I previously tried taking a n-acetylcysteine (NAC) supplement and found that it modestly helped with my ADHD symptoms. I don't remember whether it helped with procrastination specifically, or just with attention.
However, I stopped taking it until now, because when I was prescribed ADHD medication and when I took it alongside my ADHD medication, it seemed to make me very irritable. I now hypothesise this was because the combination of the medication and the NAC may have reduced my HDL cholesterol to dangerously low levels - though I don't know this for sure.
I am now on a different ADHD medication, guanfacine, which also reduces serum cholesterol, and I was also taking Athletic Greens AG-1, which contains vitamin B3, which also reduces serum cholesterol. And indeed when I did measure out AG-1 roughly instead of precisely, so that I took too much, I did indeed experience the irritability side-effect. So I think there's a risk that if I take NAC again, I will experience the same problem.
If I am unable to take NAC due to side-effects, this market will resolve as No.
Related questions
🏅 Top traders
| # | Name | Total profit |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ṁ7 | |
| 2 | Ṁ6 | |
| 3 | Ṁ4 | |
| 4 | Ṁ0 |
At this point I think I have sufficient experience with using it to resolve this market. My conclusions are:
Good news - I am now procrastinating less!
However, l-glutamine is in fact the active ingredient here that makes me stop procrastinating
NAC plays at most a supporting role, primarily by taking the edge off of the l-glutamine - 1g of l-glutamine is powerful stuff, and eventually makes me anxious. When I take l-glutamine before a meal, and then take NAC after that same meal, I don't suffer from the anxiety side-effect at all!
NAC may also help slightly by reducing my tendency to engage in addictive behaviours, or reduce my desire to engage in them for longer time periods
But overall, I strongly believe it's l-glutamine that's doing most of the work here, not NAC.
It's possible that the hacker news commenter linked below was confused about this, because he/she also took both of them. Or it's possible that they have a different physiology, and so for them, NAC helped them more. This market is only about what helps me personally!
Some other notes that may be useful to other people:
Volvic Touch of Fruit sugar-free water, blocks the l-glutamine from working - I still procrastinate if I drink the Volvic instead of tap water. I still need to figure out which ingredient(s) of the Volvic causes this effect, so that I can avoid it/them in other foods and drinks - my guess is it's one of the artificial sweeteners, but it could also be a preservative or something like that. It could be that many foods/drinks contain this type of ingredient and have this problem! So if you try l-glutamine and it doesn't work for you, this could be the reason!
l-glutamine also reduces the likelihood of digestive problems - commonly attributed to food intolerances. I personally find that it helps with some of my food intolerances. and there appears to be a strong link between ADHD and digestive symptoms - many people with ADHD also have digestive problems such as IBS, and I personally found that my digestive symptoms improved massively on guanfacine.
l-glutamine does not seem to be as effective against food intolerances when taken after a meal (which is not following the directions). And in general, anything that causes a digestive upset is probably not going to be good for supplement absorption and effectiveness! So it is important to try to follow the directions and generally take the l-glutamine 30 minutes before a meal, to maximise the probability of a successful outcome, both in terms of digestion and in terms of procrastination suppression. Though if you know from experience that a meal is safe for you to eat with or without l-glutamine, taking the l-glutamine immediately before the meal can be fine, too.
I also wouldn't recommend taking a "megadose" of l-glutamine with only 1 or 2 meals - it simply doesn't seem to last long enough, in my experience. Like NAC, it seems to have a short half-life - at least in my body.
For the above reasons, I think taking 1g of l-glutamine 3 times a day is best - at least, that works best for me - YMMV.
If your body doesn't have issues with producing or using l-glutamine, like mine presumably does, l-glutamine may not help you at all!
Like obesity, ADHD symptoms are probably caused by different things for different people - what helps one person won't necessarily help another person.
@firstuserhere Recently discovered that artificial sweeteners - or something in artificially-sweetened sweet water drinks, anyway - nullifies the effect and makes me procrastinate even more - just like a naughty child who has had something containing artificial sweeteners, haha. So that threw me off for a bit.
Currently experimenting with pairing the NAC with a lower dose of l-glutamine (500mg). But it is looking like the l-glutamine is the active ingredient, with the NAC playing a supporting role.
I think I forgot to take my NAC this morning, and now I'm leaning towards the idea that it's actually the l-glutamine that makes me stop procrastinating, but 3g of that a day + guanfacine makes me too irritable, so I need the NAC to calm me down. But I need to replicate this finding, and also experiment with different doses (and combinations of doses).
Today I tried mixing NAC with l-glutamine and HOLY SHIT
It feels like I'm on stimulants again
It's like something inside me is unblocked
The benefits of NAC I'd heard about started to materialize
I no longer have the urge to LOOK at my phone, much less procrastinate (unless you count posting this message as procrastination, which I don't).
I also no longer have imposter syndrome, have more confidence, and am less interested in porn and more interested in real women(!)
Now the question is, is this due to the l-glutamine, the combination, or some third factor that's unrelated to either of them (e.g. being worried about things and wanting to lose weight, and all that has galvanised me into action through some sort of placebo effect).
I don't know, so I haven't bought back in yet.
In order to find out, I'll try different supplement stacks on different days.
It's important to remember that no ADHD drug or supplement can make me make the right choices (when I am faced with a choice). I still have to make the right choices - at most, it can improve my executive function and make it easier to follow through on my choices. But if I make the wrong choices in the first place, no improvement in executive function is going to save me - and it might even make things worse.
Yesterday I tried 1200mg, and I feel like I procrastinated even more! But that's just one day - I need to give it more time to be sure.
However, I did learn some more about ADHD while procrastinating. Apparently protein good, iron good, carbs bad, for people with ADHD. So maybe this could explain why I seemed to be more high-functioning when I was a teenager and eating meat, than now, as a vegetarian eating a high-carb, not-very-high-protein diet (especially yesterday)?
I am going to define 2 types of procrastination:
Taking a break to do something else instead of working, e.g. going to the shop to buy a loaf of bread to make sandwiches with later.
Doing something from my work to-do list that is arguably not as urgent as something else on my work to-do list. It is not always clear to me whether this is really procrastination, though, because if I always did somewhat urgent tasks, I might neglect tasks which are important but not urgent at this moment, and then some of the important tasks might become urgent or overdue, which would not be desirable either. See https://www.mindtools.com/al1e0k5/eisenhowers-urgentimportant-principle
I am going to measure type 1 procrastination but not type 2 procrastination, because I don't want to waste time trying to figure out what was "real" procrastination and what was not - attempting to do so would also create another opportunity for me to procrastinate! Hopefully if there is any effect, there will be an effect on both types of procrastination anyway, so I hope this won't matter too much.
The pharmacokinetics of NAC indicates that its effectiveness will have rapidly decreased to almost nothing after 12 hours (graph b is the relevant one for me, as I am Caucasian). This could explain why I didn't see much effect when I tried to work late last night!
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12325-020-01542-4/figures/1
I am also reminded that it's important to consume NAC with a meal (oops!)
Person on Hacker News reports it helps: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29612160