NAD+ Patches

Note: through my doctor I'm ordering the patches from Archway, when you get a prescription you need to specify what duration patches (4 hour or 8 hour) and number of packs (6 patches to a pack). 

David Michel  I'll be getting the patches in a week or two, any other suggestions on use? Where on the arm do you put it, upper arm? How does the electrophoresis work, battery pack in the pocket?

Rudi  Well I happen to be starting testosterone replacement at the same time (this morning) as the NAD, so I suspect I will feel like King Kong, but not because of the NAD! I'm measuring about 20 daily biomarkers (BP, peripheral perfusion index, HRV, glucose etc etc), plus all the blood tests baselined, PLUS just did a DNA methylation test (urine) this morning, so if there are any effects I should see some effect in the biomarkers. HRV (Heart Rate Variability) is highly sensitive to age, mood, exercise and general health, so I am looking to that in particular. 

Side note on supplements, I take a lot. The only ones that have a macro effect are phosphitydlcholine, CoQ10 and ALC/ALA (acetyl-lipoic-carnetine/alpha-lipoic-acid). Note, phosphitydlcholine has great benefit for your cellular membranes and you notice the effect with much better/younger skin, but don't take it if you are a meat eater. 

NAD: suggestion, upper arm works well and I recommend using your non dominant arm. It does restrict movement a bit, and I feel that I don't want to overly tax the patch, so non dominant seems to be working out well. Also makes it easier to apply as you can use your dominant hand to apply and take off.

Also when applying, remember to leave a dry strip of a few mm around the edge of the electrode center pad. I'll post some pictures of this tomorrow. 

So far seems like it feels a little tingly maybe. It's just a coin cell battery which is 3V DC - very low, so probably my imagination. The rate at which it diffuses depends on your skin conductivity - as mentioned for most people it drops precipitously after 8 hours and is exhausted by 12. I actually have a sensitive (uV)  DVM so can measure my conductivity, but since I don't know the perfusion rate vs ohm for this patch it won't help. I'll poke around the specs from the company and see if I can estimate my diffusion rate with this path. 

Thread spamming ... the kit comes with a technical overview page which is very detailed, and very interesting. The positive electrode is precisely zinc coated and the negative is silver chloride coated. I wondered about this which is why I checked, the positive electrode had a oxidized green color at the end of the day which wasn't there earlier. What happens is that on a purely bi-metallic galvanic basis there's about 1V potential between the terminals, with the addition of a coin cell you get about a 4V potential between the terminals. 

The medication is either 'positive' or 'negative', presumably this means it's buffered with a ionic solution in either case. So a positive medicine/positive solution will pull into the skin, being attracted to the negative terminal. Once in the skin it'll get carried off by the blood stream. Electrode coatings are consumed during the application which is why the positive looks oxidized at the end of the day. 

Lot's more technical detail including clinical studies in the brief, but overall I'm convinced this is a safe and effective NAD method, at a bargain price. The pills are rather expensive, now I'm wishing I could discontinue them to save some money. 

Rudi  I don't feel different so far other than the probable effects from the T therapy (hopefully though I'll sleep better tonight). If I really cared to measure on quality of life basis I would have done them separately, but I'd rather start them both sooner. By the way it is possible I think to measure 'wellbeing'. I do this by measuring galvanic skin response, HRV (which is extraordinarily affected by wellbeing), and by taking an EEG snapshot during rest and active concentration, plus my other daily biomarkers. Soft heuristics are noting sleep quality (though I have an Oura ring coming in which will have a more discerning measure of sleep). Anyhow, since NAD's primary benefit presumably is DNA repair the best way to see if it helps you is to check your DNA methylation, which is why I did the sample for that just before starting. 

FYI here's a shot of the patch just before use. You can see the edges of the backing pulled up to ease application. The right side is + with the NAD and the left is saline, and there is a band of white around the NAD per the instructions. There is a silicone lip around the electrode to contain the liquid, so why didn't I do the same with the saline? The spec (fill volume you can see on the path) is 1mL which according to the NAD bottle instructions is 20 drops, however 20 drops of saline is about .5mL according to the measure embossed into the bottle. So this time I put about .8mL of saline which doesn't therefore have the band. 

Probably messing around with this too much, tomorrow I'll probably do 20 drops of saline again. So far am sleeping like a champ and no other reactions, other than some slight irritation on the spot that goes away after a day, and maybe some small pricking I feel under the patch during the day.