Is NMN safe?

As more and more people turn to daily supplementing with NMN to increase productivity and energy levels - and maybe even help us live longer - investigations into the safety of the supplement also continue to rise.

NAD+ is an essential coenzyme required to keep us healthy. Put simply, if our NAD+ levels dropped to zero our bodies would survive less than a minute! Research shows NAD+ levels decrease as we age, and scientists are discovering that taking NAD+ boosters NMN and NR look likely to reverse many signs of ageing.

A controlled human trial has now shown it is safe to take NMN. In Japan, 10 healthy men aged 40-60 took NMN with no concerning ill effects. Results of the clinical study, undertaken by researchers at Keio University School of Medicine and published in 2019 in Endocrine, showed the men were closely monitored and concluded, “The single oral administration of NMN was safe and effectively metabolized in healthy men without causing any significant deleterious effects”. Doses of up to 500mg were taken by each of the participants.

To date, countless studies of the remarkable effects using NMN to boost NAD+ levels on mice have already been undertaken. Some of those studies reveal NMN can even show marked improvements in age-related decline of vital organs such as the liver and pancreas. One early study on the impact of NAD+ levels in mice, published in Cell in 2013, even showed on some key biological markers the tissue of two-year-old mice reverted to resembling six-month-old mice. That’s like the cells of someone collecting their stately pension bouncing back to those of someone just leaving their teens. The extraordinary changes in the older mice even took the scientists by surprise, “Strikingly, treatment of old mice with NMN reversed all of these biochemical aspects of aging and switched gastrocnemius muscle to a more oxidative fiber type.” With so many studies confirming the safe use of NMN in mice, even more human clinical trials are hotly anticipated. It is noteworthy that treatments in mice are usually done at concentrations of 200mg-400mg/kg of mouse weight. This would translate into a much higher dose than 500mg in humans.

The safety of NMN was a key topic when Dr David Sinclair, P.hD., the Harvard professor at the forefront of longevity research, took time out his busy schedule to discuss anti-ageing developments in a lengthy interview with Joe Regan. Discussing the safety of taking NMN, which Sinclair explained he personally takes 1g of every morning, along with taking resveratrol and metformin, he said, “It’s extremely rare that you get sick from any of these molecules. In millions of patients around the world nobody is getting sick – the worst you’ll have, as far as I can tell, is a stomach upset.”

Following on from the Japanese study revealing the safety of taking NMN, the floodgates have now opened for researchers to explore the far-reaching impact the NAD+ booster could have. With various trials expected to explore NMN’s ability to safely reverse a multitude of ageing symptoms, currently there is no reason to expect the results will be anything but good news.

References

1. Irie J, Inagaki E, Fujita M, et al. Effect of oral administration of nicotinamide mononucleotide on clinical parameters and nicotinamide metabolite levels in healthy Japanese men, 2019 Nov 2]. Endocr J. 2019;10.1507/endocrj.EJ19-0313. https://doi.org/10.1507/endocrj.EJ19-0313

2. Declining NAD+ Induces a Pseudohypoxic State Disrupting Nuclear-Mitochondrial Communication during Aging Ana P. Gomes,1,2,3 Nathan L. Price,1 Alvin J.Y. Ling,1 Javid J. Moslehi,4,5 Magdalene K. Montgomery,6 Luis Rajman,1 James P. White,7 Joa˜ o S. Teodoro,2,3 Christiane D. Wrann,7 Basil P. Hubbard,1 Evi M. Mercken,8 Carlos M. Palmeira,2,3 Rafael de Cabo,8 Anabela P. Rolo,2,9 Nigel Turner,6 Eric L. Bell,10 and David A. Sinclair1,6, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2013.11.037
3. Joe Regan interviews David Sinclair https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOTS0HS7aq4