NAC, an Amino Acid for Lung Health [New Research]

NAC, also known by its full name of N-acetyl cysteine, is a unique amino acid supplement that has been used for lung health and chronic respiratory conditions for many years. It is used as a treatment for chronic bronchitis, for better lung function in people with cystic fibrosis, and for people with COPD and emphysema. It’s helpful for those respiratory issues for several reasons, the main two of which are that NAC is able to help to thin mucus and clear airways in the lungs and also to reduce lung inflammation.

Interesting new research is coming out, however, proposing NAC as both a treatment and a preventative supplement for the novel coronavirus, COVID-19. There’s a wonderful review of current research on NAC that has been published on PubMed (the online science database of published articles and research from different medical journals). You can read the research online by doing a Google search of “N-acetylcysteine as a potential treatment for novel coronavirus disease 2019”. It’s a pretty dry read, however, so I’ll try to summarize some of the research below in hopefully a less jargony way.

The first way the scientists listed on how NAC may help in coronavirus prevention is that the unique way the amino acids are formed in NAC may enable them to interact with individual COVID-19 viruses, damaging the way the virus holds itself together, which would make it easier for our bodies to fight off.

Test tube studies examining how NAC interacts with inflammation-causing enzymes produced in the body have also found that NAC was able to block excessive production of compounds in the body and lungs that cause inflammation, which in turn could reduce the severity of lung issues. One of the main problems with COVID-19 is that it basically makes the lungs go crazy and have a very extreme response in the lungs that causes huge amounts of inflammation. It appears that NAC can block some of that excess lung inflammation, preventing those extreme lung responses and deterioration seen in many COVID-10 patients.

This excessive lung inflammation from COVID-19 is called a “cytokine storm” and happens when our body’s immune response goes haywire. It’s kind of like what happens with autoimmune disorders, where our body’s proper immune response instead turns against us. The antioxidant properties of NAC as well as the unique benefits it has on the respiratory system can help to mitigate this overactive inflammatory immune response in the lungs and may help to reduce the severity of respiratory symptoms experienced from the virus.

Another mechanism of how NAC works is that it appears in research to be able to prevent the COVID-19 virus from being able to enter host cells effectively, reducing the amount of infection in the body.

From the research above, it seems that the amino acid NAC can be helpful both preventatively and also in people infected with the virus. There are actually trials going on right now that are trying to more definitively determine If NAC can prevent patients with COVID-19 from progressing to a more severe form of the illness.

Please keep in mind that all of this research is very preliminary. Scientists all over the world are scrambling looking for possible treatments for fighting COVID-19. NAC is not a cure, but it is a beneficial supplement that we think might help, especially when you consider its use for many years in people with lung issues and respiratory problems. NAC also has been determined in research to be a safe supplement to take even when prescribed in doses higher than any person would ever reasonably take.

There’s one NAC supplement at the store that we’d recommend above the others- Jarrow’s NAC Sustain, the reason being is that it’s a time-released version of NAC. In general, a time-released or sustained-release version of a supplement, when available, will be better absorbed since it will be released and absorbed over a period of hours instead of all at once. It doesn’t mean that supplements that aren’t time released are bad, but all things being equal, a time-released supplement will be better absorbed than one that isn’t.

Stop by the store for more information, we’d love to help you further.

We’re located at 7228 W. College Drive in Palos Heights, Illinois.