This has been written about before, but newer members may not be familiar with Nicotinamide Riboside (Tru Niagen brand) as a means of combating Parkinson’s Disease. I have been taking 900 mg daily for a couple of years. I can't say I have noticed any immediate benefits, but I think/hope it may be a good long term play.
Here's a link to an article addressing an ongoing study in Norway, among other things:
Ditto.
Over the past 5 years, since my PD diagnosis, I’ve taken NR intermittently. I also have not noticed definitive results. The stuff is pretty expensive. Do you have a good source for it?
Unfortunately, it is quite expensive. We buy through Amazon and I get the 300 mg capsules. I take 3 capsules every morning.
I agree. For some reason, when you search for nicotaminide, it's expensive, but when you search for niacinamide, it's cheap. If both products are the same thing, I don't understand why there would be this difference in price.
Also, TRU NIAGEN is actually Nicotaminide Riboside Chloride. Is that different from other nicotaminide?....or other niacinamide?
Do take a look at the diagram I posted on types of B3 and your confusion would disappear. Here it is again 👇🏾
Thanks for posting Jim. How did you come up with that dose. I have only been taking 300mg but it sounds like I need to take more
Much more affordable getting it directly from ChromaDex, 300mg 180 count is $198.00.
Thanks for the tip! My wife orders it through Amazon. I will find out what she/we pay and switch if the direct route is cheaper (which I expect it is).
My wife just checked Amazon. One bottle 300 mg. 90 count bottle is $119.95. If you order two bottles together, it's $224.95 ($112.98 per bottle).
So Jim, have you noticed a decrease in progression since you started Niagen?
It's interesting the whole Niagen/Niacin thing. Both are B3. Niacin reduces inflammation through GPR109A. Niagen increases NAD.
I see in the trial they are going to use 500 mg twice a day: clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show...
I see Niacin increases NAD also. cell.com/cell-metabolism/fu...
(They were taking 750-1000 mg a day of Niacin. I take 250 mg.)
NAD+ is a redox-active metabolite, the depletion of which has been proposed to promote aging and degenerative diseases in rodents. However, whether NAD+ depletion occurs in patients with degenerative disorders and whether NAD+ repletion improves their symptoms has remained open. Here, we report systemic NAD+ deficiency in adult-onset mitochondrial myopathy patients. We administered an increasing dose of NAD+-booster niacin, a vitamin B3 form (to 750–1,000 mg/day; clinicaltrials.gov NCT03973203) for patients and their matched controls for 10 or 4 months, respectively. Blood NAD+ increased in all subjects, up to 8-fold, and muscle NAD+ of patients reached the level of their controls. Some patients showed anemia tendency, while muscle strength and mitochondrial biogenesis increased in all subjects. In patients, muscle metabolome shifted toward controls and liver fat decreased even 50%. Our evidence indicates that blood analysis is useful in identifying NAD+ deficiency and points niacin to be an efficient NAD+ booster for treating mitochondrial myopathy.
Hi, Bolt. One of the difficulties in assessing the effectiveness of any supplement is that it's impossible to know how we would be doing without it. I don't know how quickly I would be progressing without it. It's compounded by the fact that I take multiple supplements. Is it the B3, the B12, the B1, the D, the red light, the Neuroaspis, the butyrate, or the exercise? Finally, and probably most significantly, the progression of PD is normally so slow that it's unnoticeable from day to day, month to month, or even year to year, at least for me. Other than having foot dystonia about a year after diagnosis (which totally disappeared with Sinemet), I don't feel like my PD has progressed at all in the 3.5 years since my diagnosis. That's a long winded way of saying I have no idea if TruNiagen slows progression...but even with the significant cost, I think it's worth trying because of stories like the one linked to this post. 😊
Hi Bolt,
If you refer to the post by Sunvox (Joe) only niagen boosts sirtuins but not other B3
Hubby took it for around a year and it didn’t seem to have any effect. Now he just takes niacinamide
Does niacinamide help your husband's PD?
I’m not sure as he takes many things so hard to tell which is the most important or whether they all work together
Been taking it now for 5 years. I don't have Parkinsons. I have Spinocerebellar Ataxia Type 1 which progresses faster and is deadlier. I have had zero progression in 5 years, BUT I do not think NR alone does the trick as I have a complete routine and believe it is the combination that is making a difference. Here is a link to what I am doing. If you follow the link be sure to scroll to the end as I have made numerous changes over the years, and what I am doing and taking now is not exactly the same as what I started with:
longecity.org/forum/topic/1...
Always love to see your posts sunvox.
Something I saw on your page that would interest people here:
2) reduced Niagen from 1200 mg to 600 mg - back to the human study showing most of the increase in NAD+ occurs at lower doses. Higher doses probably do not dramatically increase levels.
Note to self: Look into Creatine.
Bolt, are you suggesting taking the supplement CREATINE, or you did you intend to mean something else? As a supplement, I was under the impression that CREATINE was solely for building muscles at the gym and other fitness needs. Am I mistaken?
I just noticed that sunvox has Creatine in his stack so made a note to look into it.
The Life Extension article on PD recommends creatine for PwP. Ad well as resveratrol.
Thanks! Here is the link: lifeextension.com/protocols...
Here is the info about creatine from the Life Extension article:
Creatine
Creatine, an important amino acid-like compound, is vital to cellular energy management. Creatine deficiency is associated with neurological damage.142 Several animal studies have shown creatine, because of its "pro-mitochondrial" effect, to be effective in preventing or slowing the progression of Parkinson's disease.54,143,144 Influential Harvard neurologists noted that "creatine is a critical component in maintaining cellular energy homeostasis, and its administration has been reported to be neuroprotective in a wide number of both acute and chronic experimental models of neurological disease."145 Studies have shown that creatine is safe and well tolerated by patients with Parkinson's disease.146
In 2006, the Neuroprotective Exploratory Trials in Parkinson’s Disease (NET-PD) group at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) studied 200 treatment-naïve subjects who had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease within the past five years. Subjects were randomly assigned to receive creatine 10 grams/day, the antibiotic drug minocycline (a proposed neuroprotectant) 200 mg/day, or placebo for 12 months while their scores on a standard Parkinson's disease rating scale were monitored. Both creatine and minocycline performed well, yet creatine showed a substantial edge in performance over minocycline. Tolerability of the treatment was 91% in the creatine group and 77% in the minocycline group.147 However, a follow-up study published by this same research group in 2015 failed to show a benefit associated with creatine supplementation (10 grams daily) for a minimum of five years.148
While it is unclear why the latter study did not identify a benefit with creatine supplementation, small differences in inclusion criteria and patient characteristics between the two studies may have contributed. Also, some evidence suggests that perhaps creatine in combination with other neuroprotective nutrients (as opposed to alone, as in the NET-PD studies) might be of benefit: a recent animal study found that creatine, in combination with CoQ10, conferred significant neuroprotection by reducing the accumulation of alpha-synuclein and suppressing lipid oxidation. In addition, animals being treated with the nutrient combination survived longer than those not being treated.149 Clinical trials are needed to assess the effects of creatine in combination with other neuroprotective nutrients in Parkinson’s patients.
I hope you don't mind. I added a link to your page from my Great Links page: pdprotocols.atwebpages.com/...
Good morning ~ I was wondering how you arrived at your 900 mg dose?
Thank you and have a fabulous day!
Good Morning! The dose in the trial is 1,000 mg per day, so I figured 900 mg is as close as I can get with 300 mg capsules.
Thank you! I did just order some for my husband. Do you (or anyone else reading this post) know by any chance how Tru Niagen compares to ATP Cofactors which also has B2 in it and is Niacin as Inositol Hexinicatinate?
Thank you for your help!
I don't know anything about ATP Cofactors, but I went with nicotinamide riboside because of the ongoing studies. Good luck to you and your husband!
Hi Jim,
I have been resisting taking tru niagen because it is expensive and have been giving my husband niacin instead. However I did read somewhere that it did not activate sirtuins.
So 3 months ago I got a bottle of tru niagen 300 mg. He takes only 1 capsule and going by what Bolt noted, more isn’t always best. The only benefit I can see perceptibly is that his white hair is now growing out black. If hair can be an indicator of what is happening at cellular level then it must be good. Maybe I will give him 2 caps of 300 mg instead.
Hello Millbrook ~ Last February I started my husband on TruNiagen, 3 caps a day. If I remember correctly, within 2-3 weeks I saw improvements in his cognition. After 3 months I reduced to 2 caps/ day due to cost. I didn’t notice any change (decline). I did some more reading and have put him back on 3 caps per day because I don’t want him to loose anything of what he has. I hope that we will be able to continue him on it.
Have a fabulous day!
Thank you Lizzy for your feedback. Does your husband take other supplements? Can you exclude other B vitamins when you are on truniagen? Apart from costs my husband has to swallow more than 20 capsules a day. Sometimes I feel really sorry for him.
Afib- 6 caps hawthorn a day, taurine 3 caps a day, ubiquinol , magnesium taurate 12 caps
PD- 200 mg B1, basic B complex , truniagen, vit D3+vit C+zinc-2 caps,PS128, 2 caps Honokiol , milk thistle-9 here
Prostate-prostate supplement+stinging nettle- 4 caps
In addition to these are 9 hardcore meds
Now I am looking at NAC as well. What can I cut off?
Take it with or without food? I heard either is ok, but possibly better absorbed without food…thoughts?
SoPD blog post from Simon on the recent results from the NADPARK trial of nicotinamide riboside (Niagen)
Why You Should Be Careful With Niacin and Nicotinamide Riboside
A clinical trial of Niagen for a neurological disorder.
Hot off the press. Randomized, double-blind safety trial of high dose nicotinamide riboside in Parkinson’s disease.Nicotinamide Riboside and NMN are converted to Nicotinic Acid by the Microbiome before being absorbed?
