NAD+ half-life
Intact NAD+ doesn't linger in the blood. Given by IV it's cleared within minutes. What lasts is downstream: the body tops up NAD+ inside cells over the following hours through its breakdown products, not the original molecule staying in circulation. Given under the skin, the timing is less well characterised.
What a half-life actually means
A half-life is the time it takes for half of what is in your blood to be gone. It does not mean the compound is finished at that point. Half goes, then half of what is left goes, and so on.
That is why the last traces take so much longer to disappear than the first. Most references treat something as effectively cleared after about five half-lives, which for NAD+ is roughly 15 minutes.
How NAD+ clears
| Half-lives | Time since dose | Roughly left |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 minutes | 50% |
| 2 | 6 minutes | 25% |
| 3 | 9 minutes | 12.5% |
| 4 | 12 minutes | 6.25% |
| 5 | 15 minutes | 3.125% |
These are round numbers from a single half-life figure. Real clearance shifts with dose, body composition, liver and kidney function, and what else you are taking. Treat it as a shape, not a schedule.
Why the timing matters
A short half-life means levels swing between doses, so timing and frequency do most of the work. A long half-life means levels build for days or weeks before they settle, so a change you make today might not show up for a while, and stopping does not clear things straight away.
NAD+ sits at about 3 minutes, so it behaves like the short end of that range.
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On a repeating schedule the amount in your body climbs until what you take in each interval matches what clears in it. That plateau is called steady state, and it arrives after roughly five half-lives whatever the dose. For NAD+ that is about 15 minutes of consistent dosing.
The typical starting schedule is 1x daily, at 50 mg/day. Until that plateau, every dose lands on top of more of the last one than it will later, which is why the first weeks of a protocol can feel different from the same dose a month in.
Skipping doses resets part of that climb. One missed dose costs roughly one half-life of accumulation, so the shorter the half-life the more a gap matters.
Mixing and measuring NAD+
Bacteriostatic water, 2 mL per 100 mg vial
Mixed that way, one unit on a U-100 insulin syringe carries about 500 mcg, because a U-100 syringe is 100 units to the millilitre.
| Dose | Draw to |
|---|---|
| 50 mg | 100 units |
Store at 2-8°C (reconstituted). 21 days reconstituted, 2 years lyophilized.