The Better Body Lab Podcast
The Better Body Lab Podcast explores how science and lived experience intersect within the human ecology. Hosted by best-selling authors Dr. Taryn Marie and Mike Alden, each conversation brings together physicians, researchers, and wellness thought leaders to examine how we adapt, recover, and grow stronger—physically, mentally, and emotionally—in a complex world.
The Better Body Lab Podcast
Understanding NAD and Its Precursors: A Science-Based Guide to Health and Longevity
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What if optimizing longevity isn’t about chasing wellness trends — but about understanding how your cells create energy, repair damage, and adapt over time? In this episode of The Better Body Lab Podcast, we sit down with exercise scientist and longevity researcher Dr. Rachele Pojednic to explore the science behind NAD, supplementation myths, and sustainable health optimization.
Together, we examine how resilience, recovery, and performance are shaped within the “human ecology” of health — the interaction between biology, mindset, environment, and daily behavior. Dr. Rachele shares her journey from personal trainer to Stanford faculty and industry science leader, offering grounded insight into navigating longevity trends with evidence-based thinking.
This episode reinforces a key truth: sustainable energy, strength, and wellbeing are built through consistent habits — movement, nutrition, sleep, and stress regulation — not quick fixes or hype-driven protocols.
Dr. Rachele Pojednic:
Dr. Rachele Pojednic is Chief Science Officer at Restore Hyper Wellness and a Stanford faculty member specializing in nutrition, muscle physiology, and longevity research. Her work bridges academic science and real-world wellness application.
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Key Timestamps:
00:00 NAD trends & wellness myths
15:42 Foundational health habits
24:35 NAD IV vs precursor science
48:57 Women’s health & aging
57:38 Muscle preservation strategies
01:04:02 Peptide safety & regulation
01:17:35 Finding reliable health information
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Dr. Taryn Marie: www.resilience-leadership.com/
Mike Alden: https://www.mikealden.com/
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Okay, what does the data say that molecules are actually doing? Alright, so what we know about NAD, this is very important. This is critically important to what's gonna work and what's not going to work in the NAD supplementation world. NAD, when you make it in your body, is made inside the cell. I'm going to repeat that because it's really important. NAD is made inside the cell. It doesn't exist in high concentrations outside of the cell in your blood. And so this is really interesting because one of the ways that we are doing this in the wellness industry right now is infusing straight NAD into IVs, into people's blood. Have you guys ever gotten an NAD IV before?
SPEAKER_01We have not.
SPEAKER_03I've heard they're painful and I stay away from pain however I can.
SPEAKER_01That's why we're avoiding it, I think, because we hear that it burns when it goes in. And we're, you know, Tara and I are like, you know, we're interested in all this stuff, right? But I'm like, ah, you know, I don't like I don't want to feel that burn, you know.
SPEAKER_02It it is way worse than a burn, let me just tell you. It is chest pain.
SPEAKER_00Why does anybody want to do it then?
SPEAKER_02It's chest pain, it is nausea. In some cases, it is like literal instant diarrhea. And here's why.
SPEAKER_01That's Dr. Tara Maurice Day School, and this is the Better Body Lab Podcast.
SPEAKER_03Hello to all of you. We are so excited. We have Dr. Rachel Pojednik with us, and we are so excited about this interview because wait till I read you her series of titles. She is the Chief Science Officer at Restore Hyperwellness, and she's on faculty at Stanford University. I don't know, maybe you've heard of it, in the program for human biology and the director of education at Stanford Lifestyle Medicine. So, how exciting is that? Welcome, Dr. Rachel.
SPEAKER_02I am so thrilled to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
SPEAKER_03We're so excited. And what I'll just say for our listeners is we were actually able to have Dr. Rachel out here in March of last year in 2025, almost a year ago. And people just loved you. They absolutely adored, you know, how accessible in an accessible way that you shared information with them. They felt like you were so knowledgeable and that you care so deeply about people's physical wellness, their ability to access nutrition. And you really helped us understand. And I think this is so exciting, you know, really what you talk about, which is bridging that kind of like industry, like what's happening in the world, what things are people getting sold, and like what's the real science behind stuff? And is that going to make a meaningful and appreciable difference for us? So people just adore you, Dr.
SPEAKER_02Rachel. Oh, that's so amazing to hear, especially seeing as that's kind of my mission in life right now is to figure out how to bridge these gaps. So I very much appreciate that that is how it's coming across.
SPEAKER_03Yes. Well, you could make another mission in life being adored, because that's going really well for you, too. It could be like a secondary mission. So we love to start off, you know, because we hear all of your titles, and I'm like, whew, like palm to forehead. You are so brilliant. You're doing so many incredible things. You're at the forefront of research at one of the premier academic institutions, Stanford University, in the world. And so we also know that we love to know the personal story behind the professional accolades. So tell us a little bit for you. What's your journey been like personally that really uh inspired you and gets you motivated and excited to be doing the work that you're doing today?
SPEAKER_02This is such a great question because if you were to look at where I'm standing right now, you might actually think that it was purposeful, but it was kind of circuitous and almost accidental to be where I am today. So I started out way back in the day in the fitness industry. I was a personal trainer, I was enthusiastic about exercise, I was an athlete. And it turned into this career where caring about exercise and movement has translated into the foundation of what we now call longevity or longevity science. And so I did all of my training in Boston. I sort of went through or taught at many of the schools in the city. Mike's given me the high five there. So I did my PhD at Tufts in nutritional biochemistry and exercise. And it was really interesting when I went to do that degree. I had previously been really interested in human performance. I was looking with working with athletes and high performers. And when I went to this lab, it was all about people that were in their 80s and 90s and 100 plus. And when I knocked on the lab of my mentor there, Dr. Roger Fielding, I said, you know, I don't really want to study old people. I want to study young people and performance and what makes people really go at the highest level. And he said, Rachel, if you don't understand how muscle in particular breaks down, you can't understand the levers to pull with which to keep it healthy. And it was kind of a light bulb that went off with me at the time. And so muscle was really the tissue that I studied. And I became really interested in nutrition and supplementation specifically. So I looked at vitamin D early on, I looked at CBD for a while. And now I'm looking at IV applications like NAD and NR and how to keep people healthy for the long term. And so through sort of this circuitous route, I landed at this intersection of the industry world and also in academia. I was on the tenure track. I had been promoted to associate professor and COVID hit, and we all kind of went away for a while. And when we emerged, I had a really dear friend that was working at Restore as the chief medical officer. And he said, You've been studying all these hard things to study. You've been studying longevity. Would you ever be interested in coming to industry? And if you had known me three years ago, you would have said, Absolutely not. Rachel would never leave this career that she's built. But funny enough, I was listening to a podcast and the podcast host said, I'm just so angry that we're selling all these products in industry and making all these promises, but there's no scientists working there. Wouldn't it be awesome if industry would start to fund scientists? And this was about 15 minutes after I got the job offer, and I was just kind of like, universe? Uh, hello? And so I took a leap and I said yes. And I was really lucky that we were moving to the West Coast at the time and Stanford offered me a position, and then I have this job in industry. And I've really been able to think about how to connect the dots between this the exceptional science that is being done out there, the incredible business that is the wellness industry, and start to take a role of leadership here to figure out how can we actually give people good information so they can make choices that are at least based in some evidence to keep themselves healthy for the long term.
SPEAKER_01Wow, that's uh that that's great. You know, uh this podcast obviously is about health optimization, longevity, uh, you know, living the best life you can, you know, from a biological standpoint. But uh, as I was listening to you, I my my business uh mine was started spinning a little bit. Um, you know, so you you know, you are, you know, with one of the premier colleges as is what Taryn said, you know, in the world over at Stanford. Uh you went to Tufts, you know, you are uh over at restore hyperwellness, which by the way, as you know, Taryn and I are both members. We love it there. Um, so just you know throw that out there. Um so you you're you're in this this you know academic world and corporate world as well, but you also have your own company. Uh you're coming out with a book in 2027, you have your own website. Just out of curiosity, it's a little bit off on a tangent before we get into just um how was that in negotiating that for you as a businesswoman, uh, you know, in this in this emerging health and wellness space, basically them allowing you to have your own autonomy and your own business while at the same time, you know, working with and alongside these companies and educational institutions?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think the the great part of where I've landed right now is that science communication is so sought after. And one of my superpowers, I like to say, is taking really complicated science and making it easy and accessible for people to understand. And so what all of these institutions are looking for, whether it's Stanford or whether it's Restore, is somebody that is credible and can speak the science well in a way that people can understand. And so for Restore, it's really terrific for them that I have this academic touch point and that I'm still teaching and I'm communicating the science and investigating the science. For Stanford, they are sort of uniquely positioned in the world of academia where they like industry partnerships. This is very unusual for academic institutions. In fact, if you came up in traditional academia, most people will say if you ever go to industry, you can't come back. That is not the stance that Stanford takes. They really like these partnerships and encourage them. And then with my own work, if I am credible standing on my own two feet, then both of these other groups really like that. That is, you know, kind of the person and the persona that I bring out into the world. And so it was as I sort of just described my journey to come here, this is a position that has never really existed before. And so carving out these different pieces, including my contracts at each of these institutions. I'll give you a funny example. When I started the job at Restore, I was actually hired um by the two founders and the CEOs at the time. And they said, Rachel, will you come and spin up a lab? And we want you to do human trials and randomized control trials. And I said, Yeah, that would be great. I said, but hope hopefully you don't mind if I swear on your podcast because this is an actual story. Um I said specifically to them, I'm not here to rubber stamp your shit. Like if you want me to come in here, it is in my contract, literally, that there is a firewall between what I do in my lab and the data that they ingest into the marketing department or into the product development and the RD pipeline. And they purposefully set it up that way because they wanted me as a highly trained, credible professional to be able to bring that into their space with a lot of products that they knew suffered from an absence of evidence. So, Mike, I think it's an awesome question. And it's also a new role and it's a new navigation for a lot of us that are out here. But thinking about how to bridge all of these gaps, that's the way that I describe it all the time, is really important as these two worlds move forward together.
SPEAKER_01Thanks for that. You know, I just want to um hold on. I'm gonna, if you for those of you listening, I'm patting myself on the back because I did feel like it was somewhat of a unique, you know, kind of uh situation that you have. Uh, I wasn't sure, but thanks for that. And it's uh it's uh you know somewhat you know innovative for both Restore and um um Stanford to to allow you to do that. And and ultimately, you know, we're gonna get into the things that you're doing now as far as sharing this information. And as Dr. Tarn said earlier, you do such a great job of you know, kind of breaking down the science and making it, you know, easily digestible to the to the average everyday person. So thank you for that.
SPEAKER_02You know where that actually I think originated from? Before I went back to school to my PhD, I was a middle school science teacher for about four years. And so being able to break down science for a bunch of seventh and eighth graders was actually incredible practice for science communication. A lot of people don't know this, but for example, the New York Times writes in the context of an eighth grader.
SPEAKER_01Eighth grader, yeah.
SPEAKER_02And so to be able to speak science to that age group has been super helpful in breaking down really complicated pathways and physiology in ways that people can really understand and ingest. So that was a fun little twist that I didn't bring up in my history, but to stint with my seventh and eighth graders there for several several years before I went back to grad school.
SPEAKER_03I love that. Oh, sorry, Mike. And I'll if if I could just add on to that, I believe that the most intelligent people are the ones who are able to explain things at an eighth-grade level or a fifth grade level or a third grade level. And I remember when I was on fellowship in neuropsychology, I had um, you know, a basically like the head of, you know, kind of our lab and our department. And we had people coming in with, you know, who had sustained significant brain injuries and family members who maybe didn't finish high school, you know. And he said, look, he said, if you can't explain to them what has happened and what's going on in their life in a way that they can understand it, you don't truly understand it yourself.
SPEAKER_02I think that's so true. And being able to have that skill is just so helpful in this time period that we find ourselves with, as we're gonna talk about some pretty complicated therapeutics in the wellness industry. That's cool.
SPEAKER_01For me, though, I was gonna say, if you could, I know Dr. Karen said fifth grade, you guys start eighth, fifth grade, and then she went to the hopefully maybe you can just for me, by the way, not for our listeners or our viewers, just for me, maybe second grade level on some of this stuff so I can uh understand it. But that's that's all I was gonna say.
SPEAKER_02I got you, Mike.
SPEAKER_03I got you.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, thank you.
SPEAKER_03We'll do our best, we'll do our best. Well, let's let's dive in, right? So um what do you think right now in the world, Dr. Rachel, when you look at sort of the you know, aggregate of therapies, you know, that you see I IVs, sauna, cold plunge, research peptides, GLP ones, um, where do you where do you think we should start in terms of what where do science and industry really intersect in terms of like what is actionable and meaningful for people's physiology and maybe like where are some of the gaps?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's a great question. So I think just to set a little bit of foundation, one of the most important things that I think both of these worlds agree on is that there are big levers that you can pull for health and longevity, and then there are probably some smaller levers. So the big levers are things like exercise, eat a healthy diet, have a stress-coping mechanism, make sure you have a social network around you, uh, have a good sleep regimen, right? And all of those things are going to have what we call in science a massive effect size, right? So effect size basically means the magnitude with which it's going to impact your body. And so that's why I call them big levers. If you're nailing those foundational components, then you can start to move on to some fun little levers. And these are the things that you've just described, right? So this is sauna, this is cold plunger cryotherapy, this is IV micronutrients. We just published a paper on NAD and NR, and I would love to talk about that. And we published a paper on GLP ones and how those can be really helpful and useful. But if you don't have those foundational elements down first, which both of these worlds agree with, then the effect size of these smaller levers are gonna essentially be blunted because they're not building on top of a solid foundation already.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so thinking about the big levers that we can pull, how should a person be thinking about sleep, exercise, stress mitigation, diet and exercise?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. The good thing about this is that this is fairly simple. It doesn't have to be complicated at all. Is for exercise, move your body, pick something that you will do continuously. I will die on that hill. I could argue, you know, strength training, what kind of strength training, hip training, sit training, all the things. Should you be doing zone two? All of this. What matters is that you do it. That's the most important part. For diet, eating intact foods as much as you possibly can, being really careful about highly processed foods, make sure you're hydrating, keep alcohol at a minimum, you're gonna be nailing it. From sleep perspective, the thing that seems to be most important from the sleep literature is sleep consistency. So all of these ideas of like you have to get so many hours of sleep, you need, you know, to have a whole sleep regimen. If you go to bed at the same time and wake up at the same time every day, it seems to be the most important thing. From a social perspective, have people around you that have your back, right? Like have people that you can call up on a day where you're really stressed out or really excited, that you can go and meet in high five, that you can share your deepest secrets with. That seems to be really helpful. Loneliness is a real problem in our world right now. And then if you do all of those things, likely within those big levers, one of those things is gonna be your stress mitigator. You're gonna exercise to de-stress, you're gonna go meet your friends, you're gonna go for a walk or listen to some music. And so I think all of these things really don't have to be complicated. People get so confused with all of the heavy air quotes protocols that need to be followed. And as it turns out, these big levers are just really simple.
SPEAKER_01Amazing. You know, um, some of the you you mentioned, you know, NAD and NR. Honestly, I don't even know what NR is, but I'll ask that in a second. But um, I was just, you know, so um both Tara and I take NMM um and uh which is a precursor, right, to to NAD. Uh we also have a pretty rigorous uh peptide protocol, we'll we'll talk a little bit about. Uh, but I was I was watching some videos earlier today about NAD uh and longevity, and you know, I I forget the doctor's name, but he's pretty prolific out there talking about NAD and effectively almost like reversing aging. Um and so Restore has has some research out there. I'd love to love for you to give us an education on NAD uh because it seems there seems to be supplements that people are taking. There seems to be supplements that are labeled as NAD. As you know, I'm an attorney in this space as well. So I think that some of that stuff is is is actually mislabeled or even misbranded. Um love to hear about what is NAD, you know, why should people really pay attention, and you know, really what is the best way to get it? Because one more thing is I also hear that if you inject it, it's it's not it's not as it's not as good as people think. Um the stability on NAD, which I'm which I'm pretty um you know knowledgeable on, is also it's very unstable as a peptide. So love to hear everything that you can give to us on a second grade level for me on NAD.
SPEAKER_02I love that this is where we're segueing because this actually, if you think about the link between the big levers and the little levers, NAD is a really good molecule to focus on. So NAD, I'm gonna bring you back. I'm gonna bring you back to ninth grade biology, Mike.
SPEAKER_01All right, I can handle it. I can handle it.
SPEAKER_02So ninth grade, you probably learned about metabolism. You might remember glycolysis, the Krebs cycle, the mitochondria, maybe the electron transport chain. And that is where NAD shows up in your body. So you naturally make NAD. And one thing to call out that has actually been starting to drive me crazy is NAD is not a peptide. It's actually a nucleotide, which sounds like semantics, but it it's really important because the the actual molecule itself is not an amino acid-based molecule, which is what a peptide would be. And we can talk about the difference when we look at peptides in a few minutes. But NAD is essentially your currency of life. So NAD is what's going to shuttle a little hydrogen around inside your mitochondria and it makes ATP. ATP is energy. I remember that. Yep. And so if you think about the big levers that we were just talking about, those are going to be really important for either making NAD from the food that you eat from diet. Which is going to be the primary place where you're going to get the precursors. It's going to come from a little amino acid called tryptophan, which gets converted. It can get you can get it from B vitamins, niacin. You can get it as you described from NMN, nicotinamide mononucleotide, NR, which we'll talk about, nicotinamide riboside. And all of these are going to be in your food. You're going to use NAD when you exercise, right? And the other really interesting thing about NAD is that it starts to decline with aging. It starts to decline with exposures in the environment, whether it's sun is really damaging for NAD, alcohol, stress, getting a virus or an infection. And so what we see is that in those cases, oftentimes you can't eat enough food in order to replenish this NAD that starts to decline with aging. And so this is where we're starting to see that supplementation, either oral or what I just studied in my most recent manuscript, IV, which is very popular right now, can be very helpful for increasing those NAD concentrations in your cell. And the reason why this is important is because as those NAD concentrations start to decline, we see aging occur. So there are 12 hallmarks of aging. They're all sort of like very specific physiologically. You've probably heard of mitochondrial health or telomere length or inflammation. All of those things get worse when NAD concentrations start to decline. And it's really interesting when we look at some of the data that's out there that's starting to become quite compelling. We see that those NAD concentrations are also related to diseases of aging that are mostly neurodegenerative. Karen, this is something that you'd be super interested in. Is that we're seeing it with dementia, with Alzheimer's, with Parkinson's, is that these concentrations are so low. And we don't know yet if it's the disease that's consuming extra NAD or if it's low levels of NAD leading to the disease. It's a bit of a chicken or the egg question right now. But either way, what we're seeing is that increasing these NAD concentrations does seem to have beneficial effect, especially for these folks that have diseases. So this is where I get really curious. And I'm like, hey, the wellness industry has been on to something for a while here. However, I just told you that we just published a paper this week, hot off the presses. It was the first manuscript looking at IV NAD compared to IVNR. So one of the things that we have to be really careful about in the wellness industry is that we are pretty far out over our skis when we're looking at what the data is actually saying that these molecules are doing.
SPEAKER_03Okay, what is what is what does the data say that molecules are actually doing?
SPEAKER_02All right. So you mentioned, Mike, just a minute ago that you're taking NMN.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_02So what we know about NAD, this is very important. This is critically important to what's going to work and what's not going to work in the NAD supplementation world. NAD, when you make it in your body, is made inside the cell. I'm going to repeat that because it's really important. NAD is made inside the cell. It doesn't exist in high concentrations outside of the cell in your blood. And so this is really interesting because one of the ways that we are doing this in the wellness industry right now is infusing straight NAD into IVs, into people's blood. Have you guys ever gotten an NAD IV before?
SPEAKER_01We have not.
SPEAKER_03I've heard they're painful and I and I stay away from pain however I can.
SPEAKER_01That's why we're avoiding it, I think, because we hear that it burns when it goes in. And we're, you know, Tara and I are like, you know, we're interested in all this stuff, right? But I'm like, ah, you know, I don't like, I don't want to feel that burn, you know.
SPEAKER_02It it is way worse than a burn, let me just tell you. It is chest pain.
SPEAKER_00Why does anybody want to do it then?
SPEAKER_02It's chest pain, it is nausea in some cases. It is like literal instant diarrhea. And here's why. Remember what I just told you. Remember what I just told you. NAD exists inside the cell. So when we infuse massive doses, 500 milligrams, 750 milligrams, a thousand milligrams of straight NAD into the blood, your body freaks out. Your immune system is like, why is this molecule that's not supposed to be in this place here? And it goes scavenging, it goes looking to figure out are cells lysing? Am I in multi-system organ failure? Like, why is this molecule in the wrong place? And when you trigger your immune system when it's not supposed to be triggered, you have these adverse experiences. Now, here's what I'll say: there's nothing wrong. You're everything is fine. You're just getting this like nauseous feeling. The second you stop the IV, it goes away. There doesn't seem to be any problems with the actual feeling. However, this is also really important because your body makes NAD inside the cell. Your cell never actually created a transporter to get it from the outside to the inside. So intuitively, it sounds like it makes sense. If we give NAD, we will have more NAD. But if they had asked a biochemist back in the day, is this gonna work? We would have said no, because there's no trans, you can't get it from the outside in. So this is why it's really great, Mike and Taryn, that you guys are taking NMN. Because what we do see is that with NAD infusions, the NAD will get converted to either NMN or to NR through a very specific enzyme. And both NMN and NR have a transporter that can get that molecule inside the cell. And then once it's inside the cell, your body knows what to do with it. It now can make the NAD in the place that it's supposed to be. But here's the other thing that's happening that's problematic. In that moment where you are having chest pain and stinging and nausea and diarrhea, your liver and your kidneys are also doing their job. And there was actually one infusion study that was done on NAD specifically several years ago that actually looked at the amount that comes out in your pee during a six-hour infusion. And it's almost 100%. And the reason for this is yeah, the reason for this is because your body is primed to get rid of things that are not supposed to be in your bloodstream. Your liver and your kidneys will do their job. And so, in that, you know, 10, 15, 20 minutes where the conversion is supposed to be happening, a lot of that is just being siphoned off because it's not in the right place. So not only does it make you feel like holy hell, it's also not making a ton of NAD inside your cell because it can't get in there. And while it's trying to get in, your kidneys and your liver are doing their job and they're making this $1,500 drip that you've just had basically ineffective. And this is the part that drives me bonkers, is you get all these like longevity bros out there being like, oh, like the hurt is the is the NAD doing its job. No, it's not. No, it's not. That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. The hurt is because the process is not uh is not allowing the molecule to get into the cell. And that's just a straight indicator that this is not the right molecule to be infusing.
SPEAKER_01So I'll fast forward and then I'll keep this part really hold on to that thought, hold on to that thought for one second. Uh, I want to just pause for a second for our viewers and our listeners, and then I'd love for you to continue this thought and then to tell I ultimately I want to know is how should we take NAD? You know, we're you know, because it sounds like it's good for us, but uh, I don't know. I'm not I don't feel like sitting there feeling having chest pain, burning, and diarrhea all at the same time. It doesn't sound like it sounds like uh, I don't know, Terran and ayahuasca journey or something, or maybe even worse.
SPEAKER_03But any with none of the psychedelic benefits. It's true. It's so true.
SPEAKER_01So so so hold on to that thought, and then we'll come back uh for our viewers and listeners. Uh, and so you can tell us, you know, should we take NAD? How do we take it? What's the best way to do it? And and and all those fun things, fun things. Um, folks, we've been on with Dr. Rachel Pajednik, I think I said it right. Um, she is uh she is over at Restore Hyperwellness. She's uh obviously she's a scientist, she's a um, she's an author, uh, and clearly, as we would say from Boston, because she went to Tufts as well, she's as I like to say, wicked smart, really understands this stuff. And and this is why we do this here on the Better Body Lab podcast, you know, with my co-host and wife, Dr. Taryn Maurice Dayskill. Um, because we would we and we want to educate ourselves, but we also want to educate you as well to learn about you know, what should I be doing? What shouldn't I be doing? Where's the where's the science? You know, what where's the science coming in? What are some of the emerging things that are happening? And this is why, again, we have guests like Dr. Rachel on, and I will I just want to give uh uh Taryn, Dr. Dr. Tamari a little bit of uh you know, props, so to speak. Um, since we started this podcast, uh Dr. Taran has actually um got all of the guests. And so hopefully I'm gonna be able to bring some uh some of my my own as well. But man, I am super excited just to have her here. So if you'd like some more information uh about Dr. Rachel, we'll have everything right there in the notes. Her book is coming out uh in 2027, so obviously you want to kind of follow that when it becomes available, it'll be everywhere where books are sold. Um so just check out uh in the notes. It will show we have her Instagram, we have her website, and all these other different places where you can connect with Dr. Rachel as well. Okay. Um, NAD, you know, as you said, everybody's talking about it. We got these bros out there saying, hey, you should, it's just doing its job. I love those guys drive me insane too. Um as I'm listening to you, I'm like, I don't want to do this stuff. Like, why would I want to do this? So tell us about, you know, you know, how should we take it? Should we take it? Shouldn't we take it? Like what's what's what's the real what's the real indication here?
SPEAKER_02So I'm gonna use an analogy and then I'll come back to what you should actually do. So if you want to make muscle in your body, you have to eat the protein, you have to eat the amino acids in order to build that muscle. The same principle also holds true for NAD. If you want your body to make NAD, you need to give it the building blocks. And the building blocks from either a supplementation or an IV perspective are going to be NMN, nicotinamide mononucleotide. That's what you're taking via an oral supplement, I'm assuming, because there isn't an IV formulation yet. Although I would imagine that somebody is probably cooking this one up. And then there's NR, nicotinamide ribicide. And this is also going to be a precursor. Either one, they're used fairly interchangeably in the cell in order to make NAD. And NR is available as an oral supplement. The um major company is called True Niogen. That's one of the big ones, the little blue bottle. Um, and then you also they have just created Niogen Biosciences, has just created an IV version of NR, which is what I studied. Full disclosure, the only association that I have with Niogen Biosciences is they provided the molecule for us to infuse. We sell it at Restore, but I have no financial relationship with them. This is just, you know, strictly about the science. And so what we found was that when you infuse the NR, a couple of really great things happen. Number one, the NAD concentrations go up much more rapidly than with the NAD. And this physiologically makes sense. There's a transporter, there's a door to get that molecule into the cell so that it can make it. And the other thing that was really great about this is we found out that you get almost none of those side effects. And the reason for this is because NR is a molecule that your body knows how to deal with. Remember just a second ago that I said you get all these precursors from food. When you get NR from food, whether it's uh meat products or you can get it in brewer's yeast, there's a couple of other places that you can find um B vitamin derivatives that can also become NR, that your body doesn't freak out when it's in your bloodstream because it's like, oh, hey, I've seen you before, I know what to do. And then it can bring it into the cell, exactly, and it can make NAD. So, Mike, you're doing it right without even necessarily realizing it, is that taking these precursors, the building blocks, if you will, is the way to make sure that your NAD concentrations go up. And this has been shown in the oral data for years and years and years. Um, we've got some really good data to show that NR supplementation increases NAD concentrations inside the cell and that those concentrations are then associated with some of these health outcomes that we're seeing for longevity. So, how do we want to do it? Let's recap. Number one, take the precursors. You can get it from food. If you want that higher dose, then you want to get it from a supplement. An NMN, an NR, or a combination of the two is the right way to get the delivery.
SPEAKER_03And is there a difference, Dr. Rachel, between taking like a supplement as in a pill versus there's also, I feel like some conversation about the liposomal delivery? Yep. Great question.
SPEAKER_02Okay, so now we have to go to the orals really quickly. So there are NR, NMN, and there are emerging NAD molecules that are coming in the oral. NAD molecules, the actual nucleotide, is not well absorbed in the gut. And even if it was well absorbed in the gut, remember that I told you that your body doesn't want NAD in the bloodstream. And the first place that your bloodstream goes once it absorbs the nutrients from your small intestine is the liver. And so if you take an NAD oral and it goes to your liver, your liver is going to be like, what the hell are you doing here? and picks it to your kidneys. This is where the liposomal delivery mechanism is starting to come into play. And the theory goes something like this. If you can create a liposomal kind of encapsulation, if you will, it's like a little fat circular globule that goes around these molecules, then you can deliver it to the cell and it will drop this molecule off at the cell. There's a lot of drug uh pharmaceuticals that are delivered via a liposomal um encapsulation.
SPEAKER_01What does that what does that mean, liposomal?
SPEAKER_02Yep. So when you look at a liposome, it is a essentially it's a little circle of fat that will create a package around the molecule that you want to deliver. And that little fat, if you will, will um will protect the molecule inside. Once it gets to the cell, which is also fat on the exterior, the theory is that it will kind of attach to that cell, open, and the molecule that is inside will be delivered intracellularly. So, in theory, this sounds like it could potentially work, right? Um, there isn't any that I have seen data at all. So we have a serious absence of evidence that I like to call it, that this delivery mechanism actually delivers NAD intact into the cell. This has not been studied. So in theory, it could work, but this is where we start to see all these claims on these products, right? It's like it's liposomal, so it's going to deliver this mechanism in a better way. I don't know if that's true or not. And this is why I get, I get like, I get really frustrated with my industry that we are making these claims based on, you know, delivery mechanisms that were developed by big pharma, right? And then being like, oh, big pharma, and like we're sort of like stealing their molecules and their delivery mechanisms. And so again, this is like a bridge the gap situation, right? Where I'm like, if we really want to study whether or not NAD delivered liposomally works, we as the industry that's making these claims has a responsibility to actually demonstrate that, right? Like we can't just deal in biological plausibilities all the time. So for liposomal orals, I would say, I don't know, and they're really expensive. Don't waste your money. Use the one that we know works, that's been demonstrated over and over and over again. It's the NR, it's the NMN. It gets through your digestive tract, it gets through your liver, it goes to the cell, it's got a transporter there. Like let's go with the true physiology and not be wasting people's money, essentially. And at the end of the day, people are taking these NAD molecules for really good reasons. They want to live longer, healthier lives. Potentially they they have some kind of a disorder that they're trying to address. And if we're selling them a hundred dollar bottle of liposomal NAD or the drops or whatever that people are taking now, and we don't know that they actually work, like that's pretty dishonest, in my opinion. And so again, this is where I get on my soapbox and I'm like, let's hire some scientists in the wellness industry to figure this out. It's not that hard. Like it's a it's a dry blood spot test. Give it to people, test them over the next six hours, and like we can have this study done fairly quickly and not very expensively. So I that's I think it's really important.
SPEAKER_01I love it. Um, you know, I as you'd know, I'm an attorney in in this space and grew up in this space. And, you know, bioavailability is not a foregone conclusion based off of what other other products have been as far as the absorption rate. Um, I've seen that and and had to defend that in in federal court before. Um, so just real quick, so we're talking about the liposomal. Uh the one thing um uh that I that I do know a little bit about, and you mentioned the drops. What about sublingual? Is it is there any data out there as it relates to NAD and sublingual um bioavailability or no?
SPEAKER_02No data.
SPEAKER_01No.
SPEAKER_02Um and again, here's the thing is that you would suffer from the same problem. And I'm seeing this too with like IM shots or sub-Q, um, you know, like tiny needle shots. If you give NAD the NAD molecule, you are going to excrete most of it before it can effectively get transformed and brought into the cell, regardless of where you put it, under your tongue, in a muscle, in the fat that's right underneath your blood, your skin. Now, I will give you a slightly different perspective here. So, so far, what we've been talking about is increasing intracellular NAD, right? That's the marker that we're all chasing. That seems to be where the data is showing there is benefit for some of these clinical outcomes, neurodegeneration, sleep. Um, there's some other interesting and markers that people are looking at with metabolism. We saw a little bit of signal there. However, there is a theory that the NAD, when it starts to dissociate, will have some indirect effects on organs potentially like the brain. So there is a theory. This has not been demonstrated in any literature whatsoever. In fact, that's not true. There was, I think, one study that was done in the 1950s looking at NAD and um um disorders that are uh like substance use disorders. Um, and so there is a theory out there that you can give people really high dose NAD and it will help alleviate and maybe even treat their substance use disorders. And the theory goes because that the A part, the adenosine part of the molecule, will get into the brain where we know that there is a receptor and it could potentially be helpful. This has not been shown in any data. And the other theory that I'm hearing in this space right now, and Taryn, this is way more your up your alley than mine, is that it actually the way that it might work for folks that have a substance use disorder is it essentially creates this temporary system of pain and then relief. And so for somebody that has an addiction disorder, they will seek out their substance when they are in severe pain, typically. And once they take that substance, that pain alleviates. And so, in the case of giving the IV, you get that chest pain, you get the nausea, you get the you know, instant diarrhea. And then the second you stop that drip, it goes away. And so it is possible, it is it is possible that the adenazine molecule. Itself is having an effect on the brain. And it's also possible that this pain relief system is beneficial for people that have this substance use disorder. However, this is really important. There is zero, zero data to show that that is actually what's happening. Right now, it's just theoretical. That being said, that mechanism has nothing to do with the longevity effects that we're talking about here, right? What the longevity effects that we're talking about have to do with is increasing that NAD that's inside of your cell that's important for energy and DNA repair and signaling.
SPEAKER_03I love that we just likened an NAD IV to kind of uh the regret that occurs after a wild Saturday night.
SPEAKER_01Can I ask um Taryn? I know I'm I don't mean to monopolize this, I just um foods. You had mentioned, you know, uh there are there particular foods because you know you hear like, you know, like omegas, you know, if you have a certain you know, fish or or what have you, or or vitamin D is very, very hard to get unless you're eating a bunch of mushrooms or or uh you know uh eating lanolin uh from sheep or what have you. Um so uh are there particular foods that we should eat uh in addition to supplementation that have uh you know high NAD content to them?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so um your NAD from food precursors is gonna come from a couple of different places. One of the major ones is going to be niacin, which is a B3 vitamin, right? And so any place where you're gonna have a high niacin meat products are pretty high. There's some plants that you can get pretty high niacin levels, that's gonna be a precursor that will eventually become NAD inside your system. Tryptophan, as I mentioned just a moment ago. So that's one little amino acid. Um, people like to say you get it from turkey. That's the thing that makes you tired. Actually, the mashed potatoes and the pie make you tired, not the turkey. Um, but any anything that's high in those, that amino acid or that B vitamin, that's going to be the main place where you're gonna be getting the dietary precursors. But again, here's the problem that we're seeing in the literature is that it seems to be that food after a long period of time, particularly as you start to get into your 50s, 60s, 70s, you've got degeneration happening just because you're aging, you've had exposures for a long period of time, several decades, that that might not be enough from food alone in order to keep these NAD levels at the concentrations that we're looking for. However, that brings me to another really important point. As you mentioned earlier, Mike, NAD is kind of a fleeting molecule, right? Sometimes it's NAD, sometimes it's NADH, it gets recycled a lot, it gets degraded a lot inside of the body. It's very hard to study NAD concentrations. And right now, we don't have an adequate range that we would want people to have inside of their cells. So, for example, if you go and get your vitamin D levels taken, we have a very specific molecule, 25 OHD, that we are measuring in your blood. And we have very specific range that is, you know, you are deficient, you are sufficient, um, and anything in between there, we want to make sure that you're moving you into the sufficient range. We don't have that for NAD right now. And part of the reason is twofold. One is it's really hard to test in the blood because it's fleeting. The other is that it is acutely variable. So, Taryn, you just mentioned like you go out on a bender for a weekend, right? And you get yourself tested on Monday morning. I can guarantee that your NAD concentrations are going to be low because you have just depleted them from the alcohol. You are probably really tired, you have been exposed to a lot of germs for people that were at the club, right? And so your NAD concentrations are likely going to be low. What that doesn't mean is that you need some kind of supplement to bring them back up. It's quite possible that you're just going to be fine 36 hours later. And so what we see is that these NAD concentrations rise and fall with different exposures. And so from that problem, it's really hard to define a normal range because you're constantly using and then resupplying that molecule. Whereas something like vitamin D gets stored in your body really easily in your fat tissues. We have uh, you know, fair amount that you're going to get either from supplementation or from food, as you pointed out. And that concentration remains fairly steady most days, most of the time. So it's this is a challenge. This molecule is like it's it's fun, honestly, that to be part of doing this research now is figuring out how do we actually study this, um, knowing that there are so many different parameters that are going to affect it.
SPEAKER_03Amazing. I love it. Let's talk a little bit more about aging. And of course, because I'm in my I'm beyond my mid-40s right now. I'm 47. So we are in the perimenopause, menopause striking zone. We look great though. We don't look a day over 27. Um how do we think about what we should be doing right now in our 40s? Uh, what should we be eating? You know, what does exercise look like? What does supplementation look like? Guide us on, Dr. Rachel. What does the science say in terms of where should we be focused for healthy aging with the big levers, the big levers, diet, exercise, stress, and the smaller levers in terms of really uh what's, I mean, what's the word? Like more seamlessly facing this perimenopause, menopause transition.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, this is a really great question. And I actually think it follows a really similar talk track to NAD and what we're sort of seeing there and the claims that are being made and the lack of studies. We know that women are notoriously understudied. And so this is an area that I focus on. I've uh studied women very extensively throughout my career, specifically through the lens of skeletal muscle and aging. And this is a statistic that blows my mind is that as of last count, only about 6% of performance data is on women. And this is kind of what we're hearing right now in the kind of health sphere, all the headlines that we're seeing is what kind of exercise you should be doing? What's the diet that's perfect for you? What should be, what should you be doing to optimize? It's based on very little data, which is actually a thread through the book that I am writing is like, what do we know about women specifically? And then the other statistic that always blows my mind, and and Taryn, you'll really appreciate this or be really horrified by it, is that only 0.5% of neuroimaging studies are done on women. 0.5%. So when women are complaining about brain fog and irritability and vasomotor symptoms, we don't have the data to actually show what exactly is happening, first of all. But second of all, what we really don't have is how to fix it. Right. And so this is where, again, I get a little bit frustrated with our wellness space, is that everybody seems to have the answer, right? And this is where I say, where did you get this information from? Because it doesn't exist in the world. So for you to like very emphatically say women need to be doing HIIT training and zone two is really bad for them, or they should be eating a hundred grams of protein every day, or there should be you you need to go to bed at nine o'clock at night and make sure that you don't eat two hours before you go to bed. The data doesn't exist. The data doesn't exist. That being said, women have of a certain age. I will I will put us in this world. We have agency, we have purchasing power, we have questions, we are looking for answers, and that creates a ripe universe to give women the solution to their problems at a very high price tag. And so when you ask me what are the things that women should be focusing on, it's the big levers. It's get enough exercise, move your body in a way that feels good and right to you. I know the way that my body is moving at age 45 is very different than the way that my body was moving at age 25, right? And so I will do things that make my body strong and healthy now that maybe my 25-year-old self would have been like, do you really need to be going for that many walks during the week? And I'm like, yes, my mental health needs the walk. And also, like, this is just what my body is feeling like it needs and wants right now. My 25-year-old self probably would have been outrunning eight miles. And you know what? Good for her. That was an amazing time for her. And so this is again, I I've used this air quotes with protocols a lot, drives me bananas in our longevity world because the protocol that I'm living by now at age 45 is a very different protocol than my 25-year-old self lived by. And if we stick with those same protocols all the time, you know what we're setting ourselves up for? Failure. Like it's just going to be that we can't do the same thing that we do all of our life. I have a dear friend, she uses this term, which I love a season, a reason, a lifetime, right? And there are things that you do for a season. Let's say I'm training for a marathon. That's gonna look really different than a reason, right? Like I want myself to be healthy and capable long term. And then a lifetime, like these are just practices. I'm gonna eat my fruits and vegetables till the day I die, right? Because that is a foundational practice. So that was a long-winded way, Taryn, to say we don't have the answer right now for women. And it actually really frustrates me when people say, I know the exact protocol for us, a woman in her 40s, mid-50s, later on. We don't have the answer, which doesn't mean that we shouldn't experiment. Let's figure it out. It's awesome. You want to exercise hard? Great. You want to go for a walk? Cool. You want to eat 100 grams of protein? Terrific. Is it keeping you healthy right now? Are you feeling good? Are you at the right weight? Are you sleeping well? Then it's working. Keep doing it, keep going. I know that's a really unsatisfactory answer because I don't know the protocol.
SPEAKER_03You know what I love about it is it's a really honest answer.
SPEAKER_02And I try really hard. You know, it's it's I I wish, I wish that our our world, our longevity world, would be a little bit more honest with people.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Because you know what? If they were more honest with people, people would be less confused and they would also feel more empowered to make the choices that are right for them. Like there is a huge argument happening in my exercise world right now between people that want to do resistance training and people that want to do Pilates. And I'm like, are we really wasting our time on this right now? We're having Instagram fights over resistance training versus Pilates. That's wild because you know what? 80% of the population isn't even moving their body. I would love it if somebody did Pilates or somebody did strength training. Because you know what, at the end of the day, as a muscle researcher, I can tell you you're gonna make your muscle healthy, doing either of those things. And if strength training is the thing that you love to do and you'll keep doing, do it. If Pilates is the thing that right now, at this season of your life feels amazing to you, do it. And don't feel confused and don't feel conflicted because it's not the right protocol.
SPEAKER_01I love myself. I'll go to Instagram fight. Taryn will tell you that. Uh, I I know we've been going for a while, and and you mentioned muscle. And Taryn, unless you um, well, let's see how much longer we can keep you. Um, so I'm 50, uh, and um I'm uh my weight is actually probably the lightest it's been since high school. Uh I'm really trying hard to keep the weight lower and then maintain that muscle mass by doing a lot of different things. But if you could, and and maybe you you could give a universal answer for both men and women. I don't even know if it's possible. But you know, as we start to age, what are some of the things that we 100% should be doing to maintain that muscle density and that muscle mass itself uh as as we age? Because I feel like for me, uh, because I'll I'll do the body scans, not the DEXA ones, but the one, those scales that you know you can kind of hold on to the different that runs the electrodes to your body. So I know that they're not perfect, but what are some of the things that both men and women should 100% be doing to maintain that muscle mass uh as we age? It's a great question.
SPEAKER_02And that machine is called a BIA machine, bioelectrical impedance machine. We actually use it for store. Um, I we just published a study on GLP1s and skeletal muscle to basically figure out if you can take a GLP1 and maintain skeletal muscle mass at the same time. The answer is you absolutely can. And this goes to how we did it, Mike. And this holds true. We had a cohort of women and men, and it worked for getting adequate protein, moving your body, and if you want to maintain skeletal muscle, you actually need to stimulate that muscle. So some kind of strength training exercise was really important. Now, here's something really fun. When I say strength training, and this is why I could care less if it's Pilates or strength training, like actual resistance training, there is data out there that never gets highlighted that basically shows that you can do a, you know, two by one hundred dumbbell curl or 100 by two pounds, which is basically like a Pilates or a bar class. And as long as you bring that muscle to near failure, so fatigue, essentially, that that muscle will become healthy and robust. Now, here's the trick: if you do two by 100, you take that gigantic dumbbell, you're gonna be able to lift something heavy a couple of times. If you do 100 by two pounds, you are gonna have what we call muscle endurance, right? You're gonna be able to do something continuously long term. So the outcome is going to be different. If you want to be strong and be able to lift very heavy things, you have to lift very heavy things. If you want your muscle to be healthy, metabolically robust, and doing what it should do as you age, your muscles don't care if you do two by 100 or 100 by two, as long as you go to fatigue. And that's the trick. So your diet and your exercise were the most important things, especially as you were in a weight loss or a calorie deficit over time. And that holds true whether or not you want to maintain your actual weight or you're losing, or maybe even you want to gain weight, is that you need to give your muscle what it needs, which is protein, as those precursors, and then also stimulate that muscle with some kind of an external load.
SPEAKER_01Taryn, I know that you're really starting to pay attention to your protein intake. Like, what are your thoughts on that?
SPEAKER_03You know, what I would love to do actually is I would love to jump to research peptides.
SPEAKER_01Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_03If that's all right.
SPEAKER_01Sure, sure.
SPEAKER_03Um, because as you mentioned, Mike, we have a fairly robust uh stack of research peptides that we have built out over time, um, including uh BPC 157, MOTC, AOD, it's like alphabet soup with these things, GB500, GHKC.
SPEAKER_01G HKC.
SPEAKER_03So um, Dr. Rachel, how how would you guide us um relative to the science around, you know, first of all, what are kind of research peptides for our audience? And how do we sort of think about them?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, this is a great question. And honestly, a really lovely transition because people are taking a lot of peptides right now in order to enhance skeletal muscle, in order to recover from exercise or injury, which is the primary reason that people will use BPC 157. You know, you've got some of these um growth hormones, secretagogs that are supposed to be really helpful for increasing skeletal muscle mass. And so before I start, I just want to say I'm very bullish about peptides. I truly am. And one of the reasons that I'm very bullish about peptides is because we see that they naturally occur in your body and they are quite powerful. So a really good example that we have in the world that we were just talking about is a GLP1 peptide, right? So your GI tract, your digestive system, makes GLP1 naturally when you eat, goes to your brain, it signals satiety very powerfully, it goes to your pancreas, it signals insulin secretion. And so what we see is that these peptides are A, in most cases, naturally occurring, and B, pretty powerful in the body. That's where things get a little bit sideways, is that there have been many peptides that have been studied in the sort of breadth of the research that work really well in cells, they work really well in animals, and then we give them to humans and they don't do what we think that they were going to do. So um, ghrelin is a really good example. We were giving people ghrelin, it was supposed to be um an appetite stimulant. Um, that's what ghrelin is a naturally occurring peptide in your stomach. Um, the way you can remember it is ghrelin makes you go gur.
SPEAKER_01Is that the one? Is that is that the one? Yeah, so that that actually spikes because I I've I've been um fasting and intermittent fasting, and and that's the hormone that, yeah, like you said, that that makes you feel hungry.
SPEAKER_02Yep, exactly right.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_02And so when we gave it to people, we were expecting to increase appetite, which was really good for if you think about somebody that has like um cancer cochexia, right? Like they have no appetite when they are um getting their treatment. And it turns out it just didn't work. Like it just, it literally just didn't work. And there are some other cases where we've given peptides and they had some pretty gnarly side effects, a lot having to do with mental health, depression, suicidal ideation, right? And so this is where I get a little bit nervous with the peptides that we're putting out in the market, is that they've actually never been studied in any kind of robust human trials to understand the outcomes that we are looking at. So, for example, BPC157. I believe there is one human study. Um, there's a several preclinical. Um, preclinical in my world means either cells or animals to show that it has a biological effect. Um, but we're kind of taking it without knowing what the parameters are. Is it actually working? What's the right dose? Nobody knows this. You have probably seen and experienced that there's a thousand different protocols where you're cycling on, cycling off. What are you supposed to stack together? Should you take it before bed? Should you take it in the morning? And we have very limited data to look at those particular parameters, which is why, and everybody's losing their mind over this, which is why the FDA put the kibosh on this in late September, early October of 2023. What they said was that all of the peptides that were being created and formulated and compounded in the United States went onto what is called a category two list, not to be compounded. So they're not illegal to take or to use in the United States, although most professional sports organizations say that they are not allowed. But you can get them, you can take them. You're not going to get in trouble for taking them. They're totally fine to have around. What the law said is that the compounding pharmacies that exist in the United States cannot make them. And the reason that the FDA said this, and I know there's a lot of like theories out there, but the main reason, and I've talked to many people at the FDA about this, I presented this at a conference in DC a couple of years ago, is they were like, we don't know what the safety outcomes are. We've got animal data, we've got cell data, but we don't have human data. We don't know what the dose is, we don't know what the regimen is. Should you be taking it daily? Is it a once weekly? How should we be looking at this? And so that's when they said, no go. This is really frustrating to everybody, including myself, because I had just set up an amazing research trial at Restore Labs where we were actually. Planning on rolling out these therapies and I was going to study them in real time in humans in the real world. I was so excited to do this. And then no mass. And it was literally overnight that you couldn't get these anymore. Enter, as you described, research grade peptides. So I mentioned just a second ago that they were being formulated prior to October of 2023 in compounding pharmacies. So compounding pharmacies are essentially the pharmacies that exist adjacent to the commercial drug manufacturers, right? So compounding pharmacies can be really wonderful and terrific and amazing. Oftentimes they'll be used by physicians if you need a drug, but it's in like a capsule, for example, that has an ingredient that you're allergic to. They will call up a compounding pharmacy and say, this person needs this drug, but take it outside of the capsule that they are allergic to, and it will be compounded specifically for you in a formulation that works for you. And so those are, they call them 503A and 503B compounding pharmacies. October 2023 rolls around and they say, you can't make these anymore. So they ended up in laboratory um pharmacies, or they're being imported from mostly China and India. Um, fun fact this is also a dirty little secret of the supplement industry is that almost every single ingredient in your supplements comes from a factory in China or India, um, and they all use the same compounding pharmacies. So you could pay $60 for a bottle of your um vitamins, or you can go and buy a $7 bottle of Centrum and they all source from the same pharmacies.
SPEAKER_01So people don't realize that. That like you said, like almost almost most APIs, active pharmaceutical ingredients come from those two countries. Even the biggest drug companies in the world, it comes from these countries. It's just what happens when it gets here and how it's processed and ultimately you know tested and things like that. So, you know, you yeah, that that is a the you're right. The as far as the supplement world and also the pharmaceutical space, because a lot of stuff, like from what I've been told, it's um for lack of a better term, it's just dirty to make, uh, you know, and from a regulatory standpoint, like our country wouldn't even allow some of these things to be made here and until you know. So anyway. Exactly. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So so this is the thing. So now everybody's buying in what's called the gray market, right? And you can go Google it right now. If you want to guy buy BPC 157, you can find it and you talk to somebody through a WhatsApp, you send them a wire, or you know, there are some places that are importing it and they're selling it commercially in the United States, but they are not being made in the United States in this overseen way. And so this is where I think people get confused is they say they think that research grade peptides are actually for research. That's incorrect. That's actually just a label that the companies are putting on the bottle to give them some legal cover. And Mike, you probably can speak to this better than I can. But the I am not, as a researcher, allowed to use these peptides in a research environment. When they say research peptides, it's literally just cover to say this is not being created in a compounding pharmacy with oversight in the United States. And what you will also see if you look a little bit closer on those labels is that nine times out of 10, it will say not for human use. And that is also legal cover to say, hands up, like if somebody bought it from my, you know, factory in China and they imported it into the United States, they said they weren't using it for humans. They can wash their hands of it and walk away. And that's the environment that we're that we're living in right now, is that yeah, you can get these peptides and they're it's fine for you to use them. Again, you're not going to get in trouble, but the supply, you use the right word, I think, Mike, just a second ago. The supply is dirty. Like it is very hard to trace these molecules, and you can send them to labs in the Czech Republic or there's another one in Texas that you can get a vial and they'll test it for you and make sure that what's in there is in there. And that's, you know, it's a good check. If you're using peptides, you should do that. Um, but right now we don't, we don't have a good supply in the United States. And to wrap a little bow and land this plane on my diatribe here, this frustrates me and pisses me off so much that the FDA, by making this arguably correct call from their purview, has now created an environment where everybody is going into this supply chain that nobody knows if it's clean or dirty, if it's tested or not, what the dose should be, what the safety parameters are. And so we have created our own behemoth of a problem with peptides by probably doing the right thing, but doing it poorly. Like it would have been great if they said, hey, Dr. Rachel, we want you to study this peptide before we allow it out into the market. Done. I would do it tomorrow, yesterday, right? But now here we are in a situation where it's the Wild West. And like I said, I'm bullish on these peptides, but literally no data. It's frustrating.
SPEAKER_01I know we've been going long, but I I first of all, you are absolutely amazing. Uh, you know, the wealth of knowledge, you're the way you explain things, uh, it's just it is so awesome. And that's why I want to keep you here for a little bit longer, especially on this topic, because it reminds me of CBD. I've been in the C BD space before, right? Yeah. So you're smiling and it reminds me very, very similar to CBD and kind of like what is what is happening in that space. But I'm just curious, um, you know, as an attorney, I don't practice anymore, but I still keep my license active. But, you know, I and I try to stay up on this stuff. And I'm hearing all sorts of rumors about these peptides, and they're gonna bit get put back on the bulk substance list. From what I can tell, from a regulatory standpoint, from the framework, from how the FDA works, um, there is no pathway right now for any of these peptides to be put back on the bulk substance list. What are you hearing? Like, I know that there are some big compounding pharmacies, uh, there are some big pharmaceutical companies that are like kind of like, quote, getting ready, and everybody's saying, well, you know, with you know, with RFK, you know, he's gonna then just kind of bypass the regulatory process. Like, what I'm just curious, like, what are you hearing? Because my my opinion from a legal perspective, I don't know, I don't see how there's an actual true legal pathway for any of these peptides. And and as you, I'm also bullish, and Tar's also bullish on this stuff. I just don't see a pathway for this stuff. What are your thoughts on the legal kind of uh you know path?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, this is exactly what we're all hearing too. And and to be completely frank and honest, like I'm gearing up to get ready if it happens too. I want, I want to study these. It's kind of like my next mission and my next you know area of investigation that I'm so excited about, in addition to continuing this line of NAD. Um, we're hearing all the same things, right? Like it's gonna happen, it's not gonna happen. From what I know with the FDA, and and as you have have have reiterated, is I don't see how the FDA can approve these peptides in the in the current way that they are wanting to be rolled out into the market because we're missing all of these safety parameters. We're missing dosages. You know, like for example, if you go and buy a pharmaceutical product, let's say you get a prescription, you go to the pharmacy, you open up the box, there's a a white tape piece of paper that you can unfold and unfold and unfold and unfold. And it's going to tell you what all of the side effects are, what dosages have been studied, how it got to the market the way that it is. And that inset, that fold that happens in these pharmaceutical products, you can't create it for peptides right now. We just don't have enough information. And that's what the FDA requires in order to roll these products out to the market. So I'm with you, is I would love to see these peptides out in the world. And I do know that compounding pharmacies are gearing up, I'm gearing up. Um, we're excited potentially to roll it out at Restore if it can actually happen. But right now it's it's a regulatory quagmire. And you brought up CBD, which is a really good example. So I mentioned in the in the intro that I studied CBD for a while. And it actually is one of the reasons why I landed at the job that I have right now, is because when I studied CBD probably 10 or so years ago, it was in that time where cannabis was legal in some states, but it wasn't legal, you know, from a federal perspective. And the IRBs, the ethics boards that we have to go through in order to do human clinical trials, basically all said, you cannot give this to humans because it doesn't have any kind of safety parameters. And also it's being derived from this Schedule One drug cannabis, right? And so I got really clever and creative figuring out how to study. I was never allowed to give it. You can now, but it was so frustrating to me, Mike, in exactly the same situation. I'm walking around and I'm like, you can buy CBD at every single gas station in the United States right now. And I'm not allowed to give it to people in my lab because that regulatory framework was just such a mess. And I see these two things being almost exactly the same.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Is that we have these molecules that are very accessible to the public, that are people are injecting them. It's not like CBD where you were taking a little tincture, right? Like we're talking about needles, which can be problematic if you don't do that well. We're talking about, you know, sterility. It's so it's it's frustrating to me that we are right down this same path because we could have actually used CBD as a really good example for how to not do this again. And here we are.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the genie's been a lot out of the bottle, even with CBD. Like I don't, I don't see how they're going to be able to put it back in. They can try and, you know, fence people in a little bit, but it's it's too late. And so um, you know, hopefully we can figure out a way to, you know, quote, clean it up and and make it safer for people. And um, yeah, so, but I tell you, uh, Taryn, I mean, I know we're running, we're we're running late here, but um do you do you have any last thoughts?
SPEAKER_03Hmm, you know, I have just so appreciated, I've taken a ton of a ton of notes, and um I've so appreciated just your knowledge and your wisdom and the accessibility, your superpower by which you brought it. I wonder if we could just end on Dr. Rachel, um, something that you said kind of as we were preparing to come on and record here around um how do people get good information and how do we know that the information that we're getting as is good? Let's arm our consumers and our audience a little bit as we wrap up with how do we get good information and how do we know that the information that we're getting is good?
SPEAKER_02Well, I think that is a really good question, and it's also a real challenge in the world that we live in right now because people are making a lot of claims. And I would also argue really well-intentioned claims, right? I work in the wellness industry, and the people that work in the wellness industry are amazing. They're trying to help people get healthy, stay healthy. And we're we're operating on the edges many times, many in many cases. And so it can get really confusing for people. So I think the one thing that I would say is find people that have credentials that can actually speak to what claims they are are making. I mentioned it just a minute ago as I wish that that my world would be more honest with what's going on in our space. So look for people that use words like may, could, might, based in animal studies. This is data in mice, right? And so I start there. So looking for some expertise, looking for people that are really honest about the way that they are speaking. And then converse to that, be really wary about people that are making very definitive statements in this space right now about a protocol, about an outcome. And the reason that I say that is nine times out of 10, they're gonna make that very definitive claim and then they're gonna try and sell you something, right? This is sales 101. You have a problem. I'm gonna make a definitive claim about a solution. Here is my product. So if that wraparound is I've made this very definitive statement, and here is my you know, solution for sale, be really careful about that. I'm not saying that it's wrong. Potentially, you know, these things could work, but just be wary of that. Um, then finally, the last thing that I would say is it kind of goes back to this idea of protocols that we were talking about, is that there is no right protocol for everybody out there right now. And so if somebody says, I've got this protocol and nobody else has ever done this, or everything that you know about this fill-in-the-blank topic area is wrong, and here's my protocol, be wary of that. We go back to the women's studies that we were talking about. Six perta is in women. I mean, if we're making definitive claims off of six percent of the data, then we are really heading people into I won't necessarily say the wrong direction, but definitely not a place where you are grounded in scientific reality. So find the experts, look for people that say should, could, may, be very careful if people are making definitive statements and then trying to sell you something. And then also be really careful about these very strict protocols because they're probably not based in much evidence.
SPEAKER_03That's really helpful. I think that's gonna help a lot of people make better decisions and to not just think because somebody's making a particular claim or they're have so many followers or they have their own brand that that that there's actually real science and evidence behind that product working for us.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And I think the other thing that I would just say is it's okay to to experiment a little bit and to play. I I'm cool cool with that. I'm a curious scientist. Science is never going to be settled. And so if we are, you know, Mike, we're trying some CBD to help us sleep, we are using some peptides to help recover and regenerate. As long as you're doing it safely and it's and it's helping you, then I would say based on the data that we have right now, that's probably okay. Um, and so, you know, the the flip side of this that I think is frustrating and also um I will call it intellectually lazy, is when academics will be like, don't do that. There's no evidence at all. And they start to shake their finger and make people feel shame about trying these, you know, different protocols or products that kind of like pop up. I think that's also a really terrible take. And so we do have to navigate this world with very limited data right now, knowing that there are products on the market that could potentially help. So do experiment a little bit. It's fun. It's fun being out in this world, and that's okay. Just make sure that you're not sort of like, you know, tunnel vision going down a path that you're not able to then sort of like be curious and wiggle your way out of.
SPEAKER_03Amazing. I love it. Well, this has been so phenomenal. Thank you so much for joining us on the Better Body Lab podcast. You've been an amazing guest. As Mike shared, we'll have all of your information in the show notes around where how people can go to your website, which is just your first and last name, Rachel Pojednik. Uh, follow you on Instagram, learn more about restore hyperwellness. Thank you so much for being such an incredible guest. My absolute pleasure.
SPEAKER_02Thank you so much. And thank you for elevating the science, what we do know and what we don't. And hopefully over the next couple of years, I'll be able to give you a little bit more information on some of these longevity therapies that we're looking at. We can't wait to have you back.
SPEAKER_03All right, Mike. So we are recapping. Dr. Rachel Pojednik, what an amazing interview with her.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you know, uh giving you props again for just having such amazing guests and you know, having interviewed people throughout the years, doctors and PhDs, uh, um, and also just you know, non-accredited type people, but just really understand this world. She she just does an amazing job. Like, I was just like blown away. I love the whole NAD. You know, the interesting thing about the NAD discussion, I didn't I didn't wasn't sure if I wanted to mention it or not, but like restore hyperwellness does NAD drips, and she's basically saying that you know, probably not the best thing for you, you know. Um, which I thought was pretty courageous, you know. Did you pick up on that? Did you really absolutely yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03And she really was able to lay out how she's able to have a firewall between her research at Stanford and what she does for Restore, and yeah, in her in her words, she's not there to represent their shit.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, which which I think just even you know amplifies her credibility, you know. It really does. Um but yeah, I thought it was great. And that discussion, I I wasn't really sure, like you know, but I was psyched because we spent a majority of the stuff talking about NAD, which we haven't had anybody on about that. You and I obviously, you know, we take NMM and we've heard I've heard the hey, if you inject it, it burns, it doesn't work as well, it's unstable, like all these things. And she was like, Yeah, basically, you know what? If you if you want NAD, you should probably take NMM or have some sort of food, you know, substance um that's gonna naturally increase it, you know, in your body, you know. So she did say though, she the one thing she did say, she didn't get into it, which was okay, if you do do a drip, there are pathways that your body will convert it, you know, but you know, that you have the the potential of those side effects, which is like, I'm not doing that ever. Right? You wouldn't want to do it.
SPEAKER_03Well, she well, she said she said if you do NR.
SPEAKER_01Oh, NR.
SPEAKER_03Or NM NMM.
SPEAKER_01Oh, okay. I thought she said if you do if you do an NAD drip that it would that there are it could convert into NR. No, because there's no pathway to take the NAD through the cell, which is insane if you think about it, and I love her again, her candor, because that means all the NAD shit that's out there is not efficacious. Right.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Yeah. She's saying do the supplement, yeah, do the precursor, yeah, and it will be converted in your body because there is a transport for the precursors to be taken to the cell.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. You know, but yeah, no, I thought she was great. And I like how you also, you know, talked to her about women's health, and then we transitioned that into the into the muscle. Like it was just it's it was it was great.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. What um what's your key takeaway? Is it the is it the NAD stuff?
SPEAKER_01I think so. Yeah. I mean, you know, you and I take a lot of peptides to, you know, um, but I'm I'm psyched, you know. I think uh, you know, a friend of ours was the ones who told us to take NMM. You know, he said, look, you know, he said the same thing. Like, don't, you know. Um but I'm I'm I I want to look at it a little bit more because you know, we do know, you know, some reputable companies that are are selling NAD, injectable NAD, and you know, maybe their science is a little bit different, or maybe their bioavailability bioavailability data is different. Um, maybe the protocols are I don't I don't know.
SPEAKER_03But I'm still what what she's saying is in a peer-reviewed study, yeah. There's only one study, right? And they just published it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03You know, yeah, which basically says it's everything else is conjecture.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But that's also the same thing with like all these peptides, even though you know that we're taking, you know. So I like also how she basically said when you know she was talking to you about the women's health, it's like, hey, you know what? Find out what works best for you. If you take an NAD and you feel good, okay, great. You know, if you take it and it doesn't feel good for you, then don't take it. You know, I had I had that got that advice years ago. Like, hey, you know, I was like, oh, I'm gonna try, I want to be vegan, I want to be a vegetarian or keto, paleo, and the guy's like, just find out what works best for you and stick with that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. I like how she said um NAD is the currency of life.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And uh, you know, but just I think breaking down that currency, you know, if if NAD is a hundred dollar bill, we got to break that down into a precursor, like some tens and some twenties to get that into our get that into our Body. She also talked about the 12 markers of aging, um, things like inflammation, you know, shortened uh telomers and our cells. Um you know, so I'll I'm I'm curious to know. So if we can just end here, one thing that I'm curious to know more about is like what are those 12 markers of aging, and um you know, what is our opportunity to kind of intervene on each one of those markers?
SPEAKER_01That's maybe when we when we have her back, we're gonna have to ask her.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, amazing.
SPEAKER_01Great job.
SPEAKER_03Thank you, our amazing audience, for joining us on the Better Body Lab podcast. And until next time, that is Mike Alden, and I am Dr. Taryn Murray.