N-Acetylcysteine (NAC)

NAC usually gives me a runny nose.

 

Clear or with mucus?

 

Clear, darn near like water.

 

Are the cases of tinnitus induced by NAC always temporary? I mean, is there any report concerning a persistent or even permanent onset or worsening of tinnitus due to it? The listing of side effects scared me.

 

Honestly it is used sometimes for things like Tylenol overdose at hospitals. It is safer than many people make it out to be. Are you thinking trying it for your OCD? Have you tried Inositol yet? Can be hard on the gut. Stomach cramps mostly, but some people with OCD swear by NAC and Inositol. I honestly never gave them a fair shake. Going to have to after my Nardil (Phenelzine) disaster. I think OCD is Serotonin for some people, Glutamate or mTor issues for more and honestly the majority in my guesstimate is actually an autoimmune response. Supporting information is things such as PANDAS, findings of Imood, and just a lot of people getting long term anxiety after sinus infections. OCPD is learned or a gene variant issue.

 

Agree with you on everything. The thing is unfortunately I am still polydrugged: on Fluvoxamine, Diazepam and Pregabalin. I wonder if NAC has any boosting effect on Serotonin because in my case I would be augmenting Fluvoxamine and too much Serotonin is one possible cause of tinnitus.

I had a terrible spike with fish oil because I didn't know its effects on Serotonin: things were OK with one pill (of a strong one) but when I took 2 for some days I had vivid dreams and my tinnitus spiked. Probably because I am still on Fluvoxamine.

I am also considering Agmatine as one of my most annoying symptoms I have to deal is sensory overload. But then again not sure if it boosts Serotonin.

 

I don't have OCD myself, but after reading the below linked article, I gave it a try, and found that it helps me a lot. It can have a remarkably calming influence on the brain, and is often prescribed by non-conventional health care practitioners for OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). Here's a link to a pretty amazing article on how it originally became clear it could successfully treat OCD. -- LISTENING TO INOSITOL: CLINICAL NOTES

 

@TomBradyGOAT - what was the disaster with Nardil? I have read that it's a miracle drug for anxiety with few side effects.

 

Pretty sure NAC works on Glutamate and Glutathione.

Hey, fellow OCD person here. I understand going down the polydrug world. I am finding you can't polydrug to fix OCD. I'm off ADs right now. Going through withdrawals. Still on Valium 10 mg and 2000 mg of Gabapentin.

Fish oil is used to help with brain zaps and other withdrawal symptoms of ADs. I know it helps with Serotonin synthesis.

Serotonin is so little of the issue with OCD and same with GABA. To me it is another, let's repurpose an AD for OCD.

Inositol I think works on Serotonin but people with OCD were found to be low on Inositol when a spinal tap was done on people with OCD. So I really think that might be why it helps with OCD.

Double-blind, controlled, crossover trial of inositol versus fluvoxamine for the treatment of panic disorder

Where I live, we just had a Fungi festival to learn about shrooms. Honestly these 0.1 g and up I am seeing for shrooms might even be too high for some microdosing. Some people are starting at 0.005g. To me it isn't the Serotonin helping as much as neurogenesis. With ADs you need to go so high sometimes to gain that effect if you do it all.

EDIT:

I forgot to answer your first question. Spikes are temporary in NAC. Don't let the OCD, GAD worst fear get to you. I have done Ketamine so much. Which is of course much more powerful on Glutamate and any spikes always level off.

 

So Nardil went through a change and was sold in 2003 to Pfizer. They changed the inactive ingredients. It went from 13 ingredients to 9. Some people came out and said it was not as effective. Two companies at least decided to make their own version as close to the original as possible and were more successful. One was a company named Lupin. Lupin has shut down manufacturing to change plants. So all you can get is the Pfizer/Greenstone brand. It is really crap. Literally many people have said they felt awful on Greenstone (Pfizer). I didn't research enough.

Basically what ensued was such a deep down depression, when OCD and low level depression were my issue. Even at 30 mg I had disabling fatigue during the day while working, but insomnia at night. Couldn't pee. Constipated. Sex life gone. What people have to realize is that people who stick with MAOIs have to add at least 1-3 meds to offset the side effects of MAOIs. It is fine for MDD because it gives you a life. For most people you end up on so many drugs.

No help for anxiety. With Pfizer I got none of the help from GABA-T. None. All it was is issues with PEA which affects Dopamine which if you have anxiety and all you are getting is issues with PEA, you are screwed. Especially without the help from GABA-T.

Withdrawals from 6 years of Anafranil, a walk in the park. Withdrawals from a month of Nardil is just an up and down rollercoaster.

 

And the other company?

Sounds great. I thought side effects weren't generally supposed to be bad on that stuff.

 

The other company is out of the UK. I don't know much about them. Their version you have to refrigerate.

I thought the worst side effects were hypotension, possible with interaction with other meds and the overrated diet, that honestly doesn't need to be followed closely.

Boy was I wrong.

Hypotension, sometimes severe. Reading of people blanking out while standing and landing on things on the way down. It actually increased my blood pressure which is already high.

Fatigue that crushes you so bad (to the point where some people go on Modafinil), that when you are ready for normal sleep time, you get insomnia. So add another med for sleep.

Want sex? Let's add Wellbutrin and hope that works.

Just the worst mood changes if PEA is a problem.

Definitely increased my tinnitus. Every med you would have to take on for side effects has tinnitus as a side effect.

Constipation to the point where you have to take Magnesium citrate. One person had to go to the hospital to get unplugged.

You want to pee? Good luck with that.

Bad weight gain issues. Some people would try meta something to counteract it.

Supposedly a lot of this goes away after 6 months to a year.

Nardil can also make you hypomanic, even if you aren't predisposed to bipolar.

They actually take longer to kick in too. Sometimes up to three months. Hypotension is an indicator of it working.

So yeah maybe you are in the UK and can get the good version.

This website will mention the UK version:

https://mentalhealthdaily.com/2014/...omparison-was-the-old-version-more-effective/

 

I honestly don't know about Agmatine. I believe it has to do with nitric oxide which has more to do with Glutamate action.

You are polydrugging to a point. My niece died with 5 meds, that caused depressed breathing. I have met a person who stared straight ahead, and say "I am on 4 meds, I don't think about dying anymore, but I am worried about the numb feeling". They were spaced out. Just gone.

You are still in a place of great hope. I would love to be down to one med that cures all. I don't know if one exists. I the sooner, we realize meds can't solve everything, and we do ERP, and CBT and don't fight the anxiety and depression, the sooner peace will come.

I don't like feeling "bad" emotions. I only want the good. We have to feel all emotions. Accepting that as I withdraw from meds, has been hard.

 

My naturopath mentioned a link between OCD and histamine.

 

What do shrooms and weed do to one's tinnitus, if anything?

It sounds like NAC doesn't do much?

I need to shave with a razor and might visit the Dentist in a month or two Is it a waste of $$ to buy NAC for this?

 

Have you tried L-Carnitine?

How's your head noise been?

 

No I haven't tried it. Head noise zinging away. Haha oof.

 

To sum up, those who have taken NAC, did you experience a decrease in your tinnitus? Or at least had no worsening?

I have a box at home. I would like to take it but I don't want to aggravate my tinnitus and/or hyperacusis symptoms.

Thank you for your help.

(A French professor confirmed that it decreases the release of glutamate).

 

Been taking 600 mg for about a month. No decrease, no worsening as far as I can tell.

 

I took NAC regularly for a month or two. No worsening for me.

 

NAC is one of the best supplements and helps with so many things so you can not go wrong with it. I take it for years now, like 10+. It prevents oxidative stress on cells by busting body's natural glutamate production.

 

Do we really want more glutamate?

 

Hi @iAzra -- I'm also a big believer in NAC. A doctor I used to visit had been an ER doctor for many years. He said the first thing they did when somebody came in with any kind of toxic poisoning was to give them large amounts of NAC, which as you mentioned, is the main precursor to the body's main detoxification enzyme glutathione.

I recently discovered that both NAC and glutathione can be nebulized to great effect.

Here's a bit of what I ran across:

“Tylenol also has a very narrow window of toxicity, meaning that if you go over the recommended dose on the label, but not by much, you can get Tylenol toxicity. The liver starts to break down and people die from this,” Brownstein warns.

“The treatment for Tylenol toxicity is intravenous N-acetylcysteine (NAC), which is the precursor to making glutathione. So, I tell my patients to avoid taking Tylenol. I really made a point of it with COVID-19, because they needed glutathione production.”​

And from this website:

While I had COVID, and even several weeks after recovering and testing negative twice, I still felt some respiratory challenges. Using a nebulizer with a compounded blend of glutathione, NAC and magnesium sulfate helped my respiratory constraints tremendously.

As both a health and wellness practitioner and someone who recovered from a long stint with COVID, I highly recommended having a nebulizer as a part of your household medical care kit, alongside your thermometer, oxygen saturation meter (pulse oximeter) and a wrist blood pressure device.​

 

Glutathione, thank you, that's what I meant, not glutamate...

Yes, there are studies showing NAC is good against COVID-19 virus, too.

 

For those NAC addicts out there, PharmaNAC is now available online. It's considered one of the best forms of NAC as its effervescent tablets prevent oxidation common in bottle form.

 

I've heard you want at least 1200 mg of NAC a day to protect hearing, but won't that mess up your stomach? I'm wondering also how long you would have to be on it for it to be fully effective.

 

It’s been about a month since I’ve starting taking NAC again. I have no idea what’s going on this time around, but ever since starting it, one of my reactive tones (dubbed the warbling turkey tone) has settled down quite a bit. I haven’t heard it since on it. What I find strange is the NAC never did anything for me when I first tried it during onset. I took it for 6 months and never got any relief, but this time I feel like it’s doing something good. This is honestly the better months I’ve had with tinnitus thus far as it has been more manageable to deal with.

I’m going to drop this supplement cold turkey just to see if that reactive tone creeps back up and then go back on it. That way I know for sure if the NAC is doing something good here.

I take 1200 mg on an empty stomach when I wake up. I should add that the NAC brand I’m using also contains Selenium (50 mcg) & Molybdenum (100 mcg). I’ve now learned that they are essential trace minerals that ‘facilitate the production of several important enzymes’. Not sure if it means anything though.

 

Hi @ZFire -- I tried many things shortly after my initial onset, and didn't notice much at all. It wasn't until things started settling down a few months later than I was able to start detecting subtle changes from various things I was doing. It appears things were too intense for me those first few months to have anything touch my off the scale tinnitus.

Regarding NAC, do you know that you can nebulize NAC? I've got an article bookmarked on how to do that. But if NAC is truly helping your tinnitus, it "might" be even more effective if you nebulized it, so that it would essentially migrate from your mouth through the Eustachian tubes to your ear.

Nebulizing very dilute amounts of hydrogen peroxide, iodine, NAC, and glutathione has been shown to be very effective for preventing COVID-19, and treating it very effectively if you do get it. Nebulizers only cost about $50-60.

 

Hey @Lane, I had no idea you can do this with NAC. If NAC is more effective when it’s nebulized, then it’s honestly worth looking into for me. That article on how to nebulize would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

Because my tinnitus is so variable and fluctuates a lot, it’s so difficult to ascertain if the supplements I take are helping or not. My tinnitus cycles between different tones/noise every other week, some of the tones react instantly to external sounds and I’ll occasionally get distortions every now and then.

With that said, I’m still on NAC (1200 mg) almost 2 months in and I do feel like I’ve experienced some stability since starting it. By stability, I’m not saying there’s been a reduction in volume, it’s more about the familiarity of the tinnitus noise that I don’t mind hearing for longer durations and also lesser reactivity. I’ve had a stretch of almost 3 weeks where the tinnitus was the most manageable it’s ever been. There was less noticeable reactivity and the tones I heard were much more easier to stomach in this period of time.

The reactive tones are obviously still there and when the intrusive ones come on, they don’t last as long compare to pre-NAC. Right now though, it seems like the “honeymoon” period I’ve had with my tinnitus in the last 3 weeks is coming to end. Some distorted hearing has return and the one reactive tone I hate so much made a return too, albeit it only lasted for a day. It’s all very random and I can never pinpoint why my tinnitus changes so much. But I’m handling everything a lot better now even during the bad stretches. I’ve hardened to it despite its severity.

But again I can’t tell if these longer periods of “good” that I’ve experienced all of a sudden are happening because of NAC or just natural progression with time.