NAC = N-acetylcysteine for sleep, pain, fatigue; inflammation etc

Symptoms & Treatments Complementary Therapies
1

NAC is reported to be good for a number of things which concern fibromyalgia:

NAC for sleep (incl. apnea), pain, fatigue; anti-inflammatory, antioxidant.

At the moment (2:00 at night and not able to sleep) I’m wondering whether to try NAC for sleep, against racing thoughts, this is what I’ve found:

Nothing about sleep

  • healthline
  • DAZ.de mentions a German (Kassel) review from 2012, which mentions anti-inflammation, antioxidant, but nothing about sleep.
  • webmd mentions a lot, but not sleep. One of its sub-pages has 98 user reviews, but no condition explicitly named is sleep related.
  • verywellhealth says nothing about sleep either.

Only apnea

Helps sleep

  • psychologytoday: In the patients of NAC group, compared to their baseline values, slow wave sleep as sleep percent time (27.9 +/- 2.7 vs 42.3 +/- 4.2; p < 0.01) and sleep efficiency (90.8 +/- 1.3 vs 94.4 +/- 1.5; p < 0.05) improved considerably. And: help with ruminations , with difficult-to-control extreme negative self-thoughts. And: (Fernandes et al 2016) found evidence for moderately improved depressed mood and improved. And: 6% of subjects reported “much or very much improved” on NAC compared to 16% on placebo (sugar pill or inert substance). Significant improvement was initially noted after 9 weeks of treatment .
  • healthokay.info (German, from 2021, but apparently translated from sth. by Jack Kevorkian ) says it relaxes by influencing certain enzymes. A number of a reference is given (25), but not clickable and I can’t find Jack Kevorkian’s original webpage.
  • schoolafm.com (afm = applied functional medicine) touts using it alongside taurine, which I know does not help me, it argues that it increases GABA, decreases glutamate. Makes me wonder if I should try reducing glutamin at night and take only more theanine instead.
  • Revisiting phoenixrising: Livingwithfibro/Lily says: “I take 2400 mg of N-acetylcysteine split into two doses…I sleep like a baby, always 6-10 hours of uninterrupted sleep. Yummy” and Valentijn says: “The one I take before bedtime seems to be very helpful in sleeping well, though I usually still wake up to pee.” (The user “Beyond” adds: " It´s not like NAC is super expensive, and the fact it helps the gut is appealing." but everything on the page regarding gut is referring to glutamine, not NAC, so exactly the opposite.)

Can cause sleep problems:

  • sleepingfix reminds it can make sleep worse, do I want that now? No!

Well I tried it at night, and it didn’t help. So now daytime.

Other sfx

Altogether

Alternatives?