enhancing NAD precursor effectiveness

Therapeutic doses of NR and NMN in studies are usually much larger than the suggested amount on the label. Chromadex NR studies usually use a gram or more of the stuff, while the Tru Niagen label says to take 1x300mg capsule.

David Sinclair advised that in the mouse studies, there's a critical dosage threshold of NMN that needs to be surpassed, before the benefits are seen. He chalks that up to overwhelming the liver, so the NMN gets to the bloodstream unchanged. I suspect NR is much the same.

I've been taking NR, but I don't have the budget to take a gram or more daily, so I've been looking into how to enhance it's effectiveness. The following is what I've been doing, and I believe it's been effective, based on the kick in mood and energy I've gotten after trying each.

1. Take NR sublingually...

This avoids the liver's first pass action, which should enhance NR availability greatly. While this isn't a common way to take NR, I have run across mention of it on the net. I've been doing this for about 6 months.

I should point out that the NR we get on the consumer market is NR Chloride (the salt of NR). Based on my sole experience, I don't believe this makes a difference to NR availability to the cells (any more than it does to liver cells) or cause side-effects, but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention it.

2. Take dried parsley...

Dried parsley is a good source of apigenin, which is an inhibitor of CD38. CD38 itself is thought to be the main culprit in age related NAD decline, and has been shown to degrade NMN and NR into nicotinamide. (more details in this study)

Apigenin has a boatload of studies that show beneficial effects. It seems to be anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory, and its a heavy metal chelator. People have been eating parsley and drinking parsley tea for ages, so the risk seemed low to try it out. I didn't expect much, but I figured it was worth a shot, so I ordered a 1/2 pound of organic dried parsley off amazon.

For the past few days I've been taking 2 tsp of parsley, made into a paste with avocado oil, twice a day. The oil is to increase absorption. I chew the paste before swallowing, to grind it up. A couple hours after the parsley, I take my NR. (sublingual)

I'm getting a strong lift in mood and energy with this. It should be interesting to see if and when the euphoria eventually fades. When I first took NR I got the same sort of boost, which faded after a couple weeks, and the same thing happened again when I went sublingual.

I'm not chasing the euphoria - NR has provided me real benefits that didn't go away when that feeling did - but it's useful to use as a marker, since I'm not going to be paying for NAD blood tests.