NAC and Alcohol
Alcohol-how much has been written about alcohol. I am going to take a different approach to the topic today. I am not addressing how much you should drink, what you should drink or how often. A small change in your approach to drinking might just give you and your liver some extra time of better health.
We know that the liver is largely responsible for processing alcohol. It does this with some mixed function oxidases (MFO). If you rarely drink, you might find that you can’t handle much liquor as your body hasn’t built up a nice supply of MFOs.
Over time your body loses its ability to process the alcohol little by little. By the time you notice something, you are probably in real trouble.
One simple thing you should add to your alcohol intake is NAC or N-acetyl-L-cysteine.
I have written a few blogs on glutathione as it is critical to keeping the toxin load low. Glutathione is made from three amino acids and the one in shortest supply is L-cysteine. So adding cysteine along with the beer, cocktail or shots will be a big help to your liver as NAC helps your body make glutathione.
NAC is actually way more common as a supplement for raising glutathione than just L-cysteine alone. NAC has its own pathways to help your body but helping to increase glutathione makes it very valuable.
You can prove this to yourself. Have your doc run a routine blood test that checks for liver and kidney markers. Take NAC according to your alcohol intake and run the lab tests again in six months. I would take 1 NAC with a glass of wine or a couple of beers, 2 with 2-3 glass of wine or 3-4 beers or one cocktail and so on. You should probably take the NAC before you start drinking so you won’t run the risk of forgetting.
On non-drinking days, take 1-2 NAC just because.
Here are the NAC formulas I use the most.
Allergy Research Group (ARG) NAC Enhanced
The NAC enhanced includes trimethyglycine and alpha lipoic acid that help the NAC do its job. It only has 200 mg of N-Acetyl-L-Cysteine so I don’t rely on this solely but take a couple a day in place of the BetterGenix NAC.
We have run across a few clients who have trouble with NAC so for them we just recommend…
The NOW version is a large tablet. I break these in half to give to my border collie to help keep her a touch healthier too.
Just a quick note, this is also true of cannabinoids, nicotine, opioids and psychostimulants. Again it is best to use blood tests to ensure that your liver and kidneys are happy when taking any of these.
2026