What You Actually Need to Know About NAC and Cancer

Will NAC cause cancer, and will NAC make my cancer worse? Hey, I'm Dr. A. Welcome to the channel. Today, as we do always on this channel, it's about patient education, answering questions. And I've been involved in research and teaching in the integrative and naturopathic medical community for 30 years now. We did a very popular video. It's still up on YouTube, and it was all about N-acetylcysteine, or NAC. And one of the One of the things that came up in amongst the videos was around NAC as a supplement and the potential for cancer. Those are two sides of kind of the same question, so I'm gonna deal with them concurrently. So the first thing is, would NAC give me cancer if I don't already have cancer? And most people understand that we all have, you know, latent cancer cells we make every day and our immune system takes care of them. But let's say you're totally healthy and somehow, you know, you have no cancer, right? The other side of the coin is, if I already have cancer, where do I see NAC as far as an outside supplement? And is it a danger to me if I already have cancer? Where this information and where the concern comes from is there is definitely research that shows that NAC under certain circumstances can make certain cancer cells more resistant to treatment. So this would underscore the concern that people have that would say, well, if I have cancer, Should I take NAC if it might make my cells more resistant to chemotherapy, for example? This is a completely valid concern and it has a lot of texture to the answer, but I want to get to the main points. So on the side of a person who already has cancer, the first thing you need to remember is it's not all cancer cells that are affected by NAC in this way where they get sort of stronger, if you will, or more resistant to treatment. But it's enough that we know about it from cancer research. But then the next thing is, what is NAC? Why would I be taking it? Well, N-acetylcysteine is an absorbable oral form of the amino acid cysteine, which is a sulfur-containing amino acid. And if you ever smelled N-acetylcysteine, you probably smelled sulfur or rotten eggs or something like that. One of the reasons people take it is because it helps to build up something in the human body called the thiol pool, and it also helps in the formation of glutathione. Now, if we didn't have glutathione and if we have no thiol pool, we would be dead. So obviously there's a reason for these things going into our body. But then when it comes to an outside supplement, we have to be cautious because our body does what it's going to do, and then the outside supplement is there, hence the name supplement, to supplement what our body is already doing. So there may be times when an integrative oncology practitioner, naturopathic oncologist, somebody Like that may recommend an acetylcysteine or another thiol, but they might do it in a very specific way. They might recommend a certain dose and a certain schedule so that you're refilling the need, but you're not giving it every day multiple times a day. What would be the difference between pulse dosing and continuous dosing every day long term if I already have cancer? The difference is if I do pulse dosing, my normal cells that use cysteine as an intermediate to make glutathione or to raise the thiol. Cell pool, etc. There's other things it does too, are going to be able to get a little bit extra, but I'm not getting it all the time. If I'm giving it 1, 2, 3 times a day, 7 days a week, then not only do my normal cells get it, use it, etc., but also I have excess that then if I have one of those cancer cell types that might be strengthened or made more resistant by the presence of NAC, then that might be a negative for me because the excess then is going to kind of work against So the answer with cancer is I would recommend that you only dose thiol substances. Now we've had separate things about glutathione, zethyl, alpha lipoic acid, zethyl, and acetylcysteine, zethyl, et cetera, under the guidance of somebody in integrative naturopathic oncology who knows about these things, knows about the kind of cancer you have specifically, and knows how much, you know, to be doing. It also depends a little bit on whether you're in active treatment, so you're doing something to kill cancer right now, or you're in recovery. Recovery or you're in secondary prevention. Kind of different answers, different questions here. Now let's flip that over. Let's say you don't have cancer, right? Great. If N-acetylcysteine might make some cancer cells more resistant to treatment, does it follow then that NAC would give me cancer? There's another really common question that came up. Generally speaking, there's no research that would show that just the presence of cysteine, because we need it for our body to function, would give anybody cancer. And let's say you're taking it for some other reason. Maybe you're using it because you're short on cysteine for some reason. Maybe you're using it to support your respiratory system. It's used for that. Maybe you're using it to help support your glutathione formation. Any number of things. Well, if you have a medical need for the molecule cysteine and you're not getting enough in your diet, then definitely you need to supplement. If you have a medical need and you need the cysteine for the medical need, you're probably never going to get enough inside of your body to turn on a cancer cell or make something else happen. That's just not going to happen. Now, theoretically, this question did come up. Someone said, well, what if I technically don't need it, but I like taking it and I just take it 3, 4 times a day? It's probably still not going to cause cancer for you, so you probably don't need to worry about that. But anything in the nutrient world that you take in excess of what you need and you don't have a medical need for eventually will either be eliminated by your body or will go somewhere and imbalance your body. And amino acids, thiols can do this. So What we normally recommend is, is that if people are taking it because it's cold and flu season, or people are taking it to keep their glutathione levels, you know, elevated, or people are taking it because it helps with their asthma, or people are taking it for some other preventive medicine reason, you just work with somebody who can help you dose it in a way where the amount that goes in is going to be whatever your body needs pretty much every day, and/or you cycle it periodically. But a lot of that is about dosing. But NAC is not going to take somebody who doesn't have cancer and create cancer in them. Now, I know I've come back this a couple of times, but if you are working with any substance at all in nature and you're working with something as a supplement on top of what your body needs, and especially if you have cancer, work with somebody who is trained in integrative or naturopathic oncology because they're going to know the answers to these questions. They're going to know the safety guidelines and they're going to be able to help you to sort these things out. You don't have to do all that on your own. If you're taking NAC because it was prescribed to you, just take it as prescribed. And if you have concerns about the safety, ask the person who prescribed it because they will know the safety parameters around which the reason they prescribed NAC to you is being used. All right, I'm Dr. A. Hope that answered that specific but very, very important question. We're going to put some other videos up around here you can click on. We'll link the other videos below. And like, share, subscribe, do the notifications. We love all you new people signing up as subscribers. Really helps us out. I'll see y'all on the next one.