David Sinclair is an Australian biologist who is a professor of genetics and co-director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research at Harvard Medical School. He is known for his research on aging with a focus on epigenetics, and has been at the forefront of the biohacking world’s conversation on anti-aging and longevity for some time.

He’s also a living example of the potential benefits that anti-aging supplements and practices can have.

Practicing what he preaches, David is 52 years old at the time of this writing but could easily pass for 20 years younger. We’ve sifted through all the articles and podcasts that we could find to distill down exactly what supplements he personally uses for anti-aging and longevity.

*Please note – where a particular brand of the given supplement isn’t known, we’ve noted it and substituted our own top recommendation.

David Sinclair Regular Supplements For Anti-Aging & Longevity
David doesn’t give health recommendations or endorse brands, but he has often shared his personal supplementation regimen. We’ve detailed that below and included links here to purchase recommended brands (where available):

• Resveratrol – 1 gram daily – morning with yogurt or other fat source
• Nicotinamide Mononucleotide (NMN) – 1 gram daily – morning
• Vitamin D3 – 2,000 IU/day based on blood levels
  • Test your vitamin D blood levels
• Vitamin K2 – 45mcg/day
• Quercetin – 500mg – morning
• Omega-3/6/9 – 2 soft gels at night
• Metformin

For a full picture of David’s life-extension strategies (including more information on supplementation than we could include here) we highly recommend his book ‘Lifespan’, available on Amazon here.

David Sinclair Regular Supplements For Anti-Aging & Longevity

Resveratrol

First up on our list of David Sinclair’s regular supplements is resveratrol, a molecule that’s commonly found (albeit in very small amounts) in the skin of foods like grapes, blueberries, raspberries, and peanuts.

Resveratrol gained mainstream popularity a few years back after a study came out surrounding the resveratrol content in red wine, essentially trying to prove that red wine is healthy for you.

We’re sorry to say that this study was completely blown out of proportion.

We’re all for a nice glass of cabernet now and then, but even the highest concentration varietals only contain 0.3-1.07mg in a standard 5oz glass (source).

For reference, David Sinclair reportedly uses 1,000mg of resveratrol per day.

In other words, unless you’re ready to drink a few cases of wine each day, you’re not going to see many anti-aging benefits from the vino.

For the actual science behinds resveratrol’s benefits, the molecule is thought to act as a sirtuin activator and a “caloric restriction memetic”, which essentially means that it activates the same beneficial cellular pathways which are typically only activated through dietary caloric restriction (such as when fasting).

David describes resveratrol and NMN (which we’ll get to below) as critical for the activation of sirtuin genes. Sirtuins play a key role in functions that help us to live longer – particularly DNA repair.

He describes resveratrol as the accelerator pedal for the sirtuin genes (increasing their activation), and NMN as the fuel. Without the “fuel”, resveratrol won’t be as effective.

NAD is a molecule that is essential to energy production in our cells. The reason that resveratrol won’t work effectively without NMN is that sirtuin activation requires youthful NAD levels, but by 50 years old, David says, we have about half the level of NAD we had in our 20s. 

The combination of resveratrol and NMN helps to activate these sirtuin genes effectively, leading to benefits such as:

• Increased rate of DNA repair leading to lower visible signs of aging
• Reduced inflammation and oxidative stress in healthy people
• Improvements in memory tasks
• Improvements in metabolic and cardiovascular markers, especially in people with obesity hypertension, type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease, and cardiovascular disease

The issue that we run into comes in sourcing reliable resveratrol.

While David sources his from excess products leftover from his research lab, most of us don’t have that luxury. And if you do a quick search on Amazon you’ll find hundreds of results.

Not all resveratrol supplements are created equal though. First and foremost we wants to look for a supplement that contains trans-resveratrol and not cis-resveratrol. 

From David’s studies he concluded that cis-resveratrol did not activate the sirtuin enzyme (the main driving pathway behind the desired benefits) but trans-resveratrol did.

Next, we’re looking at the purity of the trans-resveratrol, specifically we want 98%+ pure. David mentions this in his interview with Ben Greenfield (around the 1:17 mark), noting that lower purity supplements can often cause unwanted side effects (such as diarrhea) because of the fillers that are used.

We’ve tested a few different brands and eventually settled on the ultra-high purity Resveratrol from Toniiq (one of our favorite supplement brands overall) as it offers 98% purity with independent lab analysis results published on the page. The dosing also works out well at 300mg/capsule – meaning that 3 capsules per morning get’s us close to David’s recommended dose.

One last note on resveratrol supplements: David takes his first thing in the morning with a few spoonfuls of yogurt, and there’s a reason for this.

His studies have shown that without fat, resveratrol absorption was 5x lower. So, consumption with yogurt (or another fat source) is important. He also clarified on a recent podcast with Rhonda Patrick that NMN supplements do not have this same requirement of fat for absorption. They can be taken with water alone.

Nicotinamide Mononucleotide (NMN)

The second component of our sirtuin-activating and anti-aging cocktail is NMN, used to raise NAD levels in the body back to youthful and healthy levels.

David takes one gram (1,000mg) of NMN daily in the mornings with his yogurt and resveratrol.

A common misconception is that NMN is the same as NR (nicotinamide riboside), and they are often confused with one another. The main difference between the two is the molecule size, which likely impacts how it is absorbed and assimilated into the body.

Both NMN and NR are used with the goal of raising NAD levels, and to be honest there is currently more published data to support NR as being more effective at this in humans. It’s an ongoing debate in the scientific community, but David states in his blog post on NMN & NR that he isn’t against NR supplementation or research, only that he is currently more optimistic about the science on NMN being the better molecule for raising NAD in the long run.

In terms of NMN supplementation, David notes that like resveratrol he get’s his supply as leftovers from his research lab. And like resveratrol, there are dozens of options currently on the market to choose from.

Our favorite NMN brand currently is the Ultra High Purity Stabilized (99%) NMN Capsules from Toniiq. Like with their resveratrol supplement, they offer independently lab-tested results clearly published on their website, and also offer one of the lowest price-per-gram values that we’ve come across at such a high purity level. 

Vitamin D3 + At-Home Testing

On page 304 of David’s book ‘Lifespan’ he mentions taking vitamin D3 daily.

Vitamin D is an essential micronutrient and is thought to exercise significant effect on at least 200 of our genes. It’s relatively scarce in foods and so we rely on sunlight for producing adequate quantities.

The problem is that the vast majority of people have either deficient or insufficient levels of Vitamin D, due in larger part to our mainly-indoor lifestyles. And so vitamin D supplementation becomes critical.

While David doesn’t mention in his book the dosage that he uses, he did mention in a podcast with Dave Asprey that he currently uses 2,000iu per day. However he also mentions that his dose is personalized based on vitamin D blood test results.

To mimic his strategy we recommend Thorne D-1000 vitamin D supplement and the Everlywell at-home vitamin D test to accurately test your personal vitamin D levels. While too low vitamin D is detrimental, blindly supplementing with high doses can lead to having levels above the recommended range which can have harmful effects as well.

Testing your vitamin D is crucial to getting your individual dose correct. You can find more information on comprehensive blood testing in our guide here.

Vitamin K2

David mentions Vitamin K2 supplementation on page 304 of his book ‘Lifespan’ as well.

Vitamin K is an essential micronutrient that’s plays a crucial role in the ability to form blood clots, and to transport calcium around the body. It comes in 2 different forms, vitamin K1 (phylloquinone) and K2 (menaquinone). Vitamin K1 is the most abundant in a western diet, primarily found in leafy green vegetables. Vitamin K2 on the other hand is found in fermented foods, which are less common in a western diet. A source that’s particularly high in K2 are fermented soya beans, also known as “natto” in Japan.

Unfortunately, many people are low in vitamin K1, and therefore may have inadequate levels of K1 to support adequate calcium transport. The NHANES 2011-2012 study found only 57% of men and 37.5% of women (N = 4,306) met the “adequate intake” of K116. This could lead to increased cardiovascular risk as a result17, although more research needed.

So where does the vitamin K2 supplementation come in?

While vitamin K1 is prioritized for use in the liver, vitamin K2 appears to be prioritized for use in the blood stream mainly as a transporter for calcium throughout the body. 

While David doesn’t mention his dosage, we use 45mcg/day of Life Extension’s K2 supplement per the recommendation of Rhonda Patrick (more on Rhonda’s full supplements list here).

Quercetin

David mentioned taking quercetin as recently as July 2021 in his appearance on the Modern Wisdom podcast.

He has also mentioned on Twitter as you can see above that he takes 500mg daily of quercetin. Again, he doesn’t mention a brand here but our favorite are these capsules from Pure Encapsulations. The brand is one of our most trusted supplement suppliers overall and the dose of 500mg per two capsules is in line with David’s recommendation.

Omega 3/6/9 Fish Oil Derivatives

David recently mentioned on Twitter that he uses concentrated fish oil for overall health, specifying that he uses the Nordic Naturals ProEFA-3.6.9 for it’s inclusion of not only omega-3’s and omega-6 fatty acids, but also the lesser known omega-9 oleic acid which has been shown to increase SIRT1 activation.

Since this tweet Nordic Naturals has released a new supplement called ‘Complete Omega’, which from what we can find includes the same formula as the ProEFA-3.6.9 (including the omega-9) at a lower price per serving.  Nordic Naturals Complete Omega is available on Amazon here.

Metformin

Metformin is actually a relatively old drug, first discussed in medical literature in 1922, and studied in humans in the 1950s. It is derived from a plant called the French Lilac. It’s primary use in medicine is for the treatment of diabetes, thanks to its ability to decrease blood glucose levels in patients.

Because Metformin has been used for years, and has an established track record of safety, this makes it more attractive as a longevity drug. Molecules that are discovered today will need years of testing before they can even come close to rival the amount of data and “patient years” accumulated by metformin.

It’s thought the longevity benefits are at least in part derived from activation of the AMPK cellular pathway. This has a host of knock-on effects (visualized below), some of which are involved in beneficial processes like mediating inflammation and increasing autophagy (cellular cleanup).

The bad news is that at least for now metformin remains a prescription drug, meaning that it needs to be acquired through a doctor for personal use. It isn’t (yet) considered widely in the medical community for its benefits towards longevity, so you’ll need to find a fairly forward-thinking doctor if you want to get a prescription.