This Compound Stops Greying Hair (and reduces wrinkles)

The two most noticeable signs of aging are hair and skin. Graying hair, thinning hair, wrinkling skin, the loss of elasticity. And a lot of us chalk it up to just age. It's going away. It's never coming back. The reality is there are compounds that do affect this. And we can harness them internally. We actually have access to these metabolic compounds when we do certain things with our diet, lifestyle, also with potential supplementation because this whole system of graying hair and wrinkling skin, it's much more metabolic than people think. It's not just structural. And there is actually hope. As a matter of fact, we have lots of research that shows that graying can be reversed because what's happening is there's mitochondria that's in our skin and affecting our hair. So, we have to understand what's happening as we get older and why this is changing with stress and a couple of other things. So, in this video, we'll cover a few things. First, we'll talk about what's actually happening to your skin and hair as you age, both structurally and more importantly metabolically. Then secondly, we'll talk about how NAD and not in a supplement form, but NAD produced in our body fits into this picture and why hair follicles and skin cells are uniquely sensitive to NAD availability. Then we're going to talk about a couple other things, little compounds and also something called nicotenomide monucleotide and how that connects into this not as a magic anti-aging molecule, but as part of a much deeper system involving like mitochondria, fasting, inflammation, DNA repair, stem cell production. At the end, I also have a playbook to increase NAD levels to help naturally with different foods and different diets and different lifestyles and timing. And I'm also going to show you some lifestyle factors that might determine whether these molecules that our body produces or that we take can even work at all because if our lifestyle is not in order, they don't work the right way. Let's start with the skin because this is really interesting. There was a

review in cutaneous and ocular toxicology. It looked at how aging skin changes across its different layers. Because the key thing to understand is that aging skin doesn't just look older. It's actually legit structurally weaker and metabolically older and slower. One of the first major changes is something that's called a flattened dermal epidermal junction. This is the interface that's between the outermost skin layer and the deeper supportive layer. So when this flattens, skin actually becomes more fragile and literally nutrient delivery becomes less efficient. So right away we see a huge loss of structural support and a loss of metabolic communication. That's why we're seeing like more mitochondrial focus on the skin. Okay? Because once this starts, we see reduced collagen and then we have less like elastin synthesis and we lose that flexibility. And these are the proteins that are really giving the skin its firmness. So when their production is going down there, your skin is basically less resilient. You're going to be more prone to wrinkling. So then like sun exposure is going to make you wrinkle more than it used to. And then of course we get to the actual thinning of the skin itself. This is happening because we have what are called caratinosytes and they go through turnover. So as we age that turnover slows down, meaning new skin cells are produced a lot more slowly just like a lot of cells in our body. But at the same time melanocy activity is decreasing. So then we're getting like uneven pigmentation and that like weird complexion or like I used to look so vibrant, now I have age spots where now I'm kind of gray looking. So across every layer of the skin, the same theme is emerging. Less renewal, you have less structure and less overall mitochondrial and metabolic activity. Very similar kind of thing happening with the hair because hair follicles are naturally among the most metabolically active structures in the entire body. That's why they're so sensitive to DHT, to hormones, and like they require constant energy supply. They have a lot of cell division. DNA repair that's required. They're tightly regulated when it comes to inflammation. That's why when we get stressed, we can lose hair. So, just to maintain normal growth, it's a lot of energy. And as we age, a bunch of things happen simultaneously. We get follicular stem cell activity that goes down. Then, we have a uh a decrease in pigment production and the whole like hair growth cycle shifts. So, it leads to thinning. So you have like slower regrowth and eventually you also have graying which kind of works on a different axis. So just like the skin, hair aging isn't really random. It's the result of declining mitochondrial energy and just cellular energy in the first place and the ability to regenerate which brings us to the molecule that sits kind of underneath all of this. People think NAD is just like a fancy supplement that's being sold. I'm not even talking about NAD from a supplement form. We're talking about just flat out NAD as a literal metabolic co-actor required for energy production. Like we would be dead within 15 seconds if we didn't have NAD. So it's required for enzymes when all kinds of different longevity pathways and DNA repair. So to put it simply, NAD nicotenomide adinide ducleotide is one of the most fundamental currencies of cellular metabolism. And the problem is that NAD goes down as we age. It also declines really fast with chronic inflammation and with metabolic dysfunction. So the more metabolically unhealthy you are and inflamed you are, it goes down really fast. And this decline affects all tissues and all cells, but it hits metabolically active tissues the hardest. So that means our skin cells and our hair follicles, which also happens to be on the surface and what we see. So when NAD is dropping, these tissues lose their energy availability and DNA repair capacity and they lose sort of inflammatory control. This means that the very systems that are required for youthful looks are the first to degrade. That's why it's the first sign of poor health. This is kind of interesting is where NMN, nicotanomide monucleotide, comes in because it's kind of interesting. NMN is upstream of NAD. It's a direct precursor in the NAD salvage pathway. It means that NMN itself is not the active molecule because it doesn't directly create the NAD, the energy. It doesn't directly repair DNA. its role is kind of logistical. It feeds into the supply chain that eventually becomes NAD. So technically speaking, this nicotenomide monucleotide is not for hair or for skin. It's for the body because it supports the cellular environment that allows these tissues to function properly. Which brings us into like the deeper longevity mechanisms which I'm a nerd about because the real story happens at three different levels. We have the mitochondria, we have inflammation, we have DNA repair. We have the stem cell side too, but that's a little bit separate. The mitochondria are responsible for producing like the energy that's required for this repair, right? For DNA repair, for protein synthesis, for cellular renewal, and again in the skin and hair follicules, the energy is needed for all kinds of things, for structural maintenance, for this constant cellular turnover, lots of energy demand. There was a study that was published in the journal of investigative dermatology. It looked at mitochondrial electron transport chain activity literally in human skin cells. They essentially found that complex 2 activity in the mitochondria significantly decreased with age. So essentially the mitochondria was not functioning as well. And this decline was linked to reduced expression of its catalytic subunits. So what's called SDHA and SDHB. And if you want that in human terms, basically complex 2 is part of the electron transport chain where we actually turn an electron into energy. So when its activity uh when this activity declines, electron flow is much less efficient. So that leads us to two really major things. For one, we have less ATP energy production, but we also have more oxidative stress. Less energy and more exhaust. That sounds terrible. That's like the worst, right? So now you have less energy for repair and renewal and more damage occurring. It's a perfect recipe for aging. You can't even repair from your own metabolic waste. This is where the research on NMN nicotanomide monucleotide actually gets really interesting because there was a study in the journal of the international society of sports nutrition. So uh ISSM this looked at whether NMN improves aerobic capacity and oxygen utilization in humans. Sounds interesting like what does that have to do with this? But we'll get there. They took 48 runners and they put them into either low, medium or highdose NMN versus placebo for 6 weeks. They found that NMN increased ventilary threshold and oxygen utilization but not V2 max which tells us something. It suggests that NMN didn't really make them stronger but it made them more metabolically efficient. This is important. Mitochondria were using oxygen more effectively. And now while this study is muscle tissue, muscle depends heavily on oxidative phosphorilation. So improvements in metabolic efficiency can suggest that improved mitochondrial respiratory capacity had occurred as well which matters a ton for skin and hair because those tissues live and die by mitochondrial performance. So what this is telling us is that there's a lot of interesting correlation between enamin NAD mitochondria and the hair and skin. Like for some reason we think hair and skin is on this different axis than metabolic health. It's just DNA telomeirs. That's it. No, it's metabolic. Now, in a minute, I'm going to go through like some diet strategies, some actually some fasting strategies. There's some things that you can do to increase enamin. I also put a link down

below for a company called Verso. They're the ones that I recommend when it comes to enemin. They have a really interesting product. Now, this stuff is kept in a very temperature controlled environment, so it's actually keeping the enem active. They expedite shipping so that things aren't having to be exposed for long periods of time. In my opinion, they are the highest quality NMN that is out there. They have been a supporter on this channel for probably like five or 6 years at this point. I know the owners really, really well. It seems like everywhere you turn now, there's different like NAD products or nicotanomide ribocide. I could make videos explaining why I am a fan of NMN instead of what's called NR, but I'll save that for another day. But anyway, that link down below is for a 15% off discount link for Versos NMN. They also have some other cool products in the same category. They have something called Clean Being, something called evening being all like working on autophagy pathways. So, this is their wheelhouse. They've got some really cool stuff. They're not like one of these shady weird companies. So, anyway, that link is down below for Versos's nicotenomide monucleotide. I don't want you to think that Enammen is going to replace a poor lifestyle, okay? like skin and hair depend on like healthy mitochondria and health just in general long before any kind of supplement. But secondly, mitochondria require timing signals. We're going to talk about how to kind of do this. So circadian rhythm actually matters. So consistent sleep, legit daylight exposure to help your circadian cues and daytime feeding windows and not eating when it's dark out. This makes a difference because the mitochondria don't just need fuel. They need a schedule. They need a signal. Now

the other piece of this is the inflammation piece and DNA repair and how that dovetales together. Chronic low-grade inflammation is probably the central driver of aging because it's metabolically damaging and it's of course damaging all kinds of other things. Skin is constantly exposed to pollution. We have UV radiation coming at all angles. We have oxidative stress. We have phthalates. We have bisphenol A. We have all kinds of things we're exposed to. So skin has to like deal with this stuff all the time, constantly regenerating. And then hair follicles are also just undergoing constant cycles of proliferation. And both processes for both hair and skin require massive DNA repair capacity. Okay? And NAD once again is required for both of these. There was a study in nature cell biology that looked at how NAD metabolism influences cellular scinessence. They found that scinesscent cells exhibited reduced NAD levels and increased inflammatory cytoine secretion. A scesscent cell is basically a zombie cell. It's like a proxy cell that is made to sort of do mundane tasks in the body so that the other cells can do their normal thing. But when you have dysfunctional cells that go through scinessence, then you end up with a problem. like rogue zombie cells that are actually causing more damage than anything else. And when NAD is depleted, you have something that's called SASP. Okay, the scinessence associated secrettory phenotype. Okay, this is basically a chronic inflammatory state that's caused by these zombie cells. When they restored NAD levels, the inflammatory gene expression dropped and inflammation went down. So, low NAD leads to more inflammation and faster tissue aging. Now, shifting slightly to DNA repair because there's nuance here. A review in molecular metabolism looked at how NAD regulates the DNA repair pathways. Okay, this is important for hair, skin, and anything really. There is a family of enzymes, okay? They're known as polymerases, P A RPS or poly ADP ribos, okay? Was called PARPS for short. So, PARPS require NAD to repair DNA damage, particularly damage caused by UV exposure and oxidative stress. What does that sound like? Skin, right? Oxidative stress and UV exposure. So, when NAD is low, DNA repair becomes very incomplete. So you have lot more damage building over time, especially relevant for skin because the skin is absorbing more DNA damage than pretty much any other tissue in the body. So the main thing here is that chronic inflammation consumes your NAD. And then not only is your NAD unavailable for skin and hair, but it's also unavailable for regular just cellular machinery. So even if you supplement NMN, it's going to be burned up faster in a high stress environment. So I'm a huge fan of supplementing NMN. think it's great, but you also need to change your lifestyle. Reducing the inflammation is going to slow down the NAD depletion. So, this means that sleep, diet, oxidative stress, all these things determine whether NAD repletion even works. Now, we zoom out even further because long-term hair and skin quality depends on stem cells, which gets a little more complicated, but stem cells determine whether tissues can renew themselves over decades or not. Stem cells are like the catalyst in hair follicles. Stem cells control cycling and pigmentation. In skin, we have what are called epidermal stem cells and these maintain thickness and barrier function. So these stem cells are very active in these like high turnover tissues and cells. There was a study in science that looked at whether restoring NAD levels in aged mice actually improve stem cell function. And they found that aging was associated once again with lower NAD impaired mitochondrial function and reduced stem cell activity. But when they restored NAD, mitochondrial function improved and they also saw that stem cell self-renewal increased and ultimately all these other like aging markers improved. But probably the most important thing for you, they saw that tissue maintenance improved across multiple organs. Now this makes sense because stem cells require energy. All of which depends on NAD. So when NAD goes down, stem cells burn out faster. So when NAD declines, This is going to lead to thinner hair. You're going to have slower regrowth. grayer hair. You're more fragile skin. So, at the end of the day, high inflammation, poor sleep, oxy stress are also exhausting stem cells faster. And this like none of this is super new, but we're just learning that NMN can help us with this. Stem cells also need rest periods. So, you got to have consistent sleep. You got to, you know, do all the things like excess stimulant utilization also kind of degrades how stem cells function. Under fueling matters. If people fast too much or overtrain too much, this is signaling scarcity. And scarcity is prioritizing survival over regeneration. Period. So if you fast too much, you train too hard, your body says, "Okay, we got to survive. " So long-term regeneration requires enough energy. And if that's being put in different places, then it's a problem. So the real takeaway from this is that hair and skin are not service level problems. They are metabolic problems and they are energy problems. Okay? They're driven by energy decline, mitochondrial decline, inflammation, DNA repair failure, exhausted stem cells, all as a result of low energy availability. And you don't just make more NAD. You either increase production or you reduce how fast you burn it. Most people are only focused on

the production side when the real leverage is often on the consumption side. So, for example, like fasting is one of the strongest lifestyle signals for NAD if it's done appropriately. When you fast, you activate AMPK and PGC1A, but that's going to upregulate mitochondrial biogenesis and actually repair and get new mitochondria. You have more fat oxidation and actually what are called NAD salvage pathways. At the same time, you're lowering insulin with fasting and you're reducing inflammation. You're also reducing that PARP that I talked about. So, you're lowering that enzyme that actually consumes NAD a bunch. So, fasting is doing two things at once, right? It's recycling NAD and it slows down how fast you burn it. Most people prefer to do like a daily 168 fast. I am much more of a fan of doing like 12 hours as a baseline like every day and then do like 3 or 4 days a week of an 18 to 20our fast. That's enough to get a good NAD signal without overstressing your body. Those longer fasts like a 2 or three day fast will definitely increase NAD as well, but chronically they deplete the regeneration capacity and they stress the stem cells. So double-edged swords. You want to find that balance. Now exercise is arguably even more powerful than fasting, especially if you occasionally fast and do exercise, right? So exercise is increasing mitochondrial demand. So you're upregulating enzymes that are NAD salagers and you're improving the redux. You're basically just making more of this NAD available. It improves how fast NAD can turn over and how healthy the mitochondria are and how much NAD they demand. This is where zone 2 cardio has a really big effect. Very similar to fasting, right? 45 to 90 minutes of like zone 2 endurance style work is best for simple mitochondria, like just baseline function. HIT is really good, too. As a matter of fact, you can get more bang for the buck with HIT. It's just a fine line between how much stress hormones you spike. You don't want to do HIT for longer than like 15 minutes. Okay, that's not optimal to go above that for NAD because you're depleting again. Just quick doses to signal stress to trigger a change in the mitochondria and then the zone 2 to just build the mitochondria base. And in my opinion, like sunlight is massively underrated and it's in the wrong context because people think sunlight is bad for the skin. A lot of these enzymes related with NAD are circadian regulated. So NAD production follows a daily rhythm. And if you don't have that light exposure and sleep timing, then your circadian rhythm will be off and NAD production is literally suppressed the gene level because it is circadian. So morning sunlight becomes super important. Again, consistent sleep and wake times, 12-hour minimum fast every day, and 18-hour fast 2 to 4 days per week. These things directly control NAD biosynthesis. Now the next part is where people get confused and that's how you actually reduce the burn of NAD. We talked about inflammation before, but the biggest NAD killer is inflammation. Chronic inflammation. Every inflammatory signal that we know of activates those PARPs I talked about. Okay? All of which consume NAD. So again, ultrarocessed food, alcohol, psychological stress, poor sleep, constant eating, constant inflammation. It's called a postprandial inflammatory response. If you're grazing all day, chronic inflammation. Okay. So now from diet, you can get these NAD precursors. Tryptophan, uh, it's kind of slow and inefficient, but it is still a precursor. It's still important, but mainly just get it from your meat or take a tryptophan supplement if you want to. Uh I take a tryptophan supplement before sleep anyway. Niacin or vitamin B3. This can be good too, but you know if you take a lot of nasin, you increase methylation, right? So you want to balance that. So TMG would be really good if you take that. Uh nicotanomide monucleotide like I mentioned using that verso one. Namin itself isn't abundant in food but the precursors are. So like giving yourself enamin is definitely something that you could benefit from. This is one of those things where food alone is usually enough to maintain baseline but it's not enough to kind of reverse the age related decline. This is where caloric cycling can help a lot too which is where you're doing like short-term energy stress like short-term fasts shortterm like stressing with fasts to increase NAD but not having a chronic energy deficit that's going to ultimately suppress regeneration. So fast, recover. So the sweet spot is the periodic fasting, but also eating enough when you're not fasting. So enough calories, enough protein, enough total calories. That's the most important thing. Carbs if you need them to lower the stress response. The scarcity signals activate survival and deactivate the regeneration. And the regeneration is exactly what hair, skin, and mitochondria and stem cells need again because it's happening so fast. So if you want the maximal natural NAD signal

with or without supplements, it would look like this. 12 to 16 hours of daily fasting, ideally 12 hours. And then 2 to three days a week of 18-hour fasts. Zone 2 cardio, two to four times per week. High-intensity interval training two times per week, less than 15 minutes. Morning sunlight, grounding. Sleep before 10 p. m. if you can. No late night eating, low alcohol, polyphenols, green tea. I would also recommend something like TMG, trimethlycine to help with methylation. And then at that point, nicotanomide monucleotide can really work because you've reduced the metabolic leaks. Don't get me wrong, like NMN can help hugely and I recommend pretty much anyone that's interested in this take it. But just know it's going to work so much better if you also apply those interventions I just talked about.

Now, I did another video talking about a compound that can help autophagy, which is the same thing that you activate when you are fasting. Okay? It's a really interesting compound and I put a link to it here. It's called spermadine and I really recommend you check it out. It's a way that you can actually boost autophagy without fasting. So check them out right