Epoch Times - A potentially massive breakthrough in Parkinson’s disease treatment.
Aired: 2026-02-26
Duration: 03:23


=== NAC and Glutathione Protection (01:24) ===

[00:00:00]  So you have a fascinating new study that is actually you're demonstrating increased connectivity in the brain for Parkinson's patients through kind of a simple method.
[00:00:14]  I mean tell me what you found.
[00:00:16]  So this is our third study on a molecule called N-acetylcysteine or NAC for short.
[00:00:23]  And this is a powerful antioxidant.
[00:00:25]  It's also used as a medication in the emergency room, in the hospital for people who take a Tylenol overdose.
[00:00:32]  It actually protects the liver.
[00:00:34]  So we know that it does a lot of different things.
[00:00:38]  But the important thing for us is that it's a precursor to something called glutathione.
[00:00:44]  Now, why this is important is because glutathione protects the brain when there's oxidative damage or oxidative stress.
[00:00:54]  And we lose it as we age, and when we get sick, we lose it even more.
[00:00:59]  So we want to have a way to efficiently increase glutathione in the brain, particularly when we have a neurodegenerative disorder such as Parkinson's disease.
[00:01:09]  And so we hypothesized early on that giving infused N-acetylcysteine along with oral would increase glutathione and actually have a positive impact on Parkinson's disease.

=== Parkinson Medications and NAC Infusion (01:58) ===

[00:01:25]  We've published three studies on this, and we look at brain scans in all of them.
[00:01:30]  And what we've seen is that the N-acetylcysteine increases the efficiency of dopamine in the brain, which is the neurotransmitter or chemical that gets lost in Parkinson's disease and causes all of those symptoms.
[00:01:45]  And our most recent study shows that it improves the way the brain connects to itself or talks to itself, the functional connectivity in the brain.
[00:01:55]  And this is really exciting because what we consistently see with all of our brain scan studies is that that correlates with improvements in function and how the person feels.
[00:02:07]  So it's exciting.
[00:02:08]  And in this last study that we got published in a very good journal for Parkinson's disease, I think that more of the scientific community, particularly neurologists who treat Parkinson's disease, will see it this time.
[00:02:22]  And, you know, this strikes me as something that can also work in conjunction with other treatments.
[00:02:28]  Always.
[00:02:29]  You know, that's part of integrative medicine.
[00:02:31]  And we're always trying to push the bounds of what we understand in innovative treatments in integrative medicine.
[00:02:37]  And so we're always thinking about how do we add value to what's out there.
[00:02:41]  So in this study, people who were on Parkinson's medications, which was all of them, stayed on their Parkinson's medications.
[00:02:48]  But to be in the study, you couldn't have changes in your Parkinson's medications for a period of time.
[00:02:53]  And so in both the control group and in the NAC or NAC group, people were on their Parkinson's medications.
[00:03:00]  But if they got the NAC, they did better.
[00:03:03]  Their brain came alive in a way that wasn't happening before, and they felt this subjectively.
[00:03:10]  And we even videotaped a couple of the patients in the study.
[00:03:14]  One was a lawyer who basically people said it was a miracle how different she looked and acted and functioned.