Choosing an NMN supplier for self-experimentation
What is the best NMN supplement?
Who should you choose for your NMN supplement?
Fast-take: I recommend DoNotAge, who offer a third party tested pure product, have a bulk supply option (100g) with further savings when you subscribe to regular shipments. Use the code ‘longevityblog’ to save a further 10%!
Want the details and the ‘why’ I make this recommendation? Do read on!
Today on A Longer Life, I wrap up my three part series on self-experimenting with Nicotinamide Mononucleotide. Complete with NMN before and after testing.
As discussed in the first post of the series on NMN risk management, there are three key questions that A Longer Life will engage with on the topic of NMN. These are:
What NMN supplement should I use?
In this third post of the three-part series, we’re going to zoom right in on the question - how do I choose a high quality NMN supplier?
Choosing the best NMN supplement: Potential pitfalls
NMN is a supplement, meaning its production and distribution are largely unregulated. As such, this potentially exposes the self-experimenter to several potential pitfalls when purchasing.
The most important of which are:
Imposters (i.e. not actually NMN)
Contaminants (e.g. heavy metals)
Impurities (e.g. fillers, extras)
Unnecessarily high cost per dose (e.g. low potency)
Naturally this raises the question - How can we avoid these potential disruptors to our self-experimentation?
For those currently searching for their own NMN supplier, I personally understand where you are coming from.
First up - you are aiming to purchase a product with confidence in knowing it is NMN, but fake supplements are common and are lurking amongst in the available NMN suppliers on the web right now.
Even if you can become confident the product in question is NMN (not an imposter), you still must consider the risk of contaminants such as heavy metals showing up in your supply.
Furthermore, we don’t want to waste our money on a product that has low potency and/or uses fillers to push more product (impurities).
And then there is cost. Once satisfied on the above three - imposters, contaminants, impurities - we still need an NMN supply that fits our budget. This is complicated by varying levels of potency across the options:
what is a ‘dose’?
how much NMN per dose?
how many doses per container?
shipping costs?
The above long list of factors can make selecting an NMN supplier quite daunting, and perhaps overwhelming!
No one individual can take on the challenge of sorting through these points on their own. Thankfully, the NMN self-experimentation community is working together on this one…
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NMN supplement review useful sources
One of my favourite aspects of the self-experimentation community, is the collective spirit of sharing knowledge and helping each other navigate the pitfalls of sourcing supplements.
Despite its relative novelty, NMN suppliers have been usefully reviewed in several formats - the most valuable of which, at this stage, are two YouTube videos.
In the first, we find that once again, my mate Dr. Brad Stanfield continues to be one of the top sources of information on NMN.
In his videos, he reviews several brands - and parallels my above selection criteria - analysing imposters, impurities, contaminants and cost per dose.
Dr. Stanfield’s endeavour to find 3rd party testing data reveals a key resource in our journey to select our NMN supplier.
The second YouTube video is from Vince and his channel “My NMN Experiment”.
Vince has several relevant videos for the NMN self-experimenter on the topic of NMN sourcing, self-experimentation and review of available third party testing.
Of particular use is his video on ‘Testing Heavy Metals” which you can view below:
Choosing the best NMN supplier
Use the code ‘longevityblog’ to save 10% on any order with DoNotAge
Amongst the growing number of choices for supplying NMN, is UK based company DoNotAge.
I recently became a strategic advisor to this company, owing to our shared interest in making longevity supplements like NMN widely available.
Simply put, if NMN can deliver even a fraction of the longevity benefits to humans that are observed in mice, then I firmly believe in the democratisation of access to the molecule.
By democratisation, I mean - making it widely available in both supply and cost. Quality is of course pre-requisite.
Before we move on, it is important to disclose that I stand to benefit from the sales of NMN by DoNotAge due to my advisory role.
However, this monetary benefit is modest and frankly, is not part of what motivates me to self-experiment with NMN, nor to recommend the company to you personally.
Instead, what my position as an advisor has allowed me to do is more clearly understand the NMN global supply chain and access certain confidential information about its production, proprietary competitor testing, distribution and profit margin.
Many NMN options are low quality
Through the clarity this position has provided me, I have a heightened level of concern on the practices of many of the other NMN suppliers.
The issues I am now privy to are numerous and commonplace. I am aware of products sold on Amazon, claiming to be NMN, which contain nicotinamide instead (imposters).
Suppliers who claim to be ‘manufactured in the USA’, source their products from China (lack of integrity) and package it in the United States in order to ‘cheat’ their way to this label.
Others have degradation of the product due to poor packaging and storage practices (potency), while many others provide no third party certification regarding heavy metals (contaminants).
Moreover, many sell NMN at low potency, including doses at 50 - 150mg, which are well below even the conservative doses being used in early clinical trials.
DoNotAge is a high quality supplier of NMN
In addition to the “insider scoop” on the NMN supply landscape, my advisory position has also provided me with a high degree of confidence on DoNotAge’s Pure NMN product.
I know with certainty it is NMN (not an imposter), is appropriately free of contaminants or impurities, and it is amongst the highest potency options available on the market (500g NMN per capsule).
This combination of factors given me the confidence to personally consume the DoNotAge product, using it in my current NMN self-experiment, selecting it from the ‘Wild West’ of NMN suppliers.
Despite the potential conflict of interest I hold in monetarily benefiting from the sales of this product, it is my hope that this vote of confidence may contribute to your own decision making process.
Simply put - in my longevity journey, I am very disciplined in choosing the supplements I consume! DoNotAge passes all my checkpoints.
Reviewing NMN for self-experimentation protocol:
Use the code ‘longevityblog’ to save 10% on any order with DoNotAge
Zooming out from the details of choosing the best NMN supplier, let’s come back to my NMN self-experiment.
I am presently wrapping up week 4 of the protocol, which will run for a total of 6 months.
The experiment will rely on several different data points, one of which is before & after biological age tests from Chronomics, and will wrap up at the end of February.
Unlike many of the other self-experimenters out there, I am holding constant my daily habits, diet and supplement routine, in the interest of generating the most robust scientific outcome.
When complete, I will finalise the results and protocol, in order to support the self-experimentation community.
The self-experimentation protocol is as follows:
NMN 500mg per day (updated)
TMG 500mg, every day (1:1 ratio to support methylation)
All of which is being supplied by DoNotAge.
You can find the relevant DoNotAge products in each of the above hyperlinks.
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