NAD vs NAC vs NMN vs NR Explained Simply!

Nad and Nac, are they the same molecule? Are they related? What's NMN? What's NR? Hello, I'm Dr. Payam Hakimi, I'm a functional medicine doctor. And today I'm going to talk about the difference between nad, nac, NMN and nr. And along with that we're going to talk about other molecules like glutathione and liver detoxification. I'm going to talk about NAC first. When I first came across this molecule, I was a medical student. I noticed that we use this molecule for different reasons. One of the reasons was poisoning by Tylenol or, or people who wanted to commit suicide taking a bottle of Tylenol. This was a medication to use. Also notice that in ICU we use this molecule for people who have lung issues, chronic bronchitis, people who could not clear the phlegm from their lungs. That's when we used it as well. This molecule is called Mucomist. When we use it in ICU settings, we also use it before an IV contrasted imaging study in hospital for people who do have kidney conditions. So we basically use mucomest or N acetylcysteine to make sure that there is no kidney damage for these people. It's been used for people who want to help out with their liver detoxification in a lot of the supplements that are to detoxify liver. Non alcoholic fatty liver disease is another condition that we use this for and that is when the liver cells have been engorged with fat. We also know that N acetyl cysteine has been used for people who have cough or lung issues or just want to clear their lungs. Let's talk about how NAC works in the body. NAC is a precursor to another molecule called glutathione. Glutathione is one of the strongest antioxidants in the body. Its other function is to help with liver detoxification. It's one of the major molecules in the phases of detoxification in liver. So if we help liver detoxify itself, we're actually helping you to detoxify your body as well. Because the function of liver is basically to detoxify the blood. Other functions of liver, one of them is to help with steroid hormone balance in the body or recycling. Steroid hormones are testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, dhea, pregnenolone and cortisol. And these are major molecules in the body, major hormones in the body. And how does this help us? It helps by balancing out the hormones. For example, in Conditions like pms, acne that's related to pms, infertility, decreased libido, menopausal issues, weight gain, or if you want to create weight loss. And the most important thing, when we detoxify the body, in essence we're detoxifying the cells, which basically means that we're retarding cellular aging and cellular death. It's a supplement that you can take, especially during the times that you're suffering with flu or cold or lung issues. We use glutathione a lot. Glutathione is not a stable molecule by mouth, so you're not going to find a lot of supplements that will give you glutathione properly. And that's why we use it as an IV. So after a lot of our IVs in, in the office, we use IV glutathione push or as a drip so that it can help out with cleansing the body. We offer a couple of supplements that have glutathione and NAC in them. One of them is detoxyliver detoxy. Liver has alpha lipoic acid, artichoke extract, calcium, D glucarate, which is very important in balancing the hormones that we talked about in the body. Folate, green tea extract, msm, milk thistle, which is very important to help detoxify the liver, and acetylcysteine as well as other vitamins that help out. The other supplement that we have is called vitamin C. It's a buffered form of vitamin C, which has buffered vitamin C, obviously, calcium, copper, magnesium and manganese, potassium, quercetin and reduced L, glutathione and zinc. These are important supplements. Most of my patients use this at a certain point in their journey towards health with me, just to make sure that we are cleansing their liver, we're getting their body ready for the next step. So I'm going to summarize this. NAC is a molecule that's been used in medicine as well as integrative and functional medicine. There are supplements form, there's IV form, there's inhaled form. And its function is to increase glutathione. And as it increases glutathione, it creates the effects that we talk about. So this molecule different than nad. Now, obviously NAC is different than nad. I'll share a link below to one of my videos talking about nad. NAD is a cofactor in the cellular metabolism pathway Krebs cycle, or citric acid cycle. It's synthesized from vitamin B3, which is nicotinic acid or nicotinamide or from niacin or from nmn. And it can be formed from amino acids tryptophan and, and aspartate. We know NAD decreases as we age, and as that happens, there's less energy for the cell to be able to do all of its function. Some of these functions are removing the waste from the cell itself. So that is what becomes oxidative stress and eventually cellular aging and cellular death. NAD is the master regulator of cellular metabolism. It helps with production of cellular energy. It's important in DNA repair, and it's the raw material for sirtuins, and sirtuins are in the anti aging pathway and it helps with immune regulation. If we're talking about the nervous system, we know that NAD has been used for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. It's also been used for drug and alcohol addiction and to help with lessening the withdrawal symptoms. We also know it helps with depression, it helps with anxiety, it helps with insomnia as well. Patients who get NAD actually tell us that for the next two, three days they have more energy, but they also sleep much better at night. There's recent data that shows that there is also a place for NAD in detoxification from antidepressants and from anxiolytics. And as you know, we've had an issue with opiates recently, and we're seeing that issue with antidepressants and anxiolytics as well, where people are now addicted to antidepressants and anxiolytic and it's very hard for them to stop them. Not only that, we're also seeing that people go from one antidepressant and then after four or five years, another antidepressant gets added to it and those antidepressants never come off. So it's a good way of helping with decreasing the symptomatology that goes with detoxification of antidepressants. Obviously, all of this needs to be done under medical supervision. NAD also helps with metabolism and it helps with changing the markers of metabolic issues like diabetes and insulin resistance, weight gain. It helps with athletic conditioning and performance. NAD also causes positive effect in inflammatory conditions like chronic fatigue syndrome. And it actually helps to stimulate immune system as well. In essence, when we use nad, we're helping all of the cells in the body to restore themselves. What are the natural ways that we can help increasing NAD in our body? Number one, make sure that there is no inflammation in your body or decrease inflammation. Do a food sensitivity test to make sure, you know, what are the food groups that Your body does not like and are inflammatory in nature. Make sure you have a cleanse digestive system. Make sure you do liver detoxification. Exercise properly, sleep good, make sure you have leafy and green vegetables in your diet. Whole foods and whole grains as well as there is recent data that shows that fasting and being on a keto diet helps out with helping increase NAD as well. Now I'm going to switch gears and talk about NMN and another related molecule called nr. NMN stands for nicotinamide mononucleotide and NR stands for nicotinamide ribose. And obviously these molecules are used to increase NAD in the body. The biosynthesis pathway of NAD starts with nr, NR become becomes NMN and NMN becomes nad. So in essence we can use both molecules in order to raise NAD in our body. Obviously the easiest way is to do an IV where we can give you high doses of nad. But we also ask our patients to supplement the precursors of NAD so that during their treatment time, when they're not here, they're actually raising their NAD on a daily basis as well. Those Precursors are vitamin B3 or niacin, NR and NMN. Tell that the goal now is becoming to increase our nad. And to do that we need to help the mitochondria. So to increase nad, we're going to use the substrates which are NR or NMN or NAD itself. We also need B complex, but you also need other things, other supplements and ingredients that come into effect with helping the mitochondria and the citric acid cycle or the Krebs cycle, which produces ATP. One of those supplements is mitochondria boost. The other important molecule is D ribose and obviously there needs to be higher amount of coenzyme Q10 and resveratrol, which have shown to help out with the functions of mitochondria itself. Takeaway points from this video. Obviously, nad, nac, NMN and NR are all different molecules. However, nr, NMN are related to NAD and the precursors of NAD helping raise the cellular energy. NAC is a detoxifying molecule. It helps with detoxifying the lungs, the liver, the kidneys. NAD and NAC used together will help the body do wonders. On one hand, we're detoxifying the liver, we're adding antioxidants to the body. As the liver detoxifies itself. It's basically helping all cells to get detoxified. As we increase NAD in our body, we help the cells to do their function properly. One of these functions is to dump the extra toxins and waste products that's in the cell. So using both of these molecules together, we can actually help out with antioxidation and help with detoxifying the body faster as well as producing anti aging effects in the body. I hope you've enjoyed this video. If you have any questions, please leave it in the comments and also share your experience with nad, nmn, nr or any other biohacking techniques that you're doing. We'd love to hear it.