate down into acetal coa. This is a very NAD dependent process as well. Again, we're harvesting more hydrogen here. And then we can enter what's called TCA or Krebs cycle. And this is the main pathway by which we are taking the acetto coa typically broken down from glucose or also you can
13:48 you can get to this from fat as well but but typically from glucose and this cycle runs and you can see all the NADs in this cycle there's three different stops where we're harvesting electrons and then those electrons from this cycle from this glycolysis are now being pulled over here into this process of oxidative phosphorilation. Again, to keep it simple, this is known as the electron transport chain or etc., this is the site, this is the site in your mitochondria. If you've if you've ever heard anybody talk about mitochondria being the energy or the or the um powerhouse, if you will, of the cell, this is where energy
14:34 is produced. your food is broken down and you harvest hydrogens and you run these hydrogens through this area in your mitochondria and NAD runs hydrogen through this what's called complex one which is a little specialized membrane protein in the mitochondria that drives the process ultimately getting us here ATP and remember what is ATP ATP is energy and so look at all the steps in this that require vitamin B3 NAD to carry those electrons to create a differential charge that allows for your body to drive the production of energy. And this energy is used for everything. It's used for healing. It's used for breaking down old tissues. It's used for making hormones. It's used for all the processes in your body. So when you
15:20 don't have enough NAD, your body's energy capacity goes down and so your ability to heal, repair, maintain your function diminishes. And this is what accelerated aging looks like. This why nasin is so important. That's why NAD is so important. That's why it's being studied in the context of trying to well I they use the term anti-aging. I already mentioned I don't like that term but it's in the context of graceful aging in my opinion. Okay, let's look at some of the research on nascin and specific types of health problems. So you see here, nyasin cures systemic nad deficiency and improves muscle performance in adult onset
16:05 mitochondrial myopathy. So if you've ever been diagnosed with fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue, which are forms of mitochondrial uh myopathy, then uh pay close attention here. So what they did in this study, you see they gave nascin a vitamin B3 form. They gave between 750 and 1,000 milligrams a day. And then what they found is that it increased NAD eight-fold in the subjects in this study. Okay. And ultimately muscle strength and mitochondrial biogenesis increased in all subjects. In patients, muscle metabolism shifted towards control and liver fat decreased 50%. So it improved liver function, it improved muscle strength, it improved
16:51 mitochondrial mass, it improved what's called oxidative phosphorilation. This is the process by which I just showed you this biochemically by which your body makes ATP or energy and and taking nascin vitamin B3 improved that it improved exercise performance. It improved glycogen. It reduced liver fat, lactate and hemoglobin. So all in all, B3 can efficiently rescue NAD levels in the muscle and blood of patients with mitochondrial myopathy, improving disease signs and muscle strength. If you have been diagnosed with a mitochondrial myopathy, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue are two common types. You might want to talk to your doctor about testing your vitamin B3 levels or
17:37 even supplementing with vitamin B3. Look, there it's very safe to supplement with vitamin B3. We'll talk about some of the potential issues at super high doses but at doses of 750 to a,000 milligrams a day very very safe even long term. Here's another study randomized phase one trial of using uh NR nicotenomide ribocide which is a NAD booster in PA patients with Parkinson's and so they gave a thousand milligrams of NR again this is another form of B3 or they gave a placebo and this was a 30-day trial and so what did they see that led to significant but variable increase in cerebral NAD levels so it improved the levels of NAD in the brain pain which is one of the important
18:24 things as we're as it's relating to Parkinson's right so associated with mild clinical improvement NR decreased the levels of inflammatory cytoines in the serum and in the cerebral spinal fluid so it reduced inflammation in these patients our findings nominate NR as a potential neuroprotective therapy for Parkinson's disease warranting further investigation in larger trials and the problem with a lot of these studies is they're done they're expensive to do studies And the the volume of people being studied is not tremendously high. And you'll notice and there's a trend in all these studies is we need to do more studies. But the problem with that is funding. And the government would rather fund drug based studies than they would nutritionalbased studies. As a matter of
19:09 fact, nutrition, alternative medicine, nutrition studies are on the chopping block right now as we speak. you should reach out to your uh to your politicians in your area and you should ask them to, you know, to basically to take it off the chopping block and continue to fund it because if we stop the funding on nutrition, then we're going to be stuck um with getting anything done in this realm. Here's another study that came out on the association of dietary nasin or vitamin B3 intake with all cause and cardiovascular mortality. So what they found in this study was that um higher dietary nasin intake correlates with lower risk of all cause cardiovascular mortality among US adults. So the more nasin a person ate, the less likely they were to die from a heart attack.
19:56 Here's another systematic review on nascin and uh intake in glaucoma. Glaucoma progressive optic neuropathy characterized by complex pathophysiology of mitochondrial dysfunction played a significant role in the cellular damage in apoptosis of ganglen cells the nerve cells in the eye nasin a precursor to several molecules acting as co-enzymes in the mitochondrial production of ATP I just showed you that and in DNA repair and in the reduction of o of reactive oxygen species daily dietary intake of nascin is significantly lower in patients with glaucoma compared to the general population. Now, correlation is not causation, but again, more research is needed, but these studies give us some insight as to who might benefit,
20:44 who might try using niacin or vitamin B3 or NAD precursors to um to try to improve upon their existing health. If you want more information about NAD boosters and vitamin B3, comment vitamin B3 below and I'll send you my crash course and my complete guide to supplementation.
