What Is Nicotinamide Riboside?

Key Takeaways:

• Nicotinamide riboside (NR) is a form of Vitamin B3 and a precursor to nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+), a coenzyme vital to cellular health.
• NR is found in small amounts in foods like dairy products and is one of several variations of Vitamin B3.
• NR supplementation is clinically proven to increase NAD+ levels and provide benefits for promoting cellular energy and healthy aging.

Related Product:

• Basis: Contains NR and pterostilbene, which work together to support cellular aging and healthy DNA by increasing NAD+ levels and activating SIRT1.

Nicotinamide riboside is a precursor to nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide. What does that mean? We’ll explain.

When you’re on your way to a new destination and you open up your phone’s GPS, a few options pop up. There are routes that avoid highways, traffic, walking, and train transfers. It’s nonsensical to go out of your way. The same goes for you.

Enter nicotinamide riboside, a form of Vitamin B that is the most efficient route to NAD+, or nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, a coenzyme vital to your cellular health. Levels of NAD+ naturally fall as we get older, and "researchers are curious about what this decrease means," says Joseph A. Baur, Ph.D., an associate professor of physiology at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine.

Nicotinamide riboside is often called NR for short, and it’s a precursor to NAD+, meaning it's the raw material from which your body makes NAD+ through a series of chemical transformations.  But not much was known about exactly what NR did in the body until 2004, when scientists discovered that, not only is NR a precursor to NAD+ production in the body, it’s thought to be more efficient than other NAD+ precursors.

A highly efficient way to make the very molecule that has been shown to restore NAD+ levels in cells prompted scientists to research NR more carefully and, specifically, to see how we could get more of it.

How Nicotinamide Riboside Works

NR is a vitamin, an organic compound that our bodies need to complete biological functions but that we must get through diet. There are eight kinds of Vitamin Bs, and NR is a Vitamin B3 found in small amounts in foods like dairy products. NR is one of a few variations of B3; others include nicotinamide and nicotinic acid (also called niacin).

These forms of Vitamin B3 might sound familiar. You may even recognize the word ‘niacin’ from packaged foods or flours. That’s because B3 is so important that governments mandate it in our food. In 1940, the U.S. recommended the fortification of foods with a form of B3 in order to stave off a fatal disease called pellagra. Now, there’s international legislation for similar fortification in rice and flours.  

“Nicotinamide or other vitamin B3 forms can go through multiple well-characterized reactions to get to NAD+,” Baur says. 

One route essentially allows NR to become NAD+ by bypassing a step other precursors must go through. As the science world was learning about NR’s efficiencies, researchers were starting to identify how levels of NAD+ decreased as we age. These two notions triggered the idea of NR supplementation.

“In terms of timing, it was kind of a happy coincidence that the ability of NR to serve as a precursor was being recognized at the same time that people were realizing that boosting NAD+ might be a good idea,” Baur says.

We now have a way to safely and sustainably boost NAD+ levels. Developed by Dr. Leonard Guarente, a leader in the field of aging research, Basis, which contains NR, is clinically proven to increase NAD+ levels by an average of 40% in a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Partner Journals: Aging and Mechanisms of Disease. 

The Future of Nicotinamide Riboside

We know that NAD+ levels decline with age, but it’s not clear exactly why NAD+ declines, though some scientists hypothesize it could be related to the overactivity of the NAD+-consuming enzyme CD38.

For now, we know that dietary supplementation with NR increases NAD+ levels and provides a range of benefits from promoting cellular energy to supporting healthy aging.  

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