What is NAD therapy?
Ask the internet: it will tell you that NAD+ is a wonder drug. That rightfully conjures skepticism. NAD+ therapy can allegedly be used for everything: anti-aging, anti-depressing, detoxifying. It sounds magical, or too good to be true. And by itself, it is. But deployed in conjunction with supplemental therapies, it turns out that NAD+ is one of the most powerful new tools in the recovery industry’s toolkit. And really, it’s not all that new.
As early as the 1960s, the FDA researched NAD+’s potential for withdrawal mitigation and recovery improvement amongst alcoholics. The FDA saw marked benefits back then, and yet it still took half of a century for NAD+ therapy to percolate into the public’s consciousness.
The way it works is: nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide is an amino acid that occurs naturally in our bodies. It improves the conversion of food into energy. Interestingly, it also repairs our cells. When one suffers from drug and alcohol abuse, the brain’s neural pathways are rewired to an atypical position. Moreover, drugs and alcohol diminish the body’s natural production of NAD, which further circularizes the problem.
Though the exact mechanism of action remains unclear, NAD helps the brain unwire the problematic pathways and rewire them in their natural positions. Administered to the patient intravenously over a tailored course of infusions, NAD+ IV therapy augments the brain and body’s natural healing process. Your body simply has more NAD to work with.
Addiction help from NAD therapy
Co-therapy is the key to unlocking the potential of this cutting-edge holistic therapy. Deployed correctly, NAD+ can provide a natural force multiplier for the recovery process. It allows us to take advantage of our body’s incredible self-healing abilities and positions the whole human for a successful recovery from the cellular level on up. Chicago Rehab Center provides NAD+ therapy to help those battling substance abuse or mental health disorders and promote overall wellness.
Dr. Beth Dunlap, a board-certified addiction medicine and family medicine physician, is the medical director at CRC Institute, where she is responsible for overseeing all the integrated medical services at the Institute. Beth completed medical school, residency, and fellowship at Northwestern University, where she continues to serve on the faculty as a member of the Department of Family and Community Medicine. She has extensive experience in addiction medicine at all levels of care, and her clinical interests include integrated primary care and addiction medicine, harm reduction, and medication-assisted treatment.
