A healthy sleep schedule may be one of the most underrated ways to maintain overall health. Many people consider a poor sleep schedule the norm, whether they’re parents waking at night to care for their babies or healthcare workers who work an overnight schedule. Recent studies have found that a poor sleep schedule can lead to decreases in health and even chronic disease.
One effective way to support a healthy sleep pattern is by supplementing NAD+.
NAD+ is short for nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide. This powerful amino acid is found in every cell of the body and plays a vital role in cell function. Higher levels of NAD+ ensure that your body functions properly on a cellular level, meaning that your cells can easily convert nutrients to energy. Properly functioning cells means healthy tissues and organs, helping your body function optimally.
NAD+ levels naturally decrease over time. Dropping levels of NAD+ have been associated with many common symptoms of aging, such as brain fog, low energy levels, and poor sleep patterns.
One of the key players in your sleep schedule is NAD+. Your NAD+ levels have a close association with your circadian rhythm. Your daily rhythm influences your NAD+ levels, and NAD+ also helps keep your circadian rhythm in sync. NAD+ assists with the repair and protection of certain genes that influence circadian rhythms.
NAD+ levels naturally move up and down during sleep. One study found that this oscillation of NAD+ is less frequent or missing entirely in older animals and humans. So, it makes sense that sleep patterns will change as we age and NAD+ levels decrease. Keeping NAD+ levels adequate can help to combat age-related sleep changes and help ensure a healthy sleep cycle.
Poor sleep doesn’t just interfere with your quality of life, but it can also harm your overall health. Sleep deficiency has been found to negatively impact many systems in the body, including the heart, lungs, kidneys, and brain. Chronic health issues that have been linked to insufficient sleep include heart disease, stroke, diabetes, high blood pressure, and depression.
Knowing how common many of these chronic diseases are, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that 1 in 3 adults are sleep deprived somehow. Improving your sleep quality could potentially add years to your life. In addition to causing chronic illness, sleep deprivation has been linked to an increased frequency of car accidents and other accidental injuries.
Now that we’ve established that higher levels of NAD+ can help ease the symptoms of aging and improve your sleep quality, you’re probably wondering how to naturally increase your NAD+ levels.
One of the most effective ways to increase your levels of NAD+ is to supplement with one of the precursors. There are a couple of different substances in the body that encourage the production of NAD+, including NMN and NR. By boosting levels of the precursors to NAD+, your body will naturally produce more NAD+. This helps to keep your NAD+ levels high, even as you age.
NMN supplements are an effective way to naturally boost your NAD+ levels and experience many benefits. NMN supplementation has increased energy levels, improved metabolic function, better focus, and improved sleep quality.
Numerous studies have found that oral NMN supplements are rapidly absorbed by the body and converted to NAD+. NMN supplementation has been found to support mitochondrial health, improve brain function, and reduce tissue inflammation.