GlyNAC Recipes

NAC and glycine, simple amino acid supplements,  restore glutathione, your natural resilience system.

Clinical case:  We see many young patients in the clinic at ncchc.com with migraine.  Like the older people in the Baylor study, young patients with chronic migraine have reduced resilience- low energy and impaired ability to manage stress at work and home.    

    Migraine patients have difficulty adapting to "triggers"- weather, lack of sleep, missed meal, emotional stress, heat, sensitivity to odors, and others.

    Over time it is common for this low resilience to lead to problems other than migraine:  irritable bowel syndrome, insomnia, anxiety, depression, musculoskeletal pain, menstrual problems, long recovery times from Covid, and incomplete recovery from concussion.  

    Lab testing in patients with migraine may show abnormal glutathione and glutamate levels and the amino acid precursors glycine and cysteine similar to those found in healthy older people., which may explain the other health problems in patients with chronic migraine.

    Based on the work at Baylor and others, we now know that supplementing with NAC and cysteine restores healthy levels of glutathione.

    For patients in the clinic, we are obtaining lab values for glutathione, fasting amino acids (with attention to glycine, cysteine, and the excitatory amino acid glutamate) and the gut immunity marker Immunoglobulin A.

About the Recipes

1)  When taking these supplements for a particular chronic condition it is best to  have your physician test for the labs above as a baseline or contact us for a consultation.  

2) For those over 50 taking supplements many are going without testing on the assumption that they will have low glutathione levels and reduced resilience to disease based on their age.  A common recipe for someone over 50 who is healthy would be to start with:

NAC 600 mg 2 daily from Life Extension

Glycine powder 2 teaspoons (10 mg) daily from Bulk Supplements

If not better in a month try 2 NAC twice daily (4 daily) for another month.

      Some practical points:

-The NAC of some manufacturers has a foul smell (e.g. DoubleWood).  I purchased the products of five manufacturers and found this to be true in some and probably related to less expensive manufacturing process.  Life Extension brand has minimal odor.

-Whether to take in the morning, at night, or split up the doses is not currently known to matter for general health. Interestingly, for some people, taking glycine at night seems to help insomnia but the same dose taken in the morning does not cause drowsiness https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4397399/.

    It takes about 2 weeks to see half the effect, and for some conditions (e.g. the use of NAC for some uses in psychiatry), it may take three months to see the full effect.

Disclaimer:  The information contained in UnChronic represents my own opinions and are not personal recommendations.  While many take supplements without supervision I cannot be responsible for your health based on what you decide to do with supplements.

Pro tip: We have seen some patients with type 2 diabetes and hypertension ("metabolic syndrome") who have fatigue within the first few weeks of starting GlyNAC.  One cause has been reduction of blood pressure or blood glucose. New symptoms may indicate your current dose of pharmaceutical medication needs to be reduced or eliminated.  Reduction should be done only under the direction of your health care provider.

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