4 ms·

This is an interesting topic. I've followed Dr. Sinclairs work for some time. For me specifically I personally did not experience any notable gains but I onl

This is an interesting topic. I've followed Dr. Sinclairs work for some time. For me specifically I personally did not experience any notable gains but I only used NMN for about 6 months and it was one of the more expensive supplements of the 50 or so that I take. I've since switch back to just taking NAM daily since excess NMN is converted back to NAM for storage. I would like to learn how to improve the process of converting NAM -> NR -> NMN -> NAD+ but I have not found much literature on this process. Just flow diagrams. The literature explains that the bi-directional cycle of conversion slows with age but I can't find anything explaining what the specific mechanisms are that degrade with age and how to modify the root cause of the degradation.

ziddoap 4y ago
>of the 50 or so that I take I'm no doctor and have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about with respect to supplements, but my god that seems like just an absurd amount of supplements (especially if some of them are doing multiple things like a multivitamin or whatever). Do you take all 50 of these daily? Do you like... Blend them up so your not popping pills for 15 minutes straight every morning?
- LinuxBender 4y ago
  I cycle some molecules up and down. Some molecules I take at different times of the day or week. Some can only be taken a couple times a week as they can be toxic if not used correctly. Some are safe to take daily. I have researched all of them extensively. Some of them I take at levels that would make people cringe as the known literature around some of them is incomplete. I am not a fan of multivitamins though I do keep one around and rarely touch it. Most of them contain very low quality components, most notably the vitamin E which is nearly almost always alpha-tocopherol and since I am male that is a major risk for prostate cancer if not taken with the right balance of gamma-tocopherol and selenium. Rather I prefer to take the tocotrienols. Multivitamins also contain a low quality form of vitamin C in the form of ascorbic acid and that is a topic in and of itself. I prefer to get the majority of my vitamin C from green leafy vegetables using a high powered blender that acts as a juicer. I do at times carry with me a small metal canister that can hold about 10-15 pills when I know I will be eating food someone else made, but most of that is for different formulas of garlic extracts, digestive enzymes, TUDCA, oregano oil and other things that assist with digestion and neutralization of pathogens in food. If you are interested in these topics a good starting point is nih.gov, just be highly skeptical of any studies you find. Their search is awful so I would use google and put in "site:nih.gov some topic"
  - jrimbault 4y ago
    I think the underlying question was "Why not eat food ?" or "Why do you use so much complements if you can eat normally ?"
    - LinuxBender 4y ago
      That is a good question. I personally am compensating for the lack of nutrients in food and also over-compensating for damage that I have done to my organs from a lifetime of eating a "standard american diet" or what I prefer to call a "first world diet". A healthy food diet just wasn't cutting it for me, especially given that stomach acid and other aspects of digestion decrease with age. I can compensate with digestive enzymes, tudca, benfotiamine and chelated zinc but that has rapidly diminishing effects. My goals go far beyond what a good diet and moderate exercise and decent sleep alone can accomplish but I would never even try to convince anyone to do what I am doing nor would I even suggest it unless one researches all of the molecules and their downstream effects ad-nauseam.
      - simonebrunozzi 4y ago
        Move to Italy. I grew up here, lived abroad for ~13 years, 9 of which in San Francisco (before: Luxembourg and Singapore), working for AWS and other tech firms. I can assure you that the quality of produce I can find in Italy cannot be beaten. Comparable in some parts of the Mediterranean. Whole Foods? Give me a break, not even close. I'm not too serious (I know it's not easy to "move to Italy", just like that), but I find it really interesting that the US is so rich, and yet the quality of food is so poor. The tomatoes are a great example. Visit Italy, buy some tomatoes, eat them raw. You will not believe your senses.
        LinuxBender 4y ago
        I think there is something to be said for this, especially foods that are home grown and home prepared. In the town I grew up in there was an Italian family that owned a restaurant and would get most of their ingredients from Italy. My friends mom made everything from scratch. No highly processed foods. My friend her son was built like a tank. We used to arm wrestle all the time if for no other reason than his insane strength and my laughably futile attempts to win. I should add that since then I have not once in my life enjoyed a calzone like his mom made. It was worth the 45+ minute wait.
ck2 4y ago
NAM NR and NMN all use different absorption pathways and have different pitfalls. There's good reason people stopped using NAM once there were alternatives available, topic well outside the scope of HN but not hard to google. You cannot change the conversion process/rate, at least not with current knowledge, it is rate limited by multiple biological processes. I strongly caution to use google scholar and not blogs/youtube for information. Also everyone should be aware because of the high cost there is A LOT of counterfeit NMN out there, never buy unknown brands/sources.
- LinuxBender 4y ago
  You cannot change the conversion process/rate, at least not with current knowledge That is precisely the wall I have hit but I am a stubborn old bastard and will not give up.
  - ck2 4y ago
    There are PhDs with multi-million dollar grants who cannot do it. I mean let's say they did somehow figure out an enzyme to speed it up, it would likely cost more than just supplementing more of the desired precursors. There might be some obscure food or supplement that does what you want but it will cost more because it will be rare and then you've got the problem of huge consistency between batches because all manufacturing in China/India is the wild-west. Easier to just take the precursors which are mass produced so prices slowly coming down, though covid/inflation/supply-chain threw it a curve.
- balfirevic 4y ago
  > never buy unknown brands/sources All NMN brands are unknown to me - how do I judge?
joshu 4y ago
Do you have a list published somewhere?
- LinuxBender 4y ago
  I do not. I used to list my methods on a website but I prefer to have people research this topic themselves and fully understand it as their physiology and pre-existing conditions will differ from mine. What works for me may have negative side effects on others and I would prefer they take responsibility for the trial-and-error process they will have to go through. I've even stopped using the scientific method as it is just too slow given the complexity of all the systems in a mammal and how they interact with one another and I could not in good conscience promote that for others.
  - wallfacer77 4y ago
    Do you have a blog? If not, would you be interested in making one? You could post it on HN and as the replies surely are telling you already, people will enjoy reading it. You may get some useful comments too with suggestions for different supplements and stuff.
  - joshu 4y ago
    yeah, i have just thought about making the Big List Of Supplements with what they are supposed to do, just adding papers for/against any to each

ziddoap 4y ago

>of the 50 or so that I take I'm no doctor and have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about with respect to supplements, but my god that seems like just an absurd amount of supplements (especially if some of them are doing multiple things like a multivitamin or whatever). Do you take all 50 of these daily? Do you like... Blend them up so your not popping pills for 15 minutes straight every morning?

LinuxBender 4y ago
I cycle some molecules up and down. Some molecules I take at different times of the day or week. Some can only be taken a couple times a week as they can be toxic if not used correctly. Some are safe to take daily. I have researched all of them extensively. Some of them I take at levels that would make people cringe as the known literature around some of them is incomplete. I am not a fan of multivitamins though I do keep one around and rarely touch it. Most of them contain very low quality components, most notably the vitamin E which is nearly almost always alpha-tocopherol and since I am male that is a major risk for prostate cancer if not taken with the right balance of gamma-tocopherol and selenium. Rather I prefer to take the tocotrienols. Multivitamins also contain a low quality form of vitamin C in the form of ascorbic acid and that is a topic in and of itself. I prefer to get the majority of my vitamin C from green leafy vegetables using a high powered blender that acts as a juicer. I do at times carry with me a small metal canister that can hold about 10-15 pills when I know I will be eating food someone else made, but most of that is for different formulas of garlic extracts, digestive enzymes, TUDCA, oregano oil and other things that assist with digestion and neutralization of pathogens in food. If you are interested in these topics a good starting point is nih.gov, just be highly skeptical of any studies you find. Their search is awful so I would use google and put in "site:nih.gov some topic"
- jrimbault 4y ago
  I think the underlying question was "Why not eat food ?" or "Why do you use so much complements if you can eat normally ?"
  - LinuxBender 4y ago
    That is a good question. I personally am compensating for the lack of nutrients in food and also over-compensating for damage that I have done to my organs from a lifetime of eating a "standard american diet" or what I prefer to call a "first world diet". A healthy food diet just wasn't cutting it for me, especially given that stomach acid and other aspects of digestion decrease with age. I can compensate with digestive enzymes, tudca, benfotiamine and chelated zinc but that has rapidly diminishing effects. My goals go far beyond what a good diet and moderate exercise and decent sleep alone can accomplish but I would never even try to convince anyone to do what I am doing nor would I even suggest it unless one researches all of the molecules and their downstream effects ad-nauseam.
    - simonebrunozzi 4y ago
      Move to Italy. I grew up here, lived abroad for ~13 years, 9 of which in San Francisco (before: Luxembourg and Singapore), working for AWS and other tech firms. I can assure you that the quality of produce I can find in Italy cannot be beaten. Comparable in some parts of the Mediterranean. Whole Foods? Give me a break, not even close. I'm not too serious (I know it's not easy to "move to Italy", just like that), but I find it really interesting that the US is so rich, and yet the quality of food is so poor. The tomatoes are a great example. Visit Italy, buy some tomatoes, eat them raw. You will not believe your senses.
      - LinuxBender 4y ago
        I think there is something to be said for this, especially foods that are home grown and home prepared. In the town I grew up in there was an Italian family that owned a restaurant and would get most of their ingredients from Italy. My friends mom made everything from scratch. No highly processed foods. My friend her son was built like a tank. We used to arm wrestle all the time if for no other reason than his insane strength and my laughably futile attempts to win. I should add that since then I have not once in my life enjoyed a calzone like his mom made. It was worth the 45+ minute wait.

ck2 4y ago

NAM NR and NMN all use different absorption pathways and have different pitfalls. There's good reason people stopped using NAM once there were alternatives available, topic well outside the scope of HN but not hard to google. You cannot change the conversion process/rate, at least not with current knowledge, it is rate limited by multiple biological processes. I strongly caution to use google scholar and not blogs/youtube for information. Also everyone should be aware because of the high cost there is A LOT of counterfeit NMN out there, never buy unknown brands/sources.

LinuxBender 4y ago
You cannot change the conversion process/rate, at least not with current knowledge That is precisely the wall I have hit but I am a stubborn old bastard and will not give up.
- ck2 4y ago
  There are PhDs with multi-million dollar grants who cannot do it. I mean let's say they did somehow figure out an enzyme to speed it up, it would likely cost more than just supplementing more of the desired precursors. There might be some obscure food or supplement that does what you want but it will cost more because it will be rare and then you've got the problem of huge consistency between batches because all manufacturing in China/India is the wild-west. Easier to just take the precursors which are mass produced so prices slowly coming down, though covid/inflation/supply-chain threw it a curve.
balfirevic 4y ago
> never buy unknown brands/sources All NMN brands are unknown to me - how do I judge?

joshu 4y ago

Do you have a list published somewhere?

LinuxBender 4y ago
I do not. I used to list my methods on a website but I prefer to have people research this topic themselves and fully understand it as their physiology and pre-existing conditions will differ from mine. What works for me may have negative side effects on others and I would prefer they take responsibility for the trial-and-error process they will have to go through. I've even stopped using the scientific method as it is just too slow given the complexity of all the systems in a mammal and how they interact with one another and I could not in good conscience promote that for others.
- wallfacer77 4y ago
  Do you have a blog? If not, would you be interested in making one? You could post it on HN and as the replies surely are telling you already, people will enjoy reading it. You may get some useful comments too with suggestions for different supplements and stuff.
- joshu 4y ago
  yeah, i have just thought about making the Big List Of Supplements with what they are supposed to do, just adding papers for/against any to each