NAD Therapy in Charleston and Mt. Pleasant, SC

Reviewed by Ashley Harwyn, PA-C  |  A4M Board Certified  |  Updated September 4, 2026

NAD+ infusions are the most confidently marketed thing in wellness medicine and one of the least well studied. Both of those are true at once, and you deserve to know it before you sit down with a line in your arm in Mount Pleasant or downtown Charleston.

What NAD actually is

Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide is a coenzyme present in every cell you have. It is not exotic and it is not a drug. It participates in oxidative phosphorylation and the production of adenosine triphosphate, in DNA repair, in calcium-dependent signaling and in gene expression[2]. The interest in supplementing it comes from the observation that levels appear to decline with age and under metabolic stress.

That is a reasonable premise. What does not follow automatically is that pushing NAD+ into a vein raises the amount inside your cells, or that doing so produces a clinical benefit. Those are separate claims and they need separate evidence.

Where this sits among the things we actually do

It helps to be clear about the category. An NAD+ infusion is a wellness intervention with early evidence, not a diagnostic and not a treatment for a diagnosed condition. That places it in a different bracket from full panel lab testing, from thyroid management, and from bioidentical hormone therapy, all of which rest on considerably firmer ground. People often arrive asking for the infusion when what they actually want is an answer, and those are different appointments with different costs and different odds of helping. We would rather say that at the start than after you have paid for a course.

What happens when NAD+ goes into a vein

In 2019 a research group ran the study nobody had run: a six hour intravenous NAD+ infusion at three micromoles per minute, measuring plasma and urine throughout[1]. They described their own result as surprising. No change in plasma NAD+ or its metabolites, including nicotinamide, methylnicotinamide, ADP ribose and nicotinamide mononucleotide, was observed until after two hours.

Their conclusion, in their words, was that at that rate NAD+ is rapidly and completely removed from the plasma for at least the first two hours. By six hours they were detecting increased urinary excretion of both methylnicotinamide and NAD+ itself.

What that does and does not mean

It does not mean the infusion does nothing. Disappearing from plasma is consistent with rapid uptake and metabolism, which is arguably the point. What it does mean is that the simple story sold on most clinic websites, that a drip tops up a depleted cellular reservoir in real time, is not what the one human measurement of this actually showed.

What has actually been tested in trials

A 2024 systematic review searched PubMed, MEDLINE, Embase, Cochrane CENTRAL, Web of Science and Scopus for randomized trials of NAD and NADH supplementation[2]. It included 10 studies with 489 participants in total, across chronic fatigue syndrome, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, older adults, overweight participants and postmenopausal prediabetes.

The reported findings were modest and specific: reduced anxiety, a lower maximum heart rate after a stress test, improved muscle insulin sensitivity and insulin signaling, and changes in quality of life, fatigue intensity and sleep quality in chronic fatigue syndrome.

The distinction that matters, and that is almost always omitted: most of that evidence concerns oral NADH and precursors, not an intravenous drip. A trial of an oral compound does not validate an infusion, and quoting one to sell the other is the single most common piece of misdirection on this topic.

How well is it actually tolerated?

Better than its reputation if it is run slowly, worse than the marketing implies if it is not. The systematic review is blunt that all studies showed some side effects, most commonly muscle pain and nervous system complaints[2].

More directly relevant to what you are considering: a retrospective study reviewed records from a commercial IV clinic, where clients received four consecutive days of 500 mg NAD+ IV or nicotinamide riboside IV with thirty days of follow up[3]. Participants receiving NAD+ IV reported moderate to severe gastrointestinal symptoms and increased heart rate. The authors note that commercial wellness settings increasingly provide these infusions despite limited evaluation of safety and effectiveness.

Why the drip rate is the whole story

Almost everything unpleasant people describe about NAD+ infusions, the cramping, the nausea, the flushing, the chest tightness, tracks dose and speed rather than the molecule itself. Run slowly, most people are comfortable. Run fast to fit a schedule, most people are not. A first session should take longer than you expect, and if a clinic is quoting you a brisk appointment time, that is worth asking about.

Should you have one? Here is the honest filter

The question we ask first is not whether NAD+ might help. It is whether anything has been ruled out yet. Persistent fatigue and brain fog have a real differential, and none of the common causes are treated with an infusion.

What we will and will not say about it

We will not tell you NAD+ IV is FDA approved, because it is not approved for any condition. We will not tell you insurance covers it, because it does not. We will not tell you it treats fatigue, aging, addiction, depression or long COVID, because the randomized evidence for those uses does not exist yet, however often you have read otherwise.

What we will say is that it is a real coenzyme, that people frequently report feeling better after a course, that the subjective response is not nothing, and that the honest description of the evidence is early rather than absent. If that framing is enough for you, it is a reasonable thing to try.

How a session works in Mount Pleasant and Charleston

It starts with an intake rather than a line. We want to know what you are hoping this will do, what has already been investigated, what medications you take, and whether you have any cardiac history, because increased heart rate is a documented effect[3].

The infusion itself is run slowly and the rate is adjusted to how you feel rather than to the clock. Most people are comfortable at a slower rate. Sessions run at our Mount Pleasant office at 496 Bramson Court and at The Longevity Club on Rutledge Avenue in downtown Charleston.

If you decide against it

That is a legitimate outcome of this conversation and it will not be treated as a lost sale. For a good number of people the money is better spent on finding out why they are tired, and we would rather run those tests than an infusion that does not answer the question.

Questions people actually ask

Ashley Harwyn, PA-C A4M Board Certified · Founder, Solcara Health Online

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About the author

Ashley Harwyn, PA-C

Founder, Solcara Health · Board Certified in Anti-Aging and Functional Medicine (A4M)

Ashley has practiced medicine for more than fifteen years. Her path into it began at home, with a family member born with a congenital heart defect and a childhood spent watching how much the quality of a clinician's attention could change the shape of a life. She has since practiced across a range of settings, including medical mission work in Uganda, before founding Solcara to build the kind of practice she kept wishing existed, one that treats women as whole people and tells them the truth about what the evidence does and does not support.

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