Experiment ledger
Ideas move from curiosity to a defined test, then to a decision: keep, stop, or admit that the signal was unclear. One person's decision record, not medical advice or sourcing guidance.
Does a daily NAD+ injection produce a repeatable energy, recovery, fatigue, or mental-clarity signal?
It sits upstream of cellular energy metabolism, redox balance, and DNA-repair signaling, but I am treating it as an independent experiment rather than assuming it is required for MOTS-C.
Can a 9 mg weekly run change training tolerance, endurance, recovery, or body-composition trends?
The interest is the performance-longevity overlap: exercise signaling, skeletal-muscle metabolism, metabolic flexibility, and recovery capacity.
Does an 8–12 week run produce cleaner energy, recovery, or cognition without disrupting sleep or tolerance?
The experiment tests whether mitochondrial support creates a subtle but repeatable real-world signal rather than a general anti-aging story.
Can mood stability and stress tolerance improve without worse sleep, anxiety, or a pressured stimulant feeling?
The unusual claim profile is anti-fatigue and activating while potentially less anxiety-producing than a conventional stimulant.
Does it reduce end-of-day eye fatigue, dry-eye friction, focusing strain, or screen-related headache pressure?
The useful test is eye comfort during full-day computer work, not a broad antioxidant or vision-improvement claim.
Current means the test is in progress. Research queue means it has not started.
| Status | Experiment | Tested For | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Not effective | Nicotinic Acid | Lp(a) reduction | A three-month run at 800 mg/day produced no meaningful change in Lp(a). I stopped taking it and removed it from the daily stack. Closed as no signal. |
| No signal | AOD-9604 | Fat loss / body composition | A two-month subcutaneous run at 0.5 mg/day produced no detectable effect and did not earn a continued place in the stack. Closed as no signal. |
| Not effective | Beetroot Nitrate | Training blood flow / pump | Fifteen 400 mg nitrate shots produced no repeatable change in pump, visible vascularity, strength, cardio, perceived recovery, or daily home blood-pressure readings. Closed as no signal. |
| Helpful | Mirodenafil | Training blood flow | Produced a real training blood-flow and pump signal without recreating the tadalafil pattern of deep lower-body ache, worse lying down, or sleep disruption. Kept in the pre-workout stack. |
| Inconclusive | SS-31 / Elamipretide | Mitochondrial repair / fatigue | No detectable signal on fatigue, training tolerance, or recovery across a month titrated from 2 mg to 10 mg per day, but the top dose was a quarter of clinical exposure and this is not a compound you feel, so the null is weak. Shelved to reopen at a higher dose with objective measures. |
| No signal | Cardarine (GW501516) | Endurance / fuel use | No qualitative signal strong enough to justify continued use, especially against the missing long-term human safety data and historical rodent cancer signal. |
| Intolerable | Tadalafil | Blood flow / longevity | Daily low dose triggered a recognized, dose-related muscle ache, worse lying down, that disrupted sleep within days. Isolated it to tadalafil and stopped. |
| No signal | Epicatechin | Muscle / myostatin | Could not detect an effect on strength, training feel, recovery, pump, or body composition at 1,000 mg/day. |
| Improved | Plant Sterols | ApoB / LDL-C / total cholesterol | ApoB moved from 87 yellow to 66 green, LDL-C from 113 red to 77 green, and total cholesterol from 216 red to 151 green between August 25, 2025 and January 16, 2026. |
| Supportive | Green Tea Extract | Lipids / glucose | During the August 25, 2025 to January 16, 2026 window, ApoB, LDL-C, and total cholesterol moved to green while HbA1c moved from 5.2 green to 4.9 green. |
| Mixed | Artichoke Extract | ApoB / LDL-C / liver markers | ApoB, LDL-C, and total cholesterol moved from red/yellow in August 2025 to green by January 16, 2026, while GGT stayed green and ALT/AST remained watch markers. |
| Improved | Multivitamin | Folate / vitamin B12 | Folate moved from 4.3 yellow to 21 green and vitamin B12 from 353 yellow to 694 green between June 13, 2022 and November 17, 2022. |
| Supportive | Omega-3 | hsCRP / inflammation | hsCRP moved from 0.9 yellow on June 13, 2022 to 0.7 green on November 17, 2022. |
This is a cognition-and-recovery candidate, not a muscle one. The angle is whether neurotrophic signaling could show up as cleaner mental energy, faster sleep-inertia clearance, and steadier focus under load. I am treating the loud anecdotes with heavy skepticism: the human trial evidence is mixed and sits mostly in clinical disease populations rather than healthy people, and the injectable route raises the bar well before I would consider running it.
The possible upside is not direct muscle growth. The interesting angle is whether reducing inflammatory drag could improve recovery quality, pain tolerance, sleep stability, training consistency, and how well the rest of the stack feels.
This would be a sleep-and-recovery candidate, not an anabolic one. The hypothesis is whether improved sleep onset and continuity could show up as cleaner morning alertness, steadier training output, and better perceived recovery without a sedative hangover. The bar is unusually high: there is no direct athlete, hypertrophy, testosterone, or growth-hormone evidence; standalone insomnia evidence is short; sleep-apnea and interaction questions remain; and the compound is still unapproved and WADA-prohibited.
This is the best theoretical mechanism in the current muscle-building backlog, but also the weakest human-proof entry. The useful question is whether reducing inhibitory myostatin signaling could create more room for hypertrophy when training, nutrition, sleep, and recovery are already in place. The caution is that the evidence is still preclinical and local-muscle focused, so any future experiment would need objective body-composition, strength, tendon/connective-tissue, lipid, liver, and general safety markers before it could earn confidence.
This is the best pharma-grade human signal in the current anabolic backlog. The hypothesis is not myostatin-brake removal; it is whether a more clinically studied androgen-receptor signal could add lean-mass leverage without unacceptable tradeoffs. The known concern set is exactly why it stays in future status: HDL suppression, transient liver enzyme elevations, testosterone and SHBG changes, no approval for human use, and unclear long-term risk in a trained healthy person.
This maps to recovery, pain sensitivity, nerve health, and longevity-adjacent tissue repair. If there is a useful signal, I would expect it to show up as better resilience under training stress, less inflammatory drag, or improved recovery capacity rather than direct hypertrophy.
This is mostly a longevity and immune-resilience idea. The possible upside would be less about immediate gym performance and more about keeping immune function, inflammation, and recovery capacity from becoming limiting factors over time.
This is the NAD+ efficiency-multiplier idea. If the mechanism matters, the relevant outcomes would be body composition, metabolic flexibility, nutrient partitioning, and keeping energy metabolism cleaner while training hard.
This looks like the more legitimate future metabolic-health and recomp candidate of the two. The hypothesis is not direct muscle gain. It is whether stronger AMPK signaling could support fat loss, metabolic flexibility, lipid handling, and energy expenditure while preserving training quality. The current plan is to test 200 mg once weekly. I would still treat it as investigational and not proven for healthy lifters; the useful bar would be objective body-composition, glucose, lipid, liver, and resting-metabolic-rate markers rather than gym feel alone.
Mechanistically, this sits in the recomp neighborhood because REV-ERB signaling touches circadian metabolism, fuel use, and energy expenditure. My interpretation is much more cautious than with ATX-304: it is an interesting research chemical, not a clean body-recomp tool. The concerns are the weak human-use footing, possible circadian disruption, broad effects on core clock biology, and WADA-prohibited status. If it ever became relevant, it would need a high bar and objective markers, not fat-loss marketing claims.
This is the most experimental performance-metabolism idea in the stack. The draw is oxidative capacity, fatty-acid use, endurance signaling, and body-composition leverage, but the current signal is still mainly animal and mechanistic research.