Elevant Prime review: increasing daily energy by directly targeting cells
Two years ago, my kitchen cupboard was full of vitamins I had purchased and continued to re-purchase – gotta keep going, right? I was taking over 15 tablets per day with no clear rationale behind why. Most people take vitamins as a result of great marketing or recommendations from friends (“My friend takes X and swears by it…”), rather than basing my supplement decisions based on scientific research and, more importantly, biomarkers.
I stopped taking all vitamins and supplements for three months to get myself back to zero and then started experimenting. I should also note that I have been suffering from chronic fatigue for over 3½ years and have found that changing my diet significantly helped (converting to carnivore after having been vegetarian for 35+ years). However, I still felt regular daily fatigue, especially if I exercised the previous day. So I decided that one of the first and obvious longevity supplements I would take would be NMN, and having looked at the market, I decided that trying Elevant’s NMN-C® product, Prime would be my first step.
So what is NAD+, and what does its precursor NMN do?
Although your DNA is the master code for many aspects of your healthspan and longevity, how you age isn’t set in stone. In fact, there are myriad variables affecting how you age, including:
- How much exercise you take, how regular it is and what sort of physical activity it is.
- How much sleep you get and how well you sleep.
- How much stress you undergo.
- How much exposure you have to free radicals, radiation, pollution, toxins, UV rays, bacteria, viruses…
- And, of course, your diet – what, when and how much and when you eat and drink.
These variables can all be regulated to a greater or lesser degree and one of the actions you can take to slow aging and improve healthspan is to boost NAD+ levels.
NAD+, or nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide to give it its full name, is a critical coenzyme found in every cell in your body; NAD+ is involved in hundreds of metabolic processes, including generating energy, repairing DNA and maintaining cells. As well as increasing energy for repair and recovery, research indicates NAD+ can help improve memory and protect against some age-related diseases such as heart disease and diabetes.
NMN is a NAD+ precursor, meaning the body coverts it to NAD+; NMN is more easily absorbed into the bloodstream, and supplementation with NMN has been shown to increase NAD+ biosynthesis and reduce inflammation [1].
The lowdown on Elevant Prime
The dietary supplement contains a high purity form of nicotinamide mononucleotide, NMN-C, which operates “within cells to power immunity, deliver daily energy and fight aging.”
What is NMN-C?
NMN-C is a proprietary form of NMN, produced by Seneque Lab. What differentiates the NMN-C is that it is fully synthetic – in contrast, other NMN products on the market use enzymatic products from bacteria for the last step of the synthesis. This means this fully-synthetic product is likely to be pure and more efficient at raising NAD levels. NMN-C is used in in-human trials, meaning it meets clinical levels of safety, purity and quality. With 11 clinical trials underway, NMN-C is the most extensive in-human NMN research program to date, and it is the only pharma grade NMN available in the market.
Elevant Prime overview
With 125mg NMN-C capsules (in 60, 120 and 180 variants), Elevant Prime claims to enhance your immunity and maintain overall health by raising your NAD+ level daily. It targets cellular restoration to decrease the risks of metabolic diseases like cardiovascular dysfunctions or diabetes, supplying cells with the energy needed to perform and fight ailments.
Elevant Prime aims to address:
- Cardiovascular processes: to stabilise your NAD+ levels and help improve your cardiac functions.
- Cognitive function: maintain a healthy brain by positively affecting your brain functions, as NAD+ holds essential roles in metabolic processes in the brain.
- Energy: improve your level of physical and mental energy. NAD+ is critical to a healthy metabolism as it is the root of cellular energy.
- Immunity: combat bacteria and viruses by regulating common health conditions.
- Insulin and lipids: improve your insulin acuity to repair declines from age or diabetes. NAD+ levels improve insulin sensitivities.
Some everyday fruits and vegetables such as avocado, broccoli and cabbage possess a small amount of NMN. According to Elevant Prime’s manufacturers you would have to consume 30 kilograms of it to sustain your day-to-day NMN needs! That’s A LOT of fruit and veg!
Supplementing with NMN provides a constant supply of the raw elements your body needs to naturally boost NAD+ levels, enabling you to maintain critical aspects of your health.
My take on Elevant Prime
It is weird, but my experience is always the same when I take a new supplement or try some other form of new intervention, be it a coffee substitute or red light therapy. I do find that the first 48-hour period is associated with a kind of euphoria the opposite of how some other individuals feel ill after taking theirs [2]. Maybe I just like new stuff?
Over the first two days of taking Elevant Prime. I felt more energy in my body and more productive over those two working days, but over time, the apparent effects of the supplement did dissipate. Of course, it’s all well and good talking about how I feel, but what about the evidence?
As many of you know, working with biomarkers to understand the effects of interventions on your body is a growing part of the longevity marketplace. With the support the Jinfiniti CEO Jin-Xiong She, I took a blood-spot NAD+ test at the end of 2021 to see what my NAD+ level was – at this point I had been taking Elevant Prime for several months.
I was pleased to discover that the intracellular NADTM (icNAD) result from the current test was at 58.1 μM, and was well into the optimum range (which starts at 40μM).
When I took the same test four months later, still continuing my daily Elevant Prime regimen, the results showed my NAD+ levels were still very good, with intracellular NADTM (icNAD) at 50.4 μM, 126.0% of the start of the optimum range (40μM), with my NAD value falling into the optimal range as well.
Elevant Prime verdict
Elevant supplies a handy dosage chart on their website; weighing in at 175 lb meant I took 4-5 capsules a day.
With good NAD+ results and an ongoing fatigue condition that’s improving it’s tough even to consider removing Elevant Prime from my daily supplementation regime. Of course, I should stop taking it entirely and take another test to see if this affects my NAD+ results negatively but I won’t be doing that, because I feel great and I have far too much going on to consider a dip in my energy levels.