5-HTP

[ItsRelative]

I'v been taking several vitamins and 5-htp now for 5 days for my mild depression and low energy, amazing stuff My mood and energy lift has been noticeable, every consecutive day has been better than the last, i don't feel like putting on a mask when i go for work like i used to, actually starting to enjoy it all, not just for money. I have tried ecstasy couple of times and it feels like that except come up is stretched to a week in duration and effect(milder), don't know where it ends yet.

Ofc it can effect different people in various ways, what i have read i could be just lucky or my serotonin levels where way down to start with. There is way more than 5-thp in my stack, but i'm fairly positive it's 5-htp making most of the impact.

Just letting people know there's alternatives for antidepressants
Anyone here tried 5-htp before? How did it effect you?

 

[Jelly Rev]

word up I just started takin 5htp with niacin. It is quite amazing. I suggest niacin with it. They complement each other in creating seretonin. niacin defficency creates a loss of L-tryphotan which is used to create niacin and seretonin. when niacin missin it takes from seretonin production.

Pretty much this is how people should feel. I now understand how people just go through their lives without major issues. Its simple, with taking these supps you just dont have problems, dont mind people, anxiety gone, paranoia gone, rumination gone, obessive tendencies gone.
I of course do have placebo doubts but I want to be optimistic

 

[ItsRelative]

Does it matter if it's placebo until you believe it is?

On more serious note, yes i take supplement that has huge array of other substances including niacin. You also need lot's of b6 vitamine to convert 5-htp to serotonin

Oh and yes, i had meeting today and anxiety usually comes with it and makes me feel awful, but today i felt just awesome. If this truly is how most people feel, why oh why didn't i start taking these earlier

 

[Jah]

interesting. Niacin is an efficient way of cancelling bad trips with LSD, (some light reading on google scholar http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0024320572902603 seem to suggest that Serotonin rises after ingestion of niacinamide.)

(LSD targets serotonin receptors. Niacin ups the amount of serotonin, which also is what 5-HTP seems to do. )

 

[Dimensional Transition]

This all sounds very promising, almost like creepy subliminal advertising.

Would this be safe for a 16 year old?

What are the health risks? It must have some downsides. What if you develop a super high tolerance to serotonin, causing you to become 'addicted' to these supplements? Are they safe on the long-term? If that's the case, you could just take them your whole life, but it seems too good to be true.

 

[Awaken]

Hmmm, never heard of Serotonin supplements for depression. Will have to look that one up. As for Niacin, scariest side effect for most is flushing, where your face/body turns red. Not a huge deal, just take Aspirin.


Nanook: Tryptophan is what is in Turkey that makes people drowsy. Also, I think I recall Melatonin effecting dreams. You want some crazy lucid dreams, take Chantix. That drug is odd.(No, dont really take it unless needed)

 

[nanook]

any effects on dream life? remembrance? lucidity?

i faintly remember taking L-Tryptophan, and it made me oddly dizzy, possibly tired, i didn't like that. don't remember any mood related effect.

 

[Jelly Rev]

any effects on dream life? remembrance? lucidity?

can cause extremely vivid dreams.

Hmmm, never heard of Serotonin supplements for depression. Will have to look that one up.

Hmmm, never heard of Serotonin supplements for depression. Will have to look that one up.

http://www.hypoglycemia.asn.au/articles/serotonin_connection.html

also SSRI's: selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor
common med for depression. but doesnt cure the problem. but deals with depression.
serotonin variations are a hypothesis for nearly almost all mental illness, anxiety, etc.

What if you develop a super high tolerance to serotonin, causing you to become 'addicted' to these supplements?

doubtful would be even less than SSRI's even if it was. To niacin(vitamin b3) I dont think you can be addicted to a vitamin. But people can be addicted to anything; for ex. I have a Diet mountain dew addiction lol.

If this truly is how most people feel, why oh why didn't i start taking these earlier

lol its just my hypothesis that this is how others feel. And if this is how ppl really feel I cant imagine them trying to be as anxious as I have been.
At times before Ive been so anxious with people that my legs start uncontrolably shaking but I'd stick it out.

 

[legwork]

gave me too much of an upset stomach

 

[shoeless]

i work in a health supplement store. we have an entire section on anxiety and depression and i've been researching the various things we have there (mostly because i suffer from moderate to severe anxiety myself, up to and including panic attacks). we have some 5-htp on our half off rack right now i was thinking of trying for myself, but i'm waiting to go off these antibiotics before i start anything new. currently i'm taking a passionflower extract which is simply too mild for me (the effects are noticeable but don't last long and aren't potent enough). i'm not sure if 5-htp would help with anxiety alone, considering i'm really not much of a depressed person, but then again i don't really know how these things work.

i've also looked into st. john's wort (recommended by my manager who has a degree in biology and nutrition, but i'm taking oral contraceptives and it can apparently interfere with their effectiveness) and kava kava root which, besides the possible liver damage, seems like a decent option as something i'd take during a panic attack and not regularly. but i don't know what to do and i'm too lazy and poor to schedule a doctor's appointment just to ask.

maybe i'll try the 5-htp. i get a 20% employee discount on top of that half off deal, so that's pretty good.

 

[kubikub]

I've been meaning to try out some 5-HTP lately, they sell it at my work as well.

i've also looked into st. john's wort (recommended by my manager who has a degree in biology and nutrition, but i'm taking oral contraceptives and it can apparently interfere with their effectiveness)

I bought some tea infused with st. john's wort a while ago, completely forgot I had it until I had gone through the rest of the tea I had. Drank it about once every day or so just to get my tea fix, didn't expect it to affect me at all, but I had been having a pretty rough few last months in terms of struggling with depression and it has been noticeably elevating my mood. I'm on the pill too.

Has anyone tried kava kava? I read about it pretty recently and was semi-interested in trying it out

 

[Jelly Rev]

I have tried kava kava once made me sleepy. I used to use valerian root but the effect wasnt pronounced enuff.

5htp 100mg plus niacin up to 1500mg per day has made me a new man. 5htp and niacin affect serotonin production(in diff ways). others sups may produce other effects but may not be I directly on serotonin production
This nutritional defficency approach has done 10x what 2 year or self-analysis has done

I think about personal stuff now and then Im like wait normally I wood have reacted way differently than this then, I lol.

btw like the blue hair

 

[ItsRelative]

How i like to abstract dopamine and serotonin is that dopamine is your alertness/thinking and serotonin is your mood/balance.
Too low serotonin and your thoughts are all over the place and maybe dwell on some of the thought too much causing anxiety and depression. Also serotonin helps with sleep and dreams as your brain is calmer and wont interfere with the sleep.
I feel like every effect these neurotransmitters have can easily be derived from this simple abstraction.

I have had some weird things happen related to sleep. I'v been interested in lucid dreaming for long and have had couple of them in the past, so i know when i almost accidentally entered LD trough DEILD (wake up and WILD) when my phone rang middle of the night and i just ignored it. I got sudden euphoria and i started swirling to a dream while my mind was still awake, but i lost all memory soon after when i fully fell asleep again, guess i start trying LD again and work on my dream recall

5-htp is proven more effective than SSRI in clinical trials
5-htp isn't for everyone as i have read tho, can cause nausea and what not.

 

[snafupants]

Chinese tonic herbs can be helpful for curbing anxiety. Although there are some herbs that are mildly stimulating, like pressed Astragalus Root or Wild Ginseng Root, many are calming and sedating without negatively affecting mental clarity. Duanwood Reishi mushroom would probably be the top adaptogenic tonic herb to tamp down overexcitablity; it is incredibly safe and shows no side effects if used over the long term. Researchers have actually given rats like fifty times the amount someone would normally take in a day, and it benefits the rats rather than curtailing or ruining their little lives. The rub is it's safe and hard to overdo.

Some other herbs to check out might be Ho Shou Wu, Rhodiola Crenulata, Gota Kola, and Ashwagandha. As an added bonus, something like Ho Shou Wu, will boost what is essentially the most powerful endogenous antioxidant humans have, superoxide dismutase, while effectively killing beta-monoamine oxidase, that nasty enzyme that gobbles up catecholamines like dopamine. So, basically, you're going to feel better, be smarter, and probably live longer. I mean, in a study with fruit flies, this herb increased their lifespans over ten percent! Having said all that, you need to make sure to get a quality, safe, and concentrated form of the herb, or you're probably only receiving a fraction of the purported benefits that it has to offer. The other thing is the stuff can be sort of pricey, so you should use it judiciously.

But the reality is this: you only have this one life and if you're struggling with horrible anxiety, then you should give anything a shot. In my opinion, some type of smoothie or drink with Reishi, Ho Shou Wu, and Rhodiola Crenulata could rein in even far gone, long standing anxiety. A lot of anxious people are tempted to smoke weed or drink alcohol to help them in the short term, and it might do that, but it sort of cripples your body long term and leaves you in the same place the next morning.

 

[nanook]

5-htp isn't for everyone as i have read tho, can cause nausea and what not.

i am getting the nausea.
even a tendency/vulnerability towards turning vertigo, which i never had before in my life.
ticking eyelids.
being unable to sleep all night or sleeping verry long.

after periods of nausea i might get a period of bliss. had both this morning.

dreams - they can be really bad, when they become meditations on somatic symptoms like nausea, vertigo (ever had spinning images in a dream), alien substances messing up your blood-consistency, eating you up from inside, causing clods, affecting oxygen levels in the brain. brain blood pressure in the visual cortex building up (as symbolized by exploding eyeballs in the dream). i got really scared at times.


it seemed okay for two or three weeks. had a good mood (as i usually do when spring comes). i was okay with sleeping a bit longer. then the other symptoms kicked in.

i think, maybe i am allready rather full of serotonin. yay.
although i am not this "new person who is all like carpe diem"
i'm just okay, and lazy.

at times, i took 5-htp together with tyrosin (ratio 100mg to 1000mg), which is supposed to be a good idea, according to this podcast. (dopamin and serotonin are supposed to be in balance, tyrosin supports dopamin). but dopamin messes with my sleep as well. can't actually figure out what's going on.


at times i took three pills 5-htp daily. two at once.

now i think, taking half a pill, at the exact same time every day, not sure which time is best though, would be a good idea for me.

a bad idea is playing around with it in irregular ways.

 

[levdaleshov19]

Hey guys

I know this is an old post, but I need to ask. I have really horrible OCD at the minute and in autumn 2015 I took 300 mg niacin and 200 mg of 5 http and had a fantastic effect (for personal reasons I will not go into for the moment I decided not to take them again, stupidly). However, that time I got the impression I took them practically at the same time. Now I am trying to take them again, however taking them simultaneously seems to have no results. I try taking them separately - niacin with food (cut it's best absorbed that way) and 5 htp later on an empty stomach, but it seems so hard to get it right, so exact, that I keep failing and I need some advice from people taking it. Please advise me how to take it. 300 mg of niacin and 50 mg of 5 htp at different times? not wanting to take over 50 mg of 5 http at a time. I feel it's given me weird hearing problems - have you heard of this and is the damage to your hearing permanent? I desperately need answers to these questions please, I am in a very badly dysfunctional situation. Thanks a lot.