Serotonin Deficiency Syndrome

[mcb]

Hi Megan, if you still haven't reached a good night sleep you could try alternatively the following:

Start with 50 mg at lunch and dinner and increase your dose every 2 days by 50mg until you reach 300mg of 5-HTP per day. If you are unable to have a restorative sleep after two weeks, then you can also consider increasing the dose. You can keep your night time melatonin.

Potential side effects of 5-HTP include nausea, diarrhea, and sleepiness. Also, in very rare cases, there might be insomnia and headaches, which usually happen when 5-HTP is taken on an empty stomach and when a person has “sluggish” liver issues. The good news is that when you take 5-HTP with meals and gradually increase the dose, these side effects should be eliminated.

That sounds promising; I will try it. I had figured out that I might need to take the 5-HTP with meals, as I seem to be having some sort of hard to describe (but not extreme) reaction otherwise--I wake up feeling "strange." At the same time, the 5-HTP otherwise appears to be helping. I have not had a problem falling asleep for years now, and Dr. Murphree's recommendations were geared toward people who do. The problems are with staying asleep at night and staying awake during the day, and I have had those problems all my life.

Dr. Murphree says that tryptophan can't be sold in the US, but I see L-tryptophan and N-tryptophan on the shelf in my grocery store (Whole Foods Market). Has that changed, or is there another form to which he was referring? Is there any advantage to using tryptophan over 5-HTP?

Thank you!x [<--the "x" is a "cat track" It's feeding time. ]

 

[Gaby]

Dr. Murphree says that tryptophan can't be sold in the US, but I see L-tryptophan and N-tryptophan on the shelf in my grocery store (Whole Foods Market). Has that changed, or is there another form to which he was referring? Is there any advantage to using tryptophan over 5-HTP?

Thank you!x [<--the "x" is a "cat track" It's feeding time. ]

L-tryptophan is the one I understood was not availaible due to FDA policies, but maybe this has changed. In France you can get it in the pharmacy without prescription.

5-HTP works best than tryptophan in general. There are advantages of using 5-HTP over tryptophan even though one will think is the other way around. But there are specific cases were the contrary is actually the case: tryptophan works better over 5-HTP in some people. You can try with the 5-HTP first, and if it doesn't do it, you can switch to tryptophan.

Here are a few notes that I took from the book "Boost your serotonin levels, 5HTP: The natural way to overome depression, obesity, and insomnia" by Michael Murray, N.D.

Tryptophan also gets converted to Kynurenine, a muscle stimulant. In the liver, more tryptophan is converted to it than to 5HTP. The amount taken by diet, does not pose a risk. There is a higher risk with L-trytophan. Stress can increase its rate of conversion because it reduces the supply of tryptophan hydrolase needed for the conversion into 5HTP. Cortisol which counteracts inflammation, makes your liver convert more tryptophan into Kynurenine. Also low levels of B vitamins, specially niacin and B6, low magnesium, insensitivity to insulin, and genetic deficiencies.

5htp is more lipid soluble than tryptophan. 5Htp raises levels of other brain neurotransmitters, including melatonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine. L-tryptophan does not have this effect. Hence, 5 HTP crosses the blood-brain barrier more easily, and L-tryptophan increases the conversion of tryptophan into kynurenine (and thus prevent its conversion to serotonin).

If you are taking MAO inhibitor, do not take 5 HTP until you consult with your doctor. The combination of higher serotonin levels and reduced breakdown of serotonin by MAO enzymes can raise serotonin too much. If you stop taking the MAO inhibitor, allow at least four weeks to elapse before starting treatment with 5HTP, to make sure that all of the drug has had time wash out of your body.

 

[Gonzo]

Hi Meagan,

Have you considered sleep apnea as a possible cause of your difficulty staying asleep and daytime fatigue?

I ask because I had the same problems and my doctor sent me to a sleep lab for analysis. She was concerned that medication I was taking was interfering with my sleep. Sometimes I would wake up with a deep sense of anxiety.

we were both surprised to find I never even leave first stage of sleep (which explains why I never had dreams).

Apparently I have both a high amount of apnea (forgetting to inhale) and hypopnea (holding breath, forgetting to exhale) episodes (up to 75 combined each hour).

I went back for another test using a CPAP machine (it feeds continuous air pressure through your nose, which seems to help regulate one's breathing) and they found the optimum pressure that stopped all apneas and hypoponeas. It was the first time in my life that I woke up feeling refreshed and full of energy.

I got the machine for home and continue to sleep through the night.

I do want to go back for another test though, as I wonder what the effects of the diet and EE breathing have been. But, if you discuss this with your doctor, perhaps it could be something to consider.

Gonzo

 

[Gonzo]

Sorry, Megan, I misspelled your name on my previous post but couldn't edit from my mobile.

Gonzo

 

[chachazoom]

The problems are with staying asleep at night and staying awake during the day, and I have had those problems all my life

I've been reading about adrenal gland fatigue/burnout (low cortisol levels will interfere with thyroid functioning properly so I was actually reading about thyroid) but anyways, when ones adrenals are functioning well we are supposed to wake up refreshed and I believe cortisol levels are fairly high, peaking at around 2pm then slowly lowering until night time and then we're sleepy and go to bed. But when adrenal function is weak everything is off and people find themselves burned out and start to wake up around 6 pm I believe but at any rate evening is when they feel best as cortisol levels rised slowly then they're euchred at night as they cannot sleep well because of higher cortisol levels. It might be something to look into. (Try Dr. Rind)
And only a 24 hour saliva test will give an accurate reading for cortisol levels. See stop the thyroid madness website for more info
http://www.stopthethyroidmadness.com/adrenal-info/

 

[mcb]

Have you considered sleep apnea as a possible cause of your difficulty staying asleep and daytime fatigue?...

I had a screening for sleep apnea about 15 years ago, and there was no indication of a problem then. I began complaining about sleep problems at about 6 years old (54 years ago), but was told that i was imagining it. I learned about FMS/CFS from the doctor I saw prior to the sleep apnea screening. I showed him material about Trazodone & FMS that I had found on the Internet and he wrote a prescription for that. He is the rare kind of doctor you can work with on these things but unfortunately he moved out of my area. I am tempted to try to find him.

I do have a problem not with breathing but with hip pain and leg and foot cramps while I am sleeping. The hip pain dates back to my teens, and the leg cramps go back decades as well. I am experimenting but have not been able to find anything that helps so far. The USD seems to have made it worse. I am somewhat overweight (a side effect of recent medical treatments) and I am bringing that down because I know it is making things worse.

 

[ocean59]

Dr. Murphree says that tryptophan can't be sold in the US, but I see L-tryptophan and N-tryptophan on the shelf in my grocery store (Whole Foods Market). Has that changed, or is there another form to which he was referring? Is there any advantage to using tryptophan over 5-HTP?

L-tryptophan is the one I understood was not availaible due to FDA policies, but maybe this has changed. In France you can get it in the pharmacy without prescription.

Here's the scoop on L-Tryptophan supplements, taken from wikipedia:

Although now available for purchase, there was a large tryptophan-related outbreak of eosinophilia-myalgia syndrome (EMS) in 1989 which caused 1,500 cases of permanent disability and at least thirty-seven deaths. Some epidemiological studies[40][41][42] traced the outbreak to L-tryptophan supplied by a Japanese manufacturer, Showa Denko KK.[43] It was further hypothesized that one or more trace impurities produced during the manufacture of tryptophan may have been responsible for the EMS outbreak.[44][45] The fact that the Showa Denko facility used genetically engineered bacteria to produce L-tryptophan gave rise to speculation that genetic engineering was responsible for such impurities.[46][47] However, the methodology used in the initial epidemiological studies has been criticized.[48][49] An alternative explanation for the 1989 EMS outbreak is that large doses of tryptophan produce metabolites which inhibit the normal degradation of histamine and excess histamine in turn has been proposed to cause EMS.[50]

Most tryptophan was banned from sale in the US in 1991, and other countries followed suit. Tryptophan from one manufacturer, of six, continued to be sold for manufacture of baby formulas. At the time of the ban, the FDA did not know, or did not indicate, that EMS was caused by a contaminated batch,[51][52] and yet, even when the contamination was discovered and the purification process fixed, the FDA maintained that L-tryptophan was unsafe. In February 2001, the FDA loosened the restrictions on marketing (though not on importation), but still expressed the following concern:

"Based on the scientific evidence that is available at the present time, we cannot determine with certainty that the occurrence of EMS in susceptible persons consuming L-tryptophan supplements derives from the content of L-tryptophan, an impurity contained in the L-tryptophan, or a combination of the two in association with other, as yet unknown, external factors."[43]

Since 2002, L-tryptophan has been sold in the U.S. in its original form. Several high-quality sources of L-tryptophan do exist, and are sold in many of the largest health food stores nationwide. Indeed, tryptophan has continued to be used in clinical and experimental studies employing human patients and subjects.

In recent years in the U.S., compounding pharmacies and some mail-order supplement retailers have begun selling tryptophan to the general public. Tryptophan has also remained on the market as a prescription drug (Tryptan), which some psychiatrists continue to prescribe, particularly as an augmenting agent for people who are unresponsive to antidepressant drugs.[citation needed]

 

[davey72]

i have been taking 5-htp for a couple days now,and i have felt just awesome since.is this psychosomatic, or is this possible?

 

[Gaby]

i have been taking 5-htp for a couple days now,and i have felt just awesome since.is this psychosomatic, or is this possible?

It is possible. Now you only have to do the diet, you won't regret it!

 

[Laura]

i have been taking 5-htp for a couple days now,and i have felt just awesome since.is this psychosomatic, or is this possible?

It is possible. Now you only have to do the diet, you won't regret it!

Yup. And yeah, it is possible. It does that for me, too. GABA doesn't do anything for me and I can't handle the DLPA except once in awhile at very low doses, but man, I do need some seretonin boosting now and again!

ADDED: When I started taking it, I began with low doses and wasn't getting good sleep. So, I kept increasing the dose. I got up to 500 mg per day. I found that taking it before bed didn't work for me, but taking it at lunch and mid-afternoon did it. So, I took 200 at lunch and 300 mid-afternoon. After a couple weeks of this, it seems that my "tank" got "topped up" and it started having the reverse effect, so I backed down. Now, I only take about 50 mg every few days if needed.

 

[davey72]

I was kinda worried at first, cause i took st. john's wort once,and it made me almost psychotic.
now i just gotta figure out how to implement this diet with the things i have at my disposal.

Thanks again.

 

[flashgordonv]

I do have a problem not with breathing but with hip pain and leg and foot cramps while I am sleeping.

My experience with leg cramps and the whole restless legs syndrome, which plagued me from when I was a child is that magnesium works a treat on it. I find a dose of around 1 g helps me dramatically. I used to find this a real issue when I fly and generally Magnesium solves the problem for me. Sometime in extreme cases when the magnesium has not worked, I have taken L-Tyrosine, which seems to knock it on the head (so to speak).

 

[davey72]

Jason--- trypyophan is only available in canada by prescription. I have no idea how readily they would give it out, but i have noticed a few DR's here that will consider giving for insomnia,rather than a stronger narcotic.

Unfortunately, DR's with this thinking are few and far between.

 

[davey72]

Wow--magnesium? and it's not psycosomatic? I will definately try that.
Do you mean just as they sell supplements in the health food store/pharmacy?
Sorry if you said it, but how much do you take?

 

[jaela]

After reading this article I think a have the serotonin deficiency syndrome as well. My blood pressure is low as well, so its really difficult for me to be energetic. I´m trying 3 weeks already one thing. I wake up every morning around 7 and then I go straight to the beach, and I run, walk and breath. I practisce EE breathing as well. When I come home I feel like a different person. I´m active, fresh, and it takes around 7 hours until this mood changes. For me it is a very big change, because normally I was in a depressive, negative mood most of the time. Now I just have to change one more thing, to eat a little bit more meat, but at the moment I see dad animals on the plate. I hope my experience will be heplful for somebody else as well. bye Jaela