Are NAD+ supplement everything they say they are? NAD (Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide) Therapy fuels your body’s energy engines: your mitochondria. NAD is found within all living cells in the body. It is essential for the creation of energy in the body, it regulates pivotal cellular processes, and it acts as a powerful antioxidant, so you’re less susceptible to harmful free radicals that you encounter in foods and pollution, due to stress and excessive exercise, and from alcohol consumption.
NAD+ is an oxidizing cofactor necessary to maintain the flow of glucose through Glycolysis.
Glycolysis
Glycolysis is the process by which glucose is broken down within the cells to form pyruvate. Under adequate oxygenation conditions, the mitochondria use pyruvate to power the citric acid cycle and fully charge the NADH and FADH2.
Without adequate oxygenation, pyruvate has a different fate. Instead of entering mitochondria, pyruvate converts to lactate. Although lactate itself is not utilized by the cell as a direct energy source, this reaction also allows for the regeneration of NAD+ from NADH. NAD+ is an oxidizing cofactor necessary to maintain the flow of glucose through glycolysis. Glycolysis produces 2 ATP per glucose molecule, and thus provides a direct means of producing energy in the absence of oxygen.
Glycolysis produces 4 ATP. But it cost 2 ATP to make the 4 ATP. Yielding “2 ATP”.
NAD+ results in the formation of ONLY 2 ATP.
Low Power Mode reduces the amount of power that your body has available to use when the energy supply gets low.
Glycolysis requires no oxygen. The Krebs cycle does not use oxygen, though it does stop in the absence of oxygen because it runs out of NAD and FAD. Glycolysis and the citric acid cycle can not occur if there is not NAD+ present to pick up electrons as the reactions proceed. When oxygen is present, this isn’t a problem – all of the NADH and FADH2 that were produced during glycolysis and the citric acid cycle are converted back into NAD+ and FAD after the electron transport chain. When no oxygen is present, the electron transport chain can’t run because there is no oxygen to act as the final electron acceptor.
Glucose and fat metabolism are used by the mitochondria to generate energy in cells. Thereby, when glucose and oxygen delivery is inefficient, the ATP production is low, leading to an increased production of free radicals (AKA: Reactive Oxygen Species – ROS). Reactive oxygen species formation have adverse consequences that increase and stimulate pro-inflammatory immune responses.
Insulin resistance, Ischemia and hypoxia (low oxygen delivery) puts the kibosh on not only Glycolysis but also Mitochondrial ability to produce energy for the body. Do not expect the Big $uppla, Professional or Social Media Influencers to mention this while they are trying to sell their NAD+ supplements.
More Is Always Better
Most of you have at some time or another heard of some Professional or Social Media Influencers, who was seemingly securing marvelous results and possibly some of your friends have jumped onto the Influencers bandwagon and you gone to such people and secured results. A patient with a Vasomotor lesion is very susceptible to any system of therapy that uses enthusiasm for a basis of therapy, but sad to say this enthusiasm only lasts while the patient is near the healer and as soon as this said enthusiasm dies down, the old disease returns.
Big $uppla, Professional or Social Media Influencers rely on your enthusiasm to promote their sales. It may be stated here that the indefiniteness of the symptoms and Internet searches have been financially rewarding for Professional and Social Media Influencer to offer effectively-ineffective placebos to those seeking resolution of the symptoms. Unfortunately, Direct-To-Consumer (DTC) has convinced to many that suppression of symptom symptoms is “healthy”.
Mitochondria – Cellular Power Plants
In cell biology mitochondria are small organelles found inside most cells. There can be between several hundred up to 3000 inside each cell. Mitochondria are sometimes described as “Cellular Power Plants” because one of its prominent roles is to generate most of the cell’s supply of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which is your body’s energy currency. The set of complex reactions involved in ATP production are collectively known as the citric acid cycle, or the Krebs Cycle.
Now, adding all the ATP molecules formed, we find a maximum of 38 ATP molecules formed with adequate oxygenation for each molecule of glucose degraded to carbon dioxide and water.
Energy Feedback Control
Your body’s metabolism employ control strategies to ensure homeostasis amid fluctuating environmental conditions. To be effective, these control strategies also need to be resilient to the variations in internal supply and demand, such as enzyme and oxygen/glucose concentrations.
One well-established metabolic control used by your body is through negative feedback regulation. Negative feedback (or balancing feedback) occurs when some function of the output of a system, process, or mechanism is fed back in a manner that tends to reduce the fluctuations in the output, whether caused by changes in the input or by other disturbances. Negative feedback by product inhibition is used by many metabolic, hormonal and immune pathways.
Continual release of energy from glucose when energy is not needed by the cells would be an extremely wasteful process. Instead, glycolysis and the subsequent recharging of NAD+ into NADH are continually controlled in accordance with the cells’ need for ATP. This control is accomplished by multiple feedback control mechanisms.
As you age, the level of NAD in your cells decreases, getting in the way of your body’s natural ability to repair itself. As a result, your mental and physical health can decline. This is due to metabolic and physiologic factors, such as Insulin Resistance, Hepatic Portal Hypertension. These conditions impair your body’s Red Blood Cells ability to deliver oxygen and glucose.
No, you cannot just jump in a Hyperbaric Chamber. Free Oxygen not absorbed by Red Blood Cells pushed into your body by the Hyperbaric Chamber becomes Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS; AKA Free Radicals). These free-radical ROS cause your body to rust (oxidize). Oxygen shed from RBCs must be utilized by cells within millimeters of where they are released or the ROS rusts the area they were released in. Particularly, in areas of high turbulence, e.g. heart.
Why is this not mentioned by the Professional and Social Media Influencers promoting Hyperbaric Chambers, NAD supplements, etc. Follow the Money! They blame it on certain lifestyle factors that accelerate this process, including stress, alcohol, poor diet, sleep problems, environmental factors, and drug use, to name a few. Professional Influencer always describe sickness in terms of absolute normal function.
Without oxygen and glucose, your Mitochondria go into Power Saver Mode; shutting down and begin deteriorating. The Professional Influencers describe this as your NAD levels decreasing, a physical symptoms of aging increase. Claiming that by restoring NAD in your body, it can help improve your health in many ways.
Melatonin is another popular Effectively-Ineffective supplement. Melatonin inhibits “Glycolysis”, the process to energize the NAD+ into NADH. Let’s think this through. They load your body up on empty batteries and then prevent the battery charger from working.
This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of your absolute need for these supplements because more will make it work better. What could possibly go wrong? NAD falls into the Category of Effectively-Ineffective supplements. It will not hurt you. However, it has the ability to put your health on a slippery slope of a downward spiral. Resulting in more different Professional Influencer following Doctors and $upplements.
