NAC helps muscles recover faster after exercise by reducing oxidative stress and improving how the body handles free radicals.
Scientific Claim
N-acetylcysteine supplementation reduces exercise-induced oxidative stress in skeletal muscle by serving as a glutathione precursor, thereby improving recovery and maintaining performance during repeated exercise bouts.
Original Statement
“So, exercise creates oxidative stress. Some of that is really necessary for adaptation, but too much of it, in fact, a lot of it really delays recovery and accelerates your fatigue. And once again, when you become old like me, that becomes important. So, NAC acts as a precursor to glutathione inside muscle tissue. So, this helps neutralize the excess free radicals and stabilize the muscle environment from a workout. So, there was a study in the International Journal of Sports Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism. This one looked at trained men that were supplementing for NAC for just 6 days. The NAC group preserved their performance across repeated bouts of intermittent exercise compared to placebo, meaning they fatigued more slowly and recovered better between efforts.”
Context Details
Domain
exercise
Population
human
Subject
N-acetylcysteine (NAC)
Action
reduces
Target
exercise-induced oxidative stress in skeletal muscle by serving as a glutathione precursor, improving recovery and maintaining performance during repeated exercise bouts
Intervention Details
Evidence from Studies
Supporting (2)
Efficacy of selenium and/or N-acetyl-cysteine for improving semen parameters in infertile men: a double-blind, placebo controlled, randomized study.
Investigation of the effect of N-acetylcysteine on serum levels of oxidative inflammatory biomarkers in patients with stroke