N-Acetylcysteine to Combat Covid-19: An Evidence Review | Hacker News Reader

N-Acetylcysteine to Combat Covid-19: An Evidence Review

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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This is a summer 2020 submission and fall 2020 publication (doesn’t make it wrong, just gives timing context).

I was recommended NAC supplements and some cursory research suggested that it probably wasn’t going to hurt so I bought them ($14 a bottle) as a readily available OTC supplement. FDA sent out some threatening communications in fall 2020 which suggested they’d contemplate prosecuting the sales of NAC as a supplement and it predictably got a lot harder to find. I’m still taking some of the first 500 pills I bought as it seems unlikely to be harmful. (I’m not claiming it works, just giving some background not in the NIH paper.)

It seems odd the government would suddenly stop this from being available OTC

walmart has them otc

Note that they are still available on the Canada side of the border.

Funnily enough, other supplements like lithium orotate are available in the US but not in Canada. Luckily the US website iHerb ships to Canada!

AFAIK Amazon were the only ones that complied with this. Plenty of other stores still carry NAC. It's cheap so I stocked up on it just in case.

It's a glutathione precursor. You can't really directly take glutathione as a supplement. You have to take stuff that helps the body make it in house.

Glutathione is a powerful antioxidant and, among other things, it's important liver support. Milk thistle is another glutathione precursor.

Curious if anyone has any first hand experience taking daily NAC supplements for long periods of time? I’ve been looking into it, but there doesn’t seem to be much material out there on it

Lots of folks in r/nootropics the it. Ask there.

I keep a lot of it in reserve but don't use it daily any more. I was using it for a while in combination with several other molecules to try to improve liver enzyme numbers but found TUDCA and Choline formerly B8 to be much more effective for what I was trying to do. It is good to keep on hand however especially given the multiple attempts to reclassify it as a prescription drug. I used to use it daily and had no side effects or noticeable effects at all.

Here [1] is a nice summary of NAC.

[1] - https://examine.com/supplements/n-acetylcysteine/

I don't take it every day but I often take it at pretty high doses (1200 to 1800 mg) due to an ear condition. The most adjacent condition is called Hyperacusis, which is the word I use most often in conversation, but in practice it differs in that, rather than simply having highly sensitive ears (i.e. sounds that don't harm others cause physical pain, but not permanent loss of function), it seems that my ears are very literally less able to withstand sound in general (i.e. sounds that don't harm others not only cause me physical pain, but also cause permanent hearing loss). I therefore have to be highly vigilant about the volume around me at all times.

NAC has been shown to prevent hearing loss if taken very quickly after an acoustic trauma (up to 1 hour). I keep a bottle on me at all times. This is fuzzy personal science of course, but I can think of some instances of two comparable sounds in terms of volume/exposure time, where I took NAC after one and didn't after the other; after the former I was fine except for maybe a temporary spike in my tinnitus, and after the latter my hearing loss either started at a particular frequency or permanently worsened. I'm a former professional musician/audio engineer/etc (this condition put a stop to that), so my ability to judge this stuff is higher than average.

No adverse reactions except for maybe a temporary increase in allergy symptoms. I have a ton of allergies (food and otherwise), and apparently NAC causes a large release of histamine. That said, I've also read reports that it's helpful for fighting allergies, so I guess always be wary of what you read when it comes to this stuff...

Back when I worked in SF and would end up frequently drinking to excess socially I took NAC+Thiamin for hangover mitigation.

It worked surprisingly well for that, and I didn't notice any negatives.

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