How the Body Makes and Maintains NAD+

NAD+, nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, is a critical coenzyme found in every cell of your body involved in hundreds of metabolic processes, but NAD+ levels decline with age. The impact of supplements designed to increase NAD+ on the aging process is still being studied.

NAD+ has earned its reputation by playing a role in the body’s central cellular functions. For example, NAD+ is essential in the production of cellular energy, and also works throughout the body to support mitochondrial function and cellular respiration.

Your body already makes and maintains NAD+ in various ways, specifically by converting food in your diet to NAD+. It’s important to understand that you can increase your levels in other ways, too. Here’s what you need to know about how the body makes and maintains NAD+.

The Link Between NAD+ Precursors and the Diet

When you’re driving a car, you’re probably not thinking about how it was made. But imagine the steps at play in an automotive factory: At the start, it’s simply a handful of separate parts — metal, head lights, radiators, and more — that, when put together with leather and stitching, becomes a fully functioning car. Each part goes through a series of steps that transform it until ultimately, the car is in its final state: gassed up, shined, and ready to hit the road.

The body’s function in making and maintaining NAD+ is a similar process. Your cells take certain raw materials—in this case a specific set of molecules that are NAD+ precursors—which go through a series of chemical transformations that turn them into NAD+ the body can put to work. Just as there are multiple ways to manufacture a vehicle that can hit the road, there are many ways NAD+ can be manufactured, too.

NAD+ precursors are the raw materials from which your body makes NAD+. Each NAD+ precursor follows a pathway made up of steps that chemically convert the precursors to NAD+. Some pathways are more efficient than others, some provide more NAD+, some provide less, but all of them lead to the same thing: NAD+.

Tryptophan is another NAD+ precursor, but it’s the least efficient one, having to go through the most complex pathway before transforming into NAD+. Tryptophan is an amino acid that might sound familiar because it’s in turkey and is often mistakenly touted for making people tired after Thanksgiving dinner. It’s also the only primary NAD+ precursor that’s not in the Vitamin B3 family.

Though humans need NAD+ precursors in their diets in order for their bodies to make NAD+, diet alone may not be enough. So even when you do get NAD+ through NAD+ precursors in the diet, you may need more, which is what NMN can do.