The 2pm crash, explained
Before you buy energy in a vial, rule out the four cheap causes. One of them is in most Lagos women we test.
Everyone dips a little in the early afternoon. Your body clock has a small trough after lunch, which is why siesta cultures exist. If it is a gentle slowdown, that is biology. If it is an afternoon you lose every day, something else is going on.
Cause one: iron
Ferritin is your iron store. You can have normal haemoglobin and still be running on empty. Ferritin under about 30 ng/mL is a common, fixable cause of fatigue, especially with heavy periods.1 In a placebo-controlled trial, iron reduced fatigue in non-anaemic women with low ferritin.2
Cause two: thyroid
An underactive thyroid slows everything: energy, mood, digestion, weight. One blood test, TSH, screens for it.
Half the time the answer to "should I take NAD+?" is "check your ferritin first".
Causes three and four: sleep and lunch
Six hours a night for two weeks leaves you about as impaired as a full night without sleep.4 Then a big lunch of refined carbs drives a blood sugar spike and dip that lands right around 2pm. Protein, fibre and a ten-minute walk after eating flatten it.
Where NAD+ fits
NAD+ is a molecule every cell uses to make energy, and levels fall with age. In humans, supplements reliably raise NAD+ levels in the blood. Clear improvements in how energetic people feel are much less proven.3 If your iron, thyroid and sleep are sorted and you still want to try it, we will set it up. In that order.
- Daru J et al. Serum ferritin as an indicator of iron status: what do we need to know? Am J Clin Nutr 2017;106(Suppl 6):1634S–39S.
- Vaucher P et al. Effect of iron supplementation on fatigue in nonanemic menstruating women with low ferritin. CMAJ 2012;184:1247–54.
- Freeberg KA et al. Dietary supplementation with NAD+-boosting compounds in humans: current knowledge and future directions. J Gerontol A 2023;78:2435–48.
- Van Dongen HPA et al. The cumulative cost of additional wakefulness. Sleep 2003;26:117–26.
