NMN & Harmful Impurities that can Make You Live Less

NMN is known for its longevity promises, however, the harmful impurities that might exist in your supplements may end up making you live less. The third-party chemical test mentioned here is to determine elemental impurities and their concentrations including the 4 most toxic heavy metals arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury.

We share the third-party chemical test results of three NMN products, and hopefully could help you to understand why a third-party test is so important.

The test “elemental analysis” was performed by an analytical technique called ICP-MS (Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry) to detect elements at very low concentrations at parts per billion level. Heavy metals can be detrimental to your health and the concentration of these heavy metals in your supplements will dictate how safe or how harmful they can be in the short and long run. So, you shall take the heavy metal impurities very seriously!

In this video, we chose three good-quality NMN products to show what you should expect from the third-party chemical test. Since it is not our goal to promote or demote any specific company, let’s call the chosen NMN products samples 1, 2, and 3.

Lab Results:

As you can see from the elemental analysis, 33 elements and their concentration were analyzed. The acceptance criteria highlighted here in yellow show the acceptable limit of identified elements through 3 ways of administration: ingestion, topical, and inhalation. Since NMN is usually taken orally, ingestion is the one we shall pay attention to. 4 most toxic heavy metals were listed with a specified concentration based on micrograms per kilo body weight per day on an average 70 Kg adult. There are different guidelines set out by each health authority such as Health Canada or FDA for a daily intake tolerance to be considered safe.

Here is the table from Health Canada showing the acceptable limits for each heavy metal and its adult daily limit.

Also, you may refer to the table from FDA, indicating the “permitted daily exposures for 24 elemental impurities”

As an exercise: let’s compare the lead value of these three NMN samples, which are 0.01, 0.106, and 0.158 micro-g/g. Clearly, the lead level varies from company to company, but they are all within acceptable limits from Health Canada 10 ug/day and FDA 5 ug/day. The lead level of all samples is almost 1000 times lower than the upper limit if you are taking 1 g of NMN per day. This is what you should be looking for in a third-party test result.

I talked about most toxic heavy metals that can be harmful to your body. What about other elements that are essential to your body? Take iron for instance, the concentrations from sample 1, 2 and 3 varies from 11.6 to 187 ug/g. These are within the tolerable upper daily intake limit of 45 mg. Iron is essential for your body's proper function, however, too much iron intake can damage your gastrointestinal system, over time, iron can accumulate in the organs, damaging the liver. The point here is that too much of a good thing can be bad for you. You need to find the balance. The elemental analysis will help you take control over what and how much you are taking.

Take-home message:

If you are planning to take any kind of supplement such as NMN, look for companies that are GMP compliant such as Arcwell and can provide third-party chemical test results.

In an ideal scenario, you should choose a company with a good reputation, and after purchasing your NMN, you should send the sample for a third-party chemical test to ensure all the existent elemental impurities are within the tolerance suggested by health authorities, especially the 4 major toxic heavy metals.

I know it can be expensive to do a third-party test. But if you are planning to take NMN for a lifetime it is worth knowing if the company you choose is reliable or not. Otherwise, instead of prolonging your life, you will end up heaving the exact opposite result that you are looking for.