NAD+ for Chronic Fatigue: My First Infusion and the Six Weeks After

During the hardest year of my recovery, the crisis year, my trainer sent me a single link.

It was a Huberman Lab episode with Dr. Craig Koniver on peptide and hormone therapies. He had sent it because it touched on chronic Epstein-Barr and NAD+.

I listened. And somewhere in that conversation, my body answered before my mind did: a full-body, sacral-deep yes.

After that episode, I did not let it go. I looked up straight away whether NAD+ infusions were available here in the Netherlands, and I landed on Qualevita in Amsterdam almost immediately.

It turned out to be available. It just was not possible yet. More on that below.

This post is about NAD+ for chronic fatigue after Epstein-Barr: what made me say yes, what my first infusion felt like, and what happened in the six weeks that followed.

The podcast that put NAD+ on my radar

The episode was a long conversation about peptides, hormones and longevity. But one stretch of it stayed with me.

Dr. Koniver explained that his clinic had been using NAD+ infusions longer than most, and that the 750 mg dose many clinics use today had emerged from his own practice. He was open about his bias: he had seen it work again and again, and he said he had no financial stake in any company selling NAD+.

Then he told a story about a patient with chronic Epstein-Barr, a reactivation of the virus. The man was depressed, so fatigued he could barely get out of bed, and on disability. Koniver gave him a loading course of five infusions over ten days.

When the man returned, his wife was in the room, crying.

“In a week,” she told him, “my husband is back.”

What stayed with me most was what Koniver said next. He admitted he could not fully explain it. The familiar biochemistry, fuelling the mitochondria, did not account for what he was seeing. He suspected there was something about NAD+ that science did not yet understand.

That is one clinician’s anecdote, not a study. And I read it that way.

But it was the first time I had heard Epstein-Barr, fatigue and NAD+ spoken about together by someone who had watched it happen in a real person.

Why I waited

At that point, I was in the hardest year of my recovery.

On 4 January 2024, my system stopped absorbing load. Rest, sleep and quiet no longer made a difference. That year became about survival: stabilisation, crisis prevention, and learning to pace a body that had stopped negotiating.

So I parked the idea.

NAD+ treatment is expensive, and at that time it simply was not possible.

Looking back, I am glad it was not. I first had to come out of crisis mode. A system still fighting for stability has nothing to build on, and I am not sure the infusions would have had anything to land on.

The second year was the deep one.

In January 2025, my bioresonance practitioner confirmed that the Epstein-Barr virus had gone dormant. Paradoxically, I felt more tired. Cellular repair only begins once the acute phase is over. Bioresonance, shiatsu, breathwork, grounding and a great deal of rest did the quiet work.

Now, the foundation is built and capacity is returning. For the first time, the question is no longer, How do I survive this? It is, What could support what I have already built?

For me, part of the answer was my mitochondria, the part of each cell that makes energy. My understanding is that long-term viral load can leave them depleted, and when they run low, many other processes slow down with them. So I chose NAD+ to support my mitochondrial health, and through that, to help my recovery along further.

NAD+ is not my rescue plan but the “cherry on top”. It is the finishing layer on a foundation I laid myself.

What had to line up before I could say yes

Two things had to line up: the money and the energy.

The money first. NAD+ IV therapy is not covered, and it is used off-label for this kind of fatigue. It is a decision you make privately, with your own resources. I am being honest about that because the cost is part of why I waited. If you want to see what it involves, you can read the clinic’s own information.

The energy matters just as much, and it is the part people rarely mention.

A treatment like this asks something of the body before it gives anything back. You need enough capacity to prepare, to move through the session, and to rest afterwards. In my crisis year, I had neither the money nor that capacity.

Now, I have both.

I chose a package of five sessions, spaced roughly six weeks apart, following the advice of the doctor I consulted with. He also advised the dose: 250 mg, the lowest, because of how sensitive my body is. He took that from my own health file. Dr. Koniver’s patient had five infusions in ten days at 750 mg. Mine is the opposite: a slow rhythm, built around what my system can integrate, with no loading dose and no urgency. Just a pace my body can meet.

This is the dose set for my body, not a recommendation for yours.

But the final yes did not come from a spreadsheet, or from the podcast.

It came in the consultation room.

The consultation

I walked into the consultation not knowing how it would go.

Beforehand, I had put together a ten-page account of my health history, from the Epstein-Barr activation in 2009 to the crash in January 2024, and everything since.

The doctor read it. Once he had, he confirmed that I was a suitable candidate for these treatments. He saw a long, documented, post-viral story, not a vague tiredness. He also told me I was playing my cards right.

He was honest with me, too. He could not guarantee any result, and he did not pretend otherwise. That mattered more to me than any promise would have. I was not being sold a miracle. I was being offered a careful attempt by someone who knew what he did not know.

What NAD+ is and how it works

NAD+ is a coenzyme, a helper molecule that every cell in the body uses. Its best-known role is in the mitochondria, where it helps convert food into ATP, the energy our cells run on. When the supply runs low, which can happen after long periods of viral load or chronic stress, those processes can slow down. That is the logic behind giving it back.

An infusion does not work the way you might imagine. NAD+ cannot simply walk into a cell. It is broken down outside the cells into smaller building blocks, which are taken up through specific transporters and rebuilt into NAD+ inside the cell. You are delivering raw material, and the cell decides what to do with it.

Researchers also think that a fast rise of NAD+ outside the cells can act as a kind of alarm signal in the body. That is one reason these infusions are run slowly, and why some people notice physical sensations while the drip is running. A small recent study of the two given by IV found milder side effects with NR, a precursor of NAD+. It was a retrospective review of 14 people at a commercial clinic, so I hold that finding loosely.

Much of this is still unknown. Dr. Koniver said himself that the biochemistry does not fully explain what he sees. So I was not hoping for an energy boost. I was hoping for a foundation, more raw material for the repair work my body was already doing.

Building the base first: a month of grounding in Spain

Before my first infusion, I gave myself a month in Spain with one intention: to build the best base I could for the NAD+ to land on.

Every morning, I went down to the shoreline. I spent time on the beach and in the sea, grounding in the most direct way I know.

Grounding, for anyone who has not come across it, simply means direct skin contact with the earth: bare feet on sand, soil or grass, or standing in the sea. People who practise it commonly describe a sense of less inflammation, a shift toward the parasympathetic “rest and digest” state, and a sense of discharging built-up tension while also feeling charged. The research is small and early, and much of what is said about it is not scientifically settled, so I will not tell you it works exactly the way people describe.

For me, it is not an add-on. Grounding is a non-negotiable part of my recovery and of how I live, and I have written about it in depth in my grounding posts. So when I wanted to prepare my body for NAD+, the question was never whether to ground. It was only how deeply.

A month of it. Every morning. At the sea.

I did it on purpose. If NAD+ is raw material for repair, I wanted the body receiving it to be as steady as I could make it. I could not control the infusion, but I could shape the ground it arrived on.

Pairing NAD+ with shiatsu

I do not take NAD+ on its own. I pair it with shiatsu.

Think of a car. When you fuel a car, it simply runs. My body is not that car. After seventeen years of post-viral load, it is not a well-oiled machine, and fuel alone does not mean it runs smoothly. It needs some extra help to use what it receives.

That help, for me, is shiatsu. My practitioner, who knows my body well, supports it in processing what the NAD+ sets in motion. It is my way of tuning the engine so the fuel can land.

What does a NAD+ IV feel like? Session one, July 30

I went in without much practical preparation. The real preparation was the month in Spain. The rest, like having food ready and the house in order, is something I wish I had done and plan to do next time.

At the clinic, they checked my blood pressure first. The vein in my left arm was easy to find. The drip started slowly, and for a while it was fine.

It was not until the third time after the nurse turned up the drip that I felt it: a pressure on my chest and a flushed feeling. It was not dangerous, but it was not pleasant either. I had tried to imagine it beforehand and kept comparing it to meridian pain, but that was only my mind reaching for something familiar.

Meridian pain is far worse. It feels as though the energy pathways are on fire, and it can be frightening. This was not frightening, just really uncomfortable. I read my book, breathed consciously and let it pass. The whole session took about ninety minutes.

When I was done, the nurse told me not to do anything that day that would raise my blood pressure.

I remember thinking, Oh damn, because I had come by bike.

It makes sense. In the study I read, people receiving NAD+ by IV commonly reported a faster heart rate and chest pressure during the infusion. I did not fully understand the reasoning in the moment, but I took the advice seriously. I cycled home slowly, kept the effort low, and spent the rest of the day on the couch.

Next time, I will take public transport. Not because cycling is wrong, but because a treatment day is not the day to ask my body for extra output.

Then, once I was home, a tiredness came over me that I could not ignore. I had to lie down, and before I knew it, I had slept for two hours.

I woke up with a headache and felt slightly hungover. I spent the rest of the day on the couch, and when I went to bed that evening, the headache was still there. I assumed it would pass.

It did not. The next morning, I woke up with what felt like a real hangover, not a slight one.

The clinic’s aftercare advice is to drink at least 1.5 to 2 litres of water on the day of the infusion. For me, that amount has to be much higher. In Human Design, my digestion type is Hot Thirst, which means my body asks for far more fluid than most people’s does. Once I drank much more than usual and added electrolytes, the headache cleared.

My understanding is that when cells begin producing and using energy again, the body needs fluid and minerals to support that work. I cannot prove that this is what happened, but it fits what I felt.

The six weeks in between

The first days were uneven: broken sleep and sudden hunger, once at 3:30 in the morning. On day four, I felt nauseous. I came to read this as a wipeout response, the cost before the payoff, a sign that something was moving.

Alongside that, I noticed I was emotionally triggered by things that normally would not reach me so heavily. I cried a lot. It felt less like new feelings arriving and more like a dam being given room, with old emotions finally having enough capacity to move.

A week after the infusion, I went to my shiatsu practitioner. She told me my base was really full, and that she had never felt it like that in me before.

That was when I stopped thinking of it as the NAD+ or the grounding, and started thinking of it as both.

In the weeks that followed, the practical changes started showing. Behind the computer, I had more focus and could work in longer bursts. My naps became shorter, and the dips felt lighter instead of like a full shutdown.

My appetite also stayed high, even after my period ended. I recognised the pattern from the first stretch of deep healing after the Epstein-Barr virus went quiet, as if my body were asking for building materials.

And my period, which normally costs me about ten days of energy, cost closer to seven this time. That is one cycle, so I am not drawing conclusions from it. But I wrote it down.

The clinic

Everyone I have met at Qualevita so far has been kind, compassionate and professional. That combination matters more than it sounds when you are lying in a chair with a drip in your arm.

It started with the consultation. They took the time. The doctor read my history, confirmed I was a suitable candidate, and was honest that nothing was guaranteed. I walked out completely confident that I was in the right place, and that this was the right next treatment for me.

The practical side is well organised. My blood pressure was checked before the infusion, and afterwards I received written aftercare instructions, from how much water to drink to what to avoid in the first 24 to 48 hours.

What I valued most was how they handled my tolerance.

The nurse warned me beforehand about the pressure I might feel in my chest. He told me not to worry, that we were doing this together, and that I should say so if it did not feel good. The pace could be adjusted to what my body could handle, and I was not left to decide alone whether a sensation was normal.

There was also flexibility around the schedule when my body needed it.

Does NAD+ for chronic fatigue work? What comes next

Do NAD+ IV drips actually work?

I cannot answer that yet. I also do not think a single infusion could answer it.

My own view is that the clearer picture will only show after all five sessions. I am assuming this works as a build-up, with each session laying something on top of the last, not as one moment where everything changes. That is an assumption, not something I can prove. It is simply how I read my body so far.

It would also explain the rhythm. My body needs time to integrate what each infusion sets in motion, and six weeks between sessions gives it that time.

For now, this is one infusion, one cycle and one set of observations. I am not drawing conclusions this early, and I would be wary of anyone who does.

I have four more sessions to go, spaced roughly six weeks apart. In the next post, I will share session two, and what it taught me about timing, tolerance and what happens when my body asks for a pause.

If you are curious how it unfolds, I will be writing it here as I go.