What to ask at a NAD⁺ consultation
A printable sheet of questions for the clinician, not the checkout — dose, compounding, the pharmacy, what happens in month two, and what the evidence actually supports for the format you are being sold.
A NAD⁺ consultation is usually short, often asynchronous, and almost always ends in a prescription. The prescriber knows several things the website does not publish — the milligrams, the pharmacy, the standing rate — and will say them if asked. Of the 122 prescription sellers we have reviewed, 43 publish a dose and 10 name the pharmacy. Everything else on this sheet is in the same position.
Print it, take it in, and write the answers down. The last question changes with what you are being sold, because the evidence does not transfer between formats — a trial run with an oral capsule is not evidence for an injection, and it is the study most often cited for one.
Two answers to set before you print
They change the evidence question, which is the only one whose right answer depends on what you are being sold.
NAD Picks — consultation questions for injection NAD⁺
Question 1
What dose are you prescribing me, in milligrams, and how often?
A prescriber has to know this to write the prescription, so unlike a website there is no honest way for them not to answer. Get the figure and the frequency in the same sentence, because one without the other is not an amount. It is also the number that makes every price on the market comparable, and the reason almost none of them are.
- A good answer sounds like
- A milligram figure, a frequency, and the vial size it is drawn from.
- A bad answer sounds like
- “Your provider will determine the right dose for you.” You are speaking to the provider.
Why we ask it: 43 of the 122 prescription sellers we have reviewed publish a milligram figure anywhere on their own site — against 66 across all 149, because an off-the-shelf supplement carries a printed label and a compounded prescription does not. The consultation is where that number exists, if it exists.
What they said
Question 2
Is what you are prescribing compounded, and what does that mean for FDA review?
Ask it as two questions and make them answer both. Compounded means a pharmacy mixes it to order and the FDA has not reviewed it for safety, efficacy or quality before it reaches you. That is the ordinary regulatory position of nearly everything injectable in this category, and a clinician who will not say it plainly is managing you rather than treating you.
- A good answer sounds like
- “Yes, it is compounded, so it is not FDA-approved. Here is what that does and does not mean.”
- A bad answer sounds like
- “It comes from an FDA-registered facility.” That describes the building, not the medicine.
Why we ask it: 113 of the 149 sellers we have reviewed are compounded. Registration of a facility is not approval of a drug, and the two are used interchangeably across this category.
What they said
Question 3
Which pharmacy compounds it, and can I have the name?
The pharmacy, not the brand, determines what is in the vial. A name is a license you can look up and an inspection record you can read; a “network of licensed US pharmacies” is every seller in the category and tells you nothing. A prescriber knows exactly where the script is going, which makes this an easier question to ask in a consultation than on a contact form.
- A good answer sounds like
- A pharmacy name and the state that licenses it, given without hesitation.
- A bad answer sounds like
- “We work with a network of accredited partners.” Ask which one gets mine.
Why we ask it: 10 of the 149 reviewed sellers name the compounding pharmacy on its own site, so for almost everyone this fact only exists if you ask for it.
What they said
Question 4
What would make you tell me not to take this?
A prescriber who can name a reason to decline you is screening; one who cannot is dispensing. This is the single most revealing question on the sheet, and it costs nothing to ask. A compounded preparation carries no FDA-reviewed label setting out who should not take it, so the only screen that exists is the judgment of the person on the call.
- A good answer sounds like
- Specific conditions, medicines or findings that would stop them prescribing, named before you ask twice.
- A bad answer sounds like
- “It is very safe, everyone tolerates it well.” That is an answer about sales, not about you.
Why we ask it: 122 of the 149 reviewed sellers require a prescription — which means a clinician signs off, and a clinician can decline. Requiring a prescription does not make the claims on the page true.
What they said
Question 5
What bloodwork do you want before and after, and is it included?
Two things ride on this. Labs before tell you whether the symptom you are treating has a cause worth finding, which matters because fatigue has several that respond to something cheaper. Labs after are the only way anyone can say whether this did anything. Ask who reads them and whether the result can change the plan.
- A good answer sounds like
- A named panel, a timescale, and a clear statement of what it costs.
- A bad answer sounds like
- “We can arrange labs if you want them.” Optional monitoring is not monitoring.
Why we ask it: 40 of 149 reviewed sellers state their bloodwork position at all, and 1 includes labs in the price. For the rest, this is a cost you will find out about later.
What they said
Question 6
What are we measuring, and when do we decide it has not worked?
Make them commit to an endpoint and a date before you pay for anything. A therapy with no stopping rule bills forever, and this is a category with no controlled outcome trials to define what success would even look like. If the answer is that you will simply know, ask how you would know it had not worked.
- A good answer sounds like
- A named measure, a review date, and what happens at that date if nothing has changed.
- A bad answer sounds like
- “Most people start feeling it in a few weeks.” That is a testimonial, not a plan.
Why we ask it: Of the 5 delivery routes we grade, 1 has randomized human evidence that it raises NAD⁺ at all — the oral precursors. No format has a controlled outcome trial for energy, focus, sleep or aging, so nobody can tell you what a success looks like unless you make them define one.
What they said
Question 7
What will I be charged in month two, and on what cycle?
Ask for the standing rate and the billing interval in the same breath, then write both down. The figure quoted at a consultation is very often a first month or a plan price, and “monthly” sometimes means every four weeks, which is a thirteenth charge a year nobody mentions. This is the number your whole commitment is built on.
- A good answer sounds like
- Two figures and a date: what today costs, what the next one costs, and when it lands.
- A bad answer sounds like
- A single number with no interval attached, in a category where two intervals are common.
Why we ask it: On 20 of the sellers we have checked, the advertised figure is lower than the rate that repeats, and 8 of the 144 we rank bill every four weeks rather than every month.
What they said
Question 8
How do I stop, and what happens to money I have already paid?
Cancellation is the part of the arrangement designed while you are not reading. Ask whether the plan you are being offered is a subscription you can end or a prepayment you cannot, whether an unused balance is refunded, and whether stopping requires a call rather than a click. Ask before you agree to the price, not after.
- A good answer sounds like
- “Cancel any time in the app, and here is what happens to an unused month.”
- A bad answer sounds like
- “You can cancel at any time” attached to a plan already billed in full.
Why we ask it: 12 of the sellers we have checked lead with a figure that requires money up front — a quarter, a half year, or a full year — and 27 of the 144 we rank publish no price on the page at all.
What they said
Question 9
If something goes wrong at eleven at night, who do I actually reach?
Self-injecting a compounded drug at home means the first person to notice a problem is you. Find out whether there is a clinician on the other end of that message or a support inbox, what the response time is, and whether the person who prescribed it will see it. A reasonable answer is easy to give; an evasive one tells you what the service is.
- A good answer sounds like
- A named route to a clinician, with a stated response time and who covers nights.
- A bad answer sounds like
- “Message us through the portal and someone will get back to you.”
Why we ask it: 37 of 149 reviewed sellers publish where they operate, which is the closest most of them come to describing their clinical footprint. Aftercare is rarely on a pricing page at all.
What they said
Question 10
Can I have all of that in writing before I pay?
Everything above is easy to say and easy to forget, and none of it is binding until it exists somewhere you can re-read it. Ask for the dose, the pharmacy, the price, the cycle and the cancellation terms in one message. A service that will put its own answers in writing is a different proposition from one that will not.
- A good answer sounds like
- A written summary, unprompted, before payment is taken.
- A bad answer sounds like
- “It is all in the terms.” Then ask them to point at the clause.
Why we ask it: The first month only pattern is the most common reason a remembered price and a charged price differ, which is exactly the kind of disagreement a written answer settles.
What they said
Question 11
What is the evidence that injection NAD⁺ delivers more energy?
Ask for the trial by name, and ask which format and which population it was run in. This is the question the category answers by changing the subject, and you already know the answer before you ask it.
Our grade for this exact pair
No human outcome trials
No. There is no controlled human outcome trial of injection NAD⁺ for this.
More energy sold as Compounded NAD⁺ shipped for self-injection has no controlled human outcome trial behind it. That is true of every claim on this page for every format except the oral precursors, and it is the single most important fact in the category: the format that delivers the most is the one with the least evidence that delivering more helps.
If they cite a study, this is probably the one: No controlled human trial establishes that an oral precursor makes a healthy person more energetic. Some trials have measured adjacent things — one NMN study tracked six-minute walking distance — but a walking distance is not the promise on the label. It was run with an oral precursor, which is a different molecule given by a different route.
Injectable NAD⁺ is compounded, which means the FDA has not reviewed it for safety, efficacy or quality before it reaches you. It is not a studied product with a marketing application behind it; it is a preparation made to order.
What they said
Research, not medical advice. Prepared from NAD Picks’ own provider reviews at nadpicks.com/tools/nad-what-to-ask
What a sheet like this cannot do
Good answers to all 11 questions tell you that you are dealing with a careful service. They do not tell you that NAD⁺ will do anything for you, which is a separate question with a far less comfortable answer: outside the oral precursors, no format in this category has a controlled human outcome trial behind any of the benefits it is sold on. A well-run service selling something undemonstrated is still selling something undemonstrated.
Before the call, check what a seller’s own page discloses with what to ask a NAD⁺ seller, grade the promise you were shown in the evidence grader, and settle whether the quoted price is the one that repeats in the advertised price and the one you pay. After it, the dose you were given turns into a cost per milligram in the cost-per-mg calculator, and the price into a year in the annual cost tool.