No, you should not fault them for any of it. If you are healthy and not taking regular medicine, the initial assumption — that you have to talk to your doctor about supplements — is wrong.
Yes, doctors should follow up on current research but also prioritize what is most relevant. How to have a slight effect on common infections and influenza is definitely not top of mind. Cross-medication effects for the elderly are just one example of much more relevant research to stay on top of, amid a myriad of topics.
You are definitely not supposed to have papers printed out for them. You might refer to a study you read, yes, but bringing print-outs is over the top even if you are a colleague of some sort. If you feel confident in a chatbot’s advice for something not remotely life-threatening — go ahead! And during your next regular visit inform your doctor of your decisions and any supplements you take (just as you would with OTC medicine) — but don’t expect a professional discussion. Also: doctors have the same range as any other profession, so the chance of having a mediocre one follows the bell curve.
Sidenote: your cited study is rather old. Has there been no new research since 1997? This would indicate it is not something the medical community feels is worth following up on.
Sidenote: your cited study is rather old. Has there been no new research since 1997? This would indicate it is not something the medical community feels is worth following up on.
Yes, that says quite bad things about the medical community that they are only focused on things that can be patented to make money. It’s another reason to be distrustful of doctors.
How to have a slight effect on common infections and influenza is definitely not top of mind.
We are not talking about slight effects. We are talking about an extremely huge effect that unfortunately didn’t get studied more to be well validated because it’s not in the financial interest of the system to do so.
The effect for chicken bone broth on reducing length of acute respiratory tract infections according to the literature review is 1-2.5 days reduction which is more than tamiflu’s 0.5-1.5 days while it’s a more general treatment that doesn’t require you to test for the specific virus than you can give it. The N-acetylcysteine effect is comparable to influenza vaccines but more general “only 25% of virus-infected subjects under NAC treatment developed a symptomatic form, versus 79% in the placebo group”.
The reason why it’s okay for a primary care doctor to be unaware is that primary care doctors are supposed to practice medicine based by relying on the general treatment guidelines being good and not supposed to practice based on what individual studies that haven’t been replicated say. On the other hand, NIAID and it’s equivalents all around the world not wanting to study whether those huge effects hold up is not okay.
Let me start by saying my question was genuine. 30 year old research in medicine triggers scepticism in me.
“Yes, that says quite bad things about the medical community that they are only focused on things that can be patented to make money. It’s another reason to be distrustful of doctors.”
Sorry, I don’t subscribe to this. “The medical community” is vastly diverse and merit is not only gained through patentable research.
Which is proven by the point there actually has been ongoing research into the effect of chicken soup on influenza as well as the effect of supplements. The latest study I could find was a 2025 meta-study. One of the underlying studies supports the claim of a 1-2.5 reduction. All support “modest benefits”. All in all I would say the result is not as “extremely huge” as you portray but I do agree further research is warranted to verify and explore the exact mechanisms at play.
Tamiflu also only provides modest benefits and doctors still give it to patients. The benefits are larger than the benefits of standard of care. If those benefits generalize, Galen with his theory of the four humors, Traditional Chinese Medicine and a lot of other traditional systems of medicine outperform the standard of care.
I do think that’s extremely huge. If you would approach this from a modern medicine perspective you can also simply attempt to increase the dose to get a bigger effect.
We do that people with genetic defects that produce glutathione deficiency suffer from recurrent infections. While that does not prove that the average person has a clinical problem where glutathione would reduce infections, it makes it pretty clear that at least some people do and from a mainstream medicine perspective you would want to target them to fix their glutathione deficiency. There seem to be some practical issues where glutathione in different tissues might have different levels and thus testing for glutathione deficiency isn’t straightforward, but this should provide motivation for the research agenda.
Sorry, I don’t subscribe to this. “The medical community” is vastly diverse and merit is not only gained through patentable research.
You need more than the desire to have your merit recognized to raise millions of dollars for a clinical trial.
This is the same dynamic that lead to the medical community getting the simple question of COVID19 being airborne wrong at the beginning of the pandemic that I had no problem getting right. A lot of the research is centered around the needs of big pharma.
If you have another answer why nobody tried to repeat the trial or do another trial to give glycine + NAC vs. NAC vs. Placebo to maybe build glutathione even better, I’m happy to hear that answer. The chatbots that I asked didn’t really come up with another answer.
The nutritional supplements industry does have those millions necessary for clinical trials. A peer-reviewed clinical study is likely to further boost their sales. We don’t know exactly why there hasn’t been another study commissioned. One likely explanation to me seems to be that there is low confidence in achieving results that prove the suggested “extremely huge” impact, and an inherent risk of being reduced to the efficiency level of chicken soup.
There is a case to be made to amend the DSHEA of 1994 (or equivalent legislation in the EU) to enforce more clinical studies for nutritional supplements, which would close this gap in verified knowledge.
One likely explanation to me seems to be that there is low confidence in achieving results that prove the suggested “extremely huge” impact, and an inherent risk of being reduced to the efficiency level of chicken soup.
That sounds to me like you haven’t really thought about the case. NAC has a well validated effect for clinical practice and is a routine medication and running the study for what is essentially off-label use of NAC wouldn’t discourage the on-label use of it which is driving most of the sales.
When ill the body needs cysteine both for glutathione production and for mucus production. NAC is given to help with mucus clearance when patients have problems with that. It’s ironically a supplement that the same doctors office gave me in the previous visit when I came with an acute respiratory tract infection. NAC isn’t an esoteric supplement.
I think directionally the policy of the current US administration of moving the NIH to be less of a servant of Big Pharma is the right step, even when they might mess it up in practice.
You are definitely not supposed to have papers printed out for them. You might refer to a study you read, yes, but bringing print-outs is over the top even if you are a colleague of some sort.
This is the right advise for more unproven or controversial stuff like supplements or certain diets, but it’s the wrong advice for other stuff like medications. For instance, if your doc says that one med (which doesn’t work for you) is just as effective another med that you want to try but that he’s unwilling to prescribe, the only way to change your doc’s mind is to print out and highlight the exact text where his colleagues (especially if they know more about this med than he does) disagree with his opinion.
I agree with your premise but would expect any decent doctor to actually enter a serious discussion with you to find the best med when you say one doesn’t work for you. You are proving from your own experience, and the vast variability in reactions is something well documented in the medical field.
You should not need to bring studies for this and not have to prove via academia. I will maintain that bringing print-outs shifts the interaction from patient-doctor to adversarial peer-review. Many doctors will dig in, not concede.
I don’t think my doctor was bad. I think she was doing her job the way she’s supposed to and that’s kind of the reason why asking her about this issue wasn’t useful and it’s better to discuss these kind of questions with chatbots.
Going in I had a some hope given that NAC, glycine and glutathione are are all textbook substances. Genetic glutathione-synthesis disorders causing recurrent infections is something that mainstream medicine does recognize. Glutathione being important and not some weird body work intervention (of the kind that I think increased my collagen turnover and created the increased glycine usage that left less for glutathione) that interacts with pathways that aren’t in the textbooks.
Your situation sound a bit similar to my adopted son’s situation with G6PD. One of the things I’ve just learned is how non-uniform that condition is. He’s in the Philippines and they actually screen all new born children for it now. No actual treatments for his situation is available. But since frequency of occurrence in much higher in the Philippines than many other places in the world the Philippine medical infrastructure if pretty much on par with any 1st world county for this condition. And the current “treatment” is avoiding the triggers. If you talked with a Philippine doctor it is very likely they will know “current state” knowledge (maybe not cutting edge though). If I were to start asking doctors here in the USA (and I suspect it would be the same in EU) I suspect most will not really know much and possibly nothing at all.
So one thing to think about when “asking my doctor” is should I consider the question “mainstream” or “cutting edge/far tail of some distribution” and why should I think that.
Many docs might dig in, and if they don’t change their attitude and opinion when they should, you’ll just need to switch docs until you find a decent one. The doc I brought the print out to didn’t dig in and prescribed the med I requested after he read it. This had nothing to do with any study; it seemed that it was widely known among experts (the print out quoted expert opinion), but this doc just had the wrong opinion about it. I asked another doc about a combination of meds that’s usually not prescribed often (but probably should be) to younger age groups and the reasoning behind it without showing a print out (but I had one just in case) and he agreed even though it wasn’t standard of care. Sure, advocating for yourself could lead to an adversarial situation, but if you want to avoid mistakes and blind spots that can lead to your condition not improving or even worsening, I don’t see any other alternative.
No, you should not fault them for any of it. If you are healthy and not taking regular medicine, the initial assumption — that you have to talk to your doctor about supplements — is wrong.
Yes, doctors should follow up on current research but also prioritize what is most relevant. How to have a slight effect on common infections and influenza is definitely not top of mind. Cross-medication effects for the elderly are just one example of much more relevant research to stay on top of, amid a myriad of topics.
You are definitely not supposed to have papers printed out for them. You might refer to a study you read, yes, but bringing print-outs is over the top even if you are a colleague of some sort. If you feel confident in a chatbot’s advice for something not remotely life-threatening — go ahead! And during your next regular visit inform your doctor of your decisions and any supplements you take (just as you would with OTC medicine) — but don’t expect a professional discussion. Also: doctors have the same range as any other profession, so the chance of having a mediocre one follows the bell curve.
Sidenote: your cited study is rather old. Has there been no new research since 1997? This would indicate it is not something the medical community feels is worth following up on.
Yes, that says quite bad things about the medical community that they are only focused on things that can be patented to make money. It’s another reason to be distrustful of doctors.
We are not talking about slight effects. We are talking about an extremely huge effect that unfortunately didn’t get studied more to be well validated because it’s not in the financial interest of the system to do so.
The effect for chicken bone broth on reducing length of acute respiratory tract infections according to the literature review is 1-2.5 days reduction which is more than tamiflu’s 0.5-1.5 days while it’s a more general treatment that doesn’t require you to test for the specific virus than you can give it.
The N-acetylcysteine effect is comparable to influenza vaccines but more general “only 25% of virus-infected subjects under NAC treatment developed a symptomatic form, versus 79% in the placebo group”.
The reason why it’s okay for a primary care doctor to be unaware is that primary care doctors are supposed to practice medicine based by relying on the general treatment guidelines being good and not supposed to practice based on what individual studies that haven’t been replicated say.
On the other hand, NIAID and it’s equivalents all around the world not wanting to study whether those huge effects hold up is not okay.
Let me start by saying my question was genuine. 30 year old research in medicine triggers scepticism in me.
Sorry, I don’t subscribe to this. “The medical community” is vastly diverse and merit is not only gained through patentable research.
Which is proven by the point there actually has been ongoing research into the effect of chicken soup on influenza as well as the effect of supplements. The latest study I could find was a 2025 meta-study. One of the underlying studies supports the claim of a 1-2.5 reduction. All support “modest benefits”. All in all I would say the result is not as “extremely huge” as you portray but I do agree further research is warranted to verify and explore the exact mechanisms at play.
Tamiflu also only provides modest benefits and doctors still give it to patients. The benefits are larger than the benefits of standard of care. If those benefits generalize, Galen with his theory of the four humors, Traditional Chinese Medicine and a lot of other traditional systems of medicine outperform the standard of care.
I do think that’s extremely huge. If you would approach this from a modern medicine perspective you can also simply attempt to increase the dose to get a bigger effect.
We do that people with genetic defects that produce glutathione deficiency suffer from recurrent infections. While that does not prove that the average person has a clinical problem where glutathione would reduce infections, it makes it pretty clear that at least some people do and from a mainstream medicine perspective you would want to target them to fix their glutathione deficiency. There seem to be some practical issues where glutathione in different tissues might have different levels and thus testing for glutathione deficiency isn’t straightforward, but this should provide motivation for the research agenda.
You need more than the desire to have your merit recognized to raise millions of dollars for a clinical trial.
This is the same dynamic that lead to the medical community getting the simple question of COVID19 being airborne wrong at the beginning of the pandemic that I had no problem getting right. A lot of the research is centered around the needs of big pharma.
If you have another answer why nobody tried to repeat the trial or do another trial to give glycine + NAC vs. NAC vs. Placebo to maybe build glutathione even better, I’m happy to hear that answer. The chatbots that I asked didn’t really come up with another answer.
The nutritional supplements industry does have those millions necessary for clinical trials. A peer-reviewed clinical study is likely to further boost their sales. We don’t know exactly why there hasn’t been another study commissioned. One likely explanation to me seems to be that there is low confidence in achieving results that prove the suggested “extremely huge” impact, and an inherent risk of being reduced to the efficiency level of chicken soup.
There is a case to be made to amend the DSHEA of 1994 (or equivalent legislation in the EU) to enforce more clinical studies for nutritional supplements, which would close this gap in verified knowledge.
That sounds to me like you haven’t really thought about the case. NAC has a well validated effect for clinical practice and is a routine medication and running the study for what is essentially off-label use of NAC wouldn’t discourage the on-label use of it which is driving most of the sales.
When ill the body needs cysteine both for glutathione production and for mucus production. NAC is given to help with mucus clearance when patients have problems with that. It’s ironically a supplement that the same doctors office gave me in the previous visit when I came with an acute respiratory tract infection. NAC isn’t an esoteric supplement.
I think directionally the policy of the current US administration of moving the NIH to be less of a servant of Big Pharma is the right step, even when they might mess it up in practice.
This is the right advise for more unproven or controversial stuff like supplements or certain diets, but it’s the wrong advice for other stuff like medications. For instance, if your doc says that one med (which doesn’t work for you) is just as effective another med that you want to try but that he’s unwilling to prescribe, the only way to change your doc’s mind is to print out and highlight the exact text where his colleagues (especially if they know more about this med than he does) disagree with his opinion.
I agree with your premise but would expect any decent doctor to actually enter a serious discussion with you to find the best med when you say one doesn’t work for you. You are proving from your own experience, and the vast variability in reactions is something well documented in the medical field.
You should not need to bring studies for this and not have to prove via academia. I will maintain that bringing print-outs shifts the interaction from patient-doctor to adversarial peer-review. Many doctors will dig in, not concede.
I don’t think my doctor was bad. I think she was doing her job the way she’s supposed to and that’s kind of the reason why asking her about this issue wasn’t useful and it’s better to discuss these kind of questions with chatbots.
Going in I had a some hope given that NAC, glycine and glutathione are are all textbook substances. Genetic glutathione-synthesis disorders causing recurrent infections is something that mainstream medicine does recognize. Glutathione being important and not some weird body work intervention (of the kind that I think increased my collagen turnover and created the increased glycine usage that left less for glutathione) that interacts with pathways that aren’t in the textbooks.
Your situation sound a bit similar to my adopted son’s situation with G6PD. One of the things I’ve just learned is how non-uniform that condition is. He’s in the Philippines and they actually screen all new born children for it now. No actual treatments for his situation is available. But since frequency of occurrence in much higher in the Philippines than many other places in the world the Philippine medical infrastructure if pretty much on par with any 1st world county for this condition. And the current “treatment” is avoiding the triggers. If you talked with a Philippine doctor it is very likely they will know “current state” knowledge (maybe not cutting edge though). If I were to start asking doctors here in the USA (and I suspect it would be the same in EU) I suspect most will not really know much and possibly nothing at all.
So one thing to think about when “asking my doctor” is should I consider the question “mainstream” or “cutting edge/far tail of some distribution” and why should I think that.
Many docs might dig in, and if they don’t change their attitude and opinion when they should, you’ll just need to switch docs until you find a decent one. The doc I brought the print out to didn’t dig in and prescribed the med I requested after he read it. This had nothing to do with any study; it seemed that it was widely known among experts (the print out quoted expert opinion), but this doc just had the wrong opinion about it. I asked another doc about a combination of meds that’s usually not prescribed often (but probably should be) to younger age groups and the reasoning behind it without showing a print out (but I had one just in case) and he agreed even though it wasn’t standard of care. Sure, advocating for yourself could lead to an adversarial situation, but if you want to avoid mistakes and blind spots that can lead to your condition not improving or even worsening, I don’t see any other alternative.