I prefer not to use my own health as a topic of my blogs but sometimes I think it might be beneficial to share. I guess I am inspired by an ER doc who shares some interesting cases from her work but will also talk about weird stuff that she can’t understand or manage herself.
Details here aren’t important but as a chiropractor by training and 40 years of active practice, I have learned a lot about how the body works. Nevertheless, I ended up with chronic pain over three and half years ago in a couple of spots one that gets worse with rest and one that gets worse with activity.
After trying some self-help and consultations with several doctors and reading several books on chronic pain and a couple of surgeries, the only thing that helps is a lot of Excedrin, Tylenol, Advil and moderate dose Tramadol. Excedrin contains acetaminophen like Tylenol with the addition of caffeine and aspirin. Of course, I am not taking the Excedrin at night to try to get the best sleep possible. Even then, sleep isn’t always great.
5% or more of people getting dialysis for damaged kidneys are there because of acetaminophen. So how does a person handle chronic pain like this and keep their kidneys and liver healthy. The liver, of course, takes care of the lion’s share of detox of these over the counter (OTC) drugs. So too much acetaminophen or ibuprofen can be damaging to the liver just like a life of alcohol abuse.
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 pain killers will be a big help to your liver and kidneys.
NAC or N-Acetyl -L-Cysteine is another path and is actually way more common then just L-cysteine alone. NAC has its own pathways to help your body but does aid in increasing glutathione.
Knowing all this, I run a routine lab test a couple times a year looking closely at my liver and kidney markers. I wasn’t sure how this would protect my liver but I am, as I said, going on 4 years with this chronic pain and my kidney and liver markers remain in the healthy range. I am always pretty excited to see that.
At the start, I added an NAC cap to every dose of my pain pills. I also added an NAC with my morning and afternoon supplements to give me two more routine doses.
So to be clear, I might take three Excedrin, 25 mg tramadol and 500 mg of NAC for my daytime doses. At night it is probably two or three Tylenol, 2 Advil and 25 mg tramadol with 500 mg NAC.
For all of you healers out there, try to restrain yourself from trying to fix me. I run into that from time to time. One reason I don’t bring up my own issues very often is because of the “helpful” comments. I have a staff member at my office that I have to reign in from time to time.
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. I 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.
2026