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NAD+/NADH is kind of an important energy transporter molecule in your body. If you do not have NAD+ to be reduced to NADH, your body cannot oxidize NADH to power the electron transport chain and drive forward ATP synthase.

In other words, you will die literally from exhaustion.

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And humans and the other animals make these substances from the various forms of vitamin B3, e.g. niacin or nicotinamide, which must be provided by the food.

Insufficient intake of this vitamin causes the disease named pellagra (which was frequent at people who ate almost only corn, i.e. maize, with too little of other vegetable or animal food).

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