McCall McPhersonFounder, Modern Thyroid Clinic.

The Vital Role of NAD: Energy Production Unleashed

31 Mar 2025 · 0 min

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A brief interview excerpt from a YouTube video in which McCall McPherson and an expert discuss the central biochemical role of NAD and its phosphorylated form NADP. The speaker explains that NAD/NADP serve as essential cofactors across many enzymatic chains, particularly enabling transformations that convert food into cellular energy (glucose → glycolysis → pyruvate → mitochondrial oxidation → Krebs cycle → ATP). The speaker emphasizes that essentially every viable cellular pathway to make ATP requires NAD at least at one step, and that NADP (a phosphorylated form) serves distinct enzyme sets.

Big picture, what would this, what systems of our physiology would this influence? Or is it basically everything?
Basically everything. So at one level or another, I mean, not every individual reaction, but almost every chain of reactions that leads to a specific thing happening as some step that depends on nad. Or there's a phosphorylated form called NADP that is only made from nad that does a distinct set of reactions. So having the extra phosphate on it allows it a distinct set of, of enzymes to use it as a cofactor. But it serves essentially the same purpose. And so the ones, I think the most, the most fundamental things that's involved in are the transformations that lead from food that you consume being turned into usable energy for the cell. So the typical cascades, like glucose going through glycolysis to pyruvate, which can then go in your mitochondria and be harvested to the Krebs cycle to make ATP. Just cellular energy currency. Every viable path to make ATP for the cell requires NAD at least one step.
Yeah, so I kind of describe it similar to how I describe ATP to like regular humans, which is almost like a biological energy currency. Like we need these foundational components to do pretty much everything. Correct?
Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I really make that argument in review articles that NAD is just as fundamental as ATP to cellular energy, because there is literally no sustainable path to generate ATP if you don't have nad.