NMN (
Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) is a direct precursor of NAD+ (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, also known as Noga factor), and has been regarded as an emerging health ingredient for anti-aging in recent years.
Other common NAD+ precursors include: nicotinic acid (Niacin), nicotinamide (Nicotinamide), nicotinamide riboside (Nicotinamide riboside)).
What Is NMN?NMN (nicotinamide mononucleotide) is one of the derivatives of vitamin B3 (niacin) and an intermediate product of NAD+ biosynthesis. It is a biologically active nucleotide formed by the reaction of a phosphate group and a nucleoside containing ribose (ribose) and nicotinamide (nicotinamide).
Generally speaking, it exists in two synonymous forms, alpha and beta. The beta isomer is the active form with a molecular weight of 334.221 g/mol.
NMN is present in small amounts in various natural foods, such as vegetables, fruits and meat.
Vegetables such as broccoli and cabbage contain 0.25 to 1.12 and 0 to 0.90 mg of NMN per 100 grams, fruits such as avocado and tomato contain 0.36 to 1.60 and 0.26 to 0.30 mg of NMN per 100 grams, and beef contains 0.06 to 0.42 mg of NMN per 100 grams.
What Is NAD+ (Noga Factor)?
NAD+ (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide) is an important coenzyme present in eukaryotic cells and is required for more than 500 enzyme reactions. It plays a key role in various biological processes, including metabolism, aging, mitochondrial function, DNA repair and gene expression.
NAD+ deficiency is closely related to a variety of pathophysiological mechanisms, including type 2 diabetes, obesity, heart failure, Alzheimer's disease and cerebral ischemia.
With age, NAD+ levels in multiple organs gradually decrease, which accelerates the development of age-related diseases. Therefore, improving NAD+ is considered a possible way to deal with diseases and is crucial to human health and lifespan.
What Are the Empirical Effects (benefits) of NMN?
1. Benefits to physical function in the elderly
Aging is associated with decreased muscle strength and physical fitness, which increases the burden of daily work ability, increases the risk of falls and adverse health outcomes.
By 2030, the number of elderly people is expected to exceed the number of children under 10 years old (1.41 billion people, 1.35 billion people) According to the forecast for 2050, the number of people aged 60 and above will exceed that of adolescents and young people aged 10 to 24 years old (2.1 billion people, 2 billion people).
Physical fitness indicators are useful tools for predicting functional decline and mortality risk, and have become an important part of geriatric assessment.
A randomized survey (12 weeks, subjects over 65 years old) showed that supplementation with NMN (daily dose of 250 mg) helped improve lower limb function and reduce sleepiness.
2. Improve aerobic endurance
Habitual exercise is an effective factor in weight control for people of all ages, and it can also play many other positive roles, including preventing metabolic and cardiovascular diseases and promoting mental health.
Meta-Analyses of literature (on healthy sedentary adults) confirmed that running helps reduce body mass index, body fat, resting heart rate and triglycerides, and improves maximum oxygen uptake and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, especially in the case of long-term regular training.
A randomized clinical trial (6 weeks, subjects were 48 healthy amateur runners), and the subjects were divided into four groups: low-dose group (NMN daily dose 300mg), medium-dose group (NMN daily dose 600mg), high-dose group (NMN daily dose 1200mg) and control group.
The results showed that compared with the control group, the NMN medium and high-dose groups had a higher degree of increase in oxygen uptake, maximum oxygen uptake percentage, first and second ventilation thresholds.
Conclusion: Exercise training combined with NMN supplementation is a practical strategy to improve endurance performance in athletes, and this improvement may be due to improved oxygen utilization in skeletal muscle.
３. Improved skeletal muscle metabolic capacity
Skeletal muscle accounts for 40% of total body weight and is composed of slow-twitch and fast-twitch fiber types, which differ in the composition of contractile proteins, oxidative capacity, and substrate preference for ATP production.
Slow-twitch fibers exhibit low fatigability, high oxidative capacity, and prefer fatty acids as substrates for ATP production. Fast-twitch fibers have higher fatigability, higher contractile strength, lower oxidative capacity, and prefer glucose as a substrate to produce ATP through anaerobic glycolysis.
A randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind trial (10 weeks in overweight or obese prediabetic women) showed that NMN (daily dose of 250 mg) can increase muscle insulin sensitivity, muscle insulin signaling, and muscle remodeling.
４. Benefits Liver Fibrosis
Liver fibrosis is a response to chronic liver damage, such as alcohol intake, viral hepatitis (hepatitis B and C), autoimmune hepatitis, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and cholestatic liver disease.
The structure of the liver is disrupted by the presence of fibrous scars, which leads to hepatocyte loss and dysfunction of normal liver function, ultimately leading to liver failure.
Liver fibrosis is a reversible process, and removing the fibrotic response helps fibrosis regression as long as the liver is not in the advanced stage of cirrhosis.
An animal study showed that supplementing NMN inhibited the activation of hepatic stellate cells in mice and prevented liver fibrosis, providing new opportunities for the development of liver fibrosis treatments.
5. Anti-aging
Telomeres are specific DNA-protein structures found at the ends of each chromosome that protect the genome from nuclear lytic degradation, unnecessary recombination, repair, and interchromosomal fusion.
Therefore, telomeres play a vital role in preserving the information in our genome. As a normal cellular process, a small portion of telomeric DNA is lost with each cell division.
When telomere length reaches a critical value, cells will age or die. Therefore, telomere length can be used as a biological clock to determine the lifespan of a cell and an organism.
One animal study showed that NAD+ precursor nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN) can maintain telomere length, inhibit DNA damage response, and improve mitochondrial function.
Another animal study showed that NMN specifically increases SIRT1 (sirtuin 1) gene activity.
６. Beneficial to blood sugar control
Diabetes is a common chronic disease characterized by high blood sugar. It has two types, summarized as type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes.
Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease with absolute insulin deficiency that occurs in young people. Type 2 diabetes is characterized by insulin resistance, hyperinsulinemia, and beta cell failure
Diabetes and poor control are associated with microvascular (retinopathy and nephropathy), macrovascular, and nonvascular (neuropathy) complications.
An animal study showed that nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN) can enhance liver insulin sensitivity by partially activating SIRT1, restore gene expression associated with oxidative stress, inflammatory response and circadian rhythm, and help improve glucose intolerance.
7. Beneficial to Alzheimer's disease
Alzheimer's disease is the most common dementia (affecting tens of millions of people worldwide), characterized by progressive cognitive impairment caused by synaptic loss and neuronal death in brain regions critical for learning, memory and emotional control.
The accumulation of two self-aggregating proteins, including extracellular amyloid plaques and intracellular neurofibrillary tangles, is a diagnostic feature of Alzheimer's disease
A study in a rat model of Alzheimer's disease showed that NMN treatment improved neuronal survival, improved energy metabolism and reduced reactive oxygen accumulation.
