Pure NAC Health and Wellness

Being diagnosed with a chronic disease isn’t something that anyone takes well, and understanding that your every activity will be more difficult, require more effort, and take longer for you because of your condition isn’t easy to deal with.  The best thing that someone in this situation can do is to educate themselves, because although there may be no cure for COPD, little changes to your lifestyle can make a huge difference for you.

When you’re diagnosed with COPD, your life changes.  Everyday tasks take you longer, breathing requires effort, and little by little your physical activity becomes hindered by this progressive lung disease.  However, there are many things that you can do to improve your quality of life, prevent serious lung infections, and slow the disease’s progression.

The best thing that you can do to manage COPD is to quit smoking.  Doctors agree that this adds years to a COPD patient’s life, on top of making them immediately feel better and slowing the rate of decline in lung functions.

Diet and exercise are also incredibly important for living with COPD.  According to WebMD, just to breathe the muscles of a person with COPD burn 10 times the calories of other people.  Therefore it is important to get enough calories to keep the muscles involved in the breathing process strong.

Although it causes some shortness of breath, the benefits of exercising with COPD are significant and wide reaching.  Exercising improves breathing and how well your body uses oxygen, strengthens your heart and improves circulation, and boosts energy.

On top of adapting your diet and exercise, always remember to take the COPD medicine that has been prescribed to you by your doctor.  In addition to these, there are supplement options, such as N-acetyl cysteine (NAC) that have been proven to slow the progression of COPD and improve lung function (which we covered in this article).  You can use these in addition to your prescription medications to help you breathe easier.

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a chronic progressive disease involving thickening and scarring of the lung tissue.  IPF patients have found hope for improving their quality of life and slowing the disorder’s progression thanks to an ever-growing body of research into alternative IPF treatments.  One such treatment that has been the subject of several clinical trials and scientific studies is N-acetyl cysteine (NAC) supplementation.

At the foundation of this research into NAC and IPF is the fact that glutathione levels are depleted due to increased oxidant burden in the lung tissue of IPF patients.  Because NAC increases glutathione levels, researchers reasoned, supplementation with NAC should improve patients’ lung function; this is precisely what they found.  Both of the studies discussed below used an effervescent NAC tablet available in Europe, similar to PharmaNAC in the US and Canada.

One double-blind study randomly assigned 182 IPF patients to receive either 600 mg of NAC 3 times per day or placebo for one year (in addition to standard therapy of prednisone and azathioprine).  After the twelve months were up, NAC was found to decrease the mean loss of vital capacity by 9% and of carbon monoxide diffusing capacity by 24%, when compared to placebo, and mortality was 9% in the NAC group as compared to 11% in the placebo group.  No significant differences were found in severity of adverse reactions to treatment between groups with the exception of a lower rate of myelotoxic medication side effects in the group supplementing with NAC.

A similar study conducted in Germany administered oral N-acetyl cysteine to IPF patients, who before the supplementation were found to have glutathione levels that had been reduced to about 51% of those observed in normal individuals.  This study again confirmed the safety and efficacy of NAC as a glutathione precursor.  While many studies investigate the use of inhaled NAC, this study found that while aerosol (inhaled) NAC raised glutathione levels in the lungs for only a few hours, by administering NAC orally the increased glutathione concentrations remained present up to 10 hours after the last dose.  The researchers concluded that oral supplementation with NAC may be a rational therapy to reverse glutathione deficiency in the lower respiratory tract of IPF patients in order to restore the antioxidant balance and to control fibroblast proliferation.  The finding that no adverse affects were found with long-term NAC therapy combined with the understanding that glutathione deficiency may play a central role in IPF led these researchers to suggest long-term oral supplementation of NAC for IPF patients.

N-acetylcysteine for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.  Alan R. Gaby

The effect of oral N-acetylcysteine on lung glutathione levels in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.  A. Meyer, R. Buhl, H Magnussen.

Evidence exists both for and against antioxidant supplementation by athletes, making it difficult for many to understand whether or not it will benefit them.  NAC, however, is one antioxidant supplement that athletes can use to maximize their performance and minimize damage and injury to the body without the blunting effect on training adaptations that many antioxidant supplements have been found to produce.

When we exercise our bodies are put under stress, working overtime to repair any damage or injury we’ve done.  While many other high-dose antioxidants have been proposed to help athletes recover, many have been shown limit training adaptations due to their interference with the cell signaling that is necessary to adapt to higher intensity training..  NAC, however, does not have this effect because in increases the synthesis of glutathione only when there is a demand for it in the body and only when the oxidative stress in the body demands it.

NAC’s role in increasing levels of the antioxidant glutathione in the body makes it an excellent way to strengthen the immune system.  For athletes, though, the antioxidant-boosting properties of N-acetyl cysteine are especially important, helping to reduce cell damage, speed up the body’s recovery from injury, and aid in muscle growth.  Moreover, recent studies suggest that NAC supplementation might increase the amount of time that athletes can do intensive physical exercise.  For endurance athletes such as triathletes, long-distance runners, and cyclists this is especially important news.

Remember: athletes (and anyone else) looking to supplement with NAC should take caution to ensure that the NAC supplement they choose is a high-quality, safe, and effective formulation.