There’s A Secret Ingredient in our Balls.
You’ve seen it in skincare, but we’re using it to change how drinks are made (and packaged).
There’s a secret ingredient in our balls.
You may have even heard about it, but mentioned in a different way…
In fact, if you are on skintok, or skinstagram (mmm, that one doesn't flow as well does it), you will almost certainly have heard of it.
We didn't put it in there to give you good skin though; it's in Incrediballs because it helps us do our whole thing - rid the world of plastic bottles. It’s part of our co-crystal tech that keeps our balls stable, so that we can package them in home compostable cardboard.
And as it turns out, it also has some really interesting effects on human health.
That magical ingredient is ✨nicotinamide✨.
Those of you who are familiar with terms like double cleanse will know it as niacinamide (exact same thing). It's a form of vitamin B3. (But no, absolutely nothing to do with nicotine, or smoking!)
What it actually does
The short version is that nicotinamide is a form of vitamin B3 that your body uses to make NAD⁺ (short for nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide). NAD+ is what you may have seen on the front of that expensive bottle of 'brain booster', as it's a molecule involved in everything from turning food into energy to repairing DNA.
It helps your cells make energy by enabling key steps in how your mitochondria (remember the 'powerhouse of the cell' from school?) convert food into adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Without enough NAD⁺, that whole system slowwws down, which means less energy for everything your body does.
It helps repair your DNA. Every day, your DNA gets damaged by things like UV light, pollutants, and normal cellular stress. To fix it (which you definitely want to happen...) your cells use enzymes like poly (ADP-ribose) polymerases (we will call them PARPs for short) which use up NAD⁺ as part of the repair process.
‘It boosts your immune system.’ Okay, no it doesn't, because that's not a thing that can happen. You can't 'boost' your immune system with a supplement no matter how much wellness people say you can. But immune cells do rely heavily on NAD⁺ to produce the energy and signals they need to respond to infections. It also helps regulate how strongly and how long your immune system responds - reducing overreaction and maintaining control (which is what can lead to autoimmune disorders).
It also helps regulate inflammation and cell stress by supporting sirtuins (a group of proteins). These proteins influence how cells respond to damage and how genes related to stress and ageing are expressed. Sirtuins can only function when NAD⁺ levels are adequate.
So, when I say your body needs NAD⁺ to run all of those essential processes, it seems pretty clear why right? But the irritating part of all of this is that as we age, we make less of it.
In a super sustainable move though, our bodies recycle NAD⁺ back into nicotinamide, through something called the salvage pathway. Ignore the name, it’s not actually a last-resort system - it’s how your body maintains most of its NAD⁺ stores. Nicotinamide enters this cycle and gets converted back into NAD⁺ so your cells can keep doing their jobs. The NAD+ is used up, one of the products is nicotinamide, and poof, back it goes into NAD+.
So Incrediballs contains nicotinamide, which is a NAD+ precursor, like a couple of others you may have heard of; like nicotinamide riboside (NR) and nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN). They all have pros and cons, a fair amount of research and have slightly different biochemical roles, but ultimately, they can all be converted into NAD+.
But what about the marketing claims. Does more NAD+ make you smarter, younger, or more energised?
Well, no. We don't think so yet anyway. There is some science to show it might do some good stuff, then some studies that show it might not do much at all. But it's an area of ongoing research so it is interesting.
Nicotinamide isn’t a nootropic (a term used for stuff that improves your cognitive abilities). It won’t give you 20 hours of unrelenting focus to memorise an encyclopedia (although I guess no one has those now anyway?) or unlock your inner genius. But NAD+ does support the systems that keep your brain working as you age. So, that might be interesting. There is some promising (but early) research in areas like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s - though it's far from conclusive.
But no, you won't become all zesty and articulate if you start taking a B3 supplement.
But if it's just niacinamide, then what about skin?
Applied topically there’s great evidence that nicotinamide (niacinamide remember) genuinely does help with things like acne, pigmentation, and redness. Taken orally? Unfortunately, not a lot of evidence yet. Well, okay pretty much none, except for one thing: nicotinamide has been shown, in several human trials, to reduce non-melanoma skin cancers in people with sun damage.
That is very interesting.
Okay, but can I skip my energy drink if I take it?
NAD⁺ is what your mitochondria use to turn food into energy. So yeah, it sounds like drinking nicotinamide = more energy. But sadly that's also a no. It supports energy production, but not in a stimulant-y, Red Bull kind of way. It’s about maintaining baseline function, so it helps with the energy processes in your cells, it doesn't give you a boost when you have 3.30 itis (I have a nap 3-4 days a week, highly recommend).
For other metabolic issues, some studies have shown some benefits in insulin sensitivity or metabolism. Others don’t, but there might be reasons for that. The science is still forming, but it’s promising. So, watch this space...
Why Nicotinamide, not something trendier like NMN or NR?
I explained above that there are several NAD+ precursors; NMN and NR are the two more popular. So, for marketing reasons it would make sense to use those. But again, these benefits aren't actually why we used nicotinamide in the first place.
They're also more expensive, less stable, NMN has fewer human trials and in the end... your body just converts it into nicotinamide anyway.
There is some evidence that they might be better at producing more NAD+, but all three have shown conclusively that they all cause an increase in NAD+ in humans. So, on balance, we're pretty happy
.
Some specifics for you:
One serve of Incrediballs is 67mg of nicotinamide (so that's ten balls in 350ml, though don't forget, they're adjustaBALL, so you can have them how you like).
That’s 418% of your RDI. Sounds high, but honestly, some of the studies above used WAAYYYY more and the participants reported minimal side effects.
And it's still way below the upper safe limit, which is 900 mg/day (which those studies above actually went over too, but we'll use that limit for now).
So, that's our magical ingredient. It's pretty cool actually; I didn't intend to have anything in there for this range that people who associate with health as ultimately, I want this to be a drink people love the taste of, rather than because they think it might help improve their health.
But I thought you may want to know some details on what you're drinking before we launch.
So yeah - nicotinamide is a science-backed ingredient that helps us deliver something useful without the healthwashing. And it just happens to help make our plastic-free tech possible.