Thread by @CharlesMBrenner

every week, i get an email from a desperate parent whose kid has a potentially incurable cancer, asking if they should take #NR, often in a cocktail with resveratrol & other stuff /1

experiences like these make me shudder at the 💩 being peddled in the name of "anti-aging." no phd scientist should tell any such parent that their kid's rare malignancy is curable with their favorite elixir /2

i remind ppl that NR is active in many rodent models of human diseases & conditions of metabolic stress in which the NAD system is under attack (heart failure, fatty liver, neurodegeneration, central brain injury, etc) /3

while many of these conditions are age-associated, aging is not 1 thing & clearly their kid's cancer is a distinct entity that has little resemblance to the biohacking experiments of grown men & women /4

i do believe that ppl can age better & it usually starts with increased physical/mental activity, matching food consumption to energy expenditure & avoiding the killers of smoke, gun violence, drugs, SARS-CoV-2, etc /5

the NAD system comes under pressure from many types of common stresses including sun (DNA damage), oxygen (ROS damage), alcoholic liver damage & coronavirus infection. this is precisely the reason why there are so many clinical trials of NR for conditions of metabolic stress /6

& why there could be health claims for NR in the future. folks are barking up the wrong tree if they expect human lifespan experiments to be completed with NR or any other molecule. /7

we advise NR trialists to select the target population carefully & do the study for sufficient time to see results while combining with approaches like exercise that are complementary doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/n… /8

also, please stop putting NR in a basket with debunked snake oils like resveratrol or pterostilbene. eating veggies & blueberries is great for 1000s of reasons but it doesn't help legitimate NAD research to be associated with junk science /end

PS. If you are one of those parents, know that my thoughts are with you. Ppl like myself & @ranjitbindra are working on specific cancer approaches for specific tumors. Pls don’t be suckered by bad science, false claims & book promotion. False promises hurt ppl every day