Subject: NAD+ / MOTS-c / 5-Amino-1MQ: Breaking Down The Blend
From: Derek from Peptide Price <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2026 20:31:44 +0000
List-Id: <derekpruski.substack.com>

View this post on the web at https://derekpruski.substack.com/p/nad-mots-c-5-amino-1mq-breaking-down

For research purposes only. Not for human consumption.
A lot of you have been asking about this one, so I figured we’d just walk through each component and explain how it works and whether the combination actually makes sense. By the end of this you’ll have a clear picture of what each compound is doing and why they were put together the way they were.
What Is This Blend?
Your mitochondria are the power plants inside every cell in your body. Their job is to take the food you eat and convert it into usable energy. When they work well, you feel it — better energy, better metabolism, better recovery. When they decline, everything suffers.
This blend targets mitochondrial function from three different angles at the same time. Each compound has its own job, but they work together in a way that makes the combination more effective than any one of them alone.
The Three Compounds — Plain English
NAD+ (the fuel)
NAD+ is a molecule your cells absolutely cannot function without. It sits at the center of energy production — without it, your mitochondria can’t convert nutrients into ATP (the energy currency your body runs on). It also activates proteins called sirtuins that are closely tied to cellular repair and longevity.
The catch: NAD+ levels drop significantly as you age and under metabolic stress. Less NAD+ means less efficient energy production across every cell in your body.
MOTS-c (the builder)
MOTS-c is a peptide that’s actually encoded inside mitochondrial DNA — making it one of the only compounds that originates from the mitochondria themselves rather than from the cell’s main nucleus. Think of it as the mitochondria sending their own distress signal to trigger adaptation.
Its main job is activating AMPK, which is essentially your body’s low-fuel warning system. When AMPK turns on, it signals cells to become more efficient — pulling in more glucose, burning more fat, and building new mitochondria. More mitochondria means more capacity to produce energy.
5-Amino-1MQ (the plug for the leak)
There’s an enzyme in the body called NNMT that essentially drains your NAD+ supply by siphoning off the raw materials needed to make it. 5-Amino-1MQ blocks that enzyme. It’s not adding more NAD+ — it’s stopping the leak so the NAD+ you have (and are supplying with the first compound) sticks around longer and gets used productively. It also plays a role in how fat cells behave metabolically.
Why These Three Together?
On their own, each compound does something useful. Together, they address the same system from three directions:
NAD+ and 5-Amino-1MQ work as a supply-and-preserve pair. You’re putting more NAD+ in while simultaneously slowing the rate it gets degraded. Without addressing the drain, supplementing NAD+ alone is less efficient — 5-Amino-1MQ closes that loop.
MOTS-c and NAD+ reinforce each other at the output level. MOTS-c stimulates the creation of more mitochondria and activates proteins that require NAD+ to function. So MOTS-c is essentially creating more demand for NAD+ in a productive way — more mitochondrial machinery that can actually put the NAD+ to work.
MOTS-c and 5-Amino-1MQ both support metabolic flexibility — the ability to efficiently switch between burning glucose and fat — but they do it through entirely different pathways. MOTS-c works through the energy-sensing axis. 5-Amino-1MQ works through fat tissue metabolism. They approach the same problem from opposite ends.
The short version: NAD+ is the fuel. MOTS-c builds more engines to burn it. 5-Amino-1MQ stops the fuel from leaking out.
A Note on Ratios
This blend only makes sense if the ratios make sense for the researcher. Personally, I prefer a 20-1-1 ratio by mg — heavier on the NAD+ relative to the other two. That said, the research-referenced amounts for 5-Amino-1MQ are all over the place, which makes dialing in a clean ratio harder than it sounds.
Given the way the synergy stacks here though, the 10-1-1 breakdown in this blend is well-reasoned. The NAD+ is doing the heavy lifting as the primary substrate, MOTS-c and 5-Amino-1MQ are present in amounts that support and preserve that without either one dominating the equation. For a pre-blended vial, this ratio holds up.
Reconstitution
Vial contents: 100mg NAD+ / 10mg MOTS-c / 10mg 5-Amino-1MQ
Add 3ml of bacteriostatic water to the vial. Store reconstituted vial refrigerated.
Each 30-unit (0.3ml) research dose yields 1mg NAD+, 0.1mg MOTS-c, and 0.1mg 5-Amino-1MQ — a 10-1-1 ratio that keeps all three compounds proportional throughout the vial.
Compound Summary
NAD+ is the direct energy substrate — it supplies what mitochondria need to produce ATP and activates repair proteins that depend on it.
MOTS-c is the capacity builder — it signals the body to create more mitochondria and become more metabolically efficient, amplifying what NAD+ can do.
5-Amino-1MQ is the preservation mechanism — it blocks the enzyme that degrades NAD+ precursors, extending the effectiveness of the NAD+ being supplied.
Together they cover substrate availability, degradation prevention, and biogenic capacity. That’s the full stack for mitochondrial support in a single vial.
Research use only. Not for human consumption.

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