B6 and 5HTP

as far as B6 and 5HTP go, they dont mix well. if you take 5HTP you do NOT want to take much, if any, B6.

Here is a very interesting comment on 5HTP from a doctor. he is against taking it, since he believes the liver converts it to seratonin which is then excreted by the urine and very little if any gets into the brain. He believes this extra load of seratonin in the body is harmful. i dont know if this is true, but its worth reading anyway.

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http://yarchive.net/med/5-htp.html


5-HTP needs only one more step to
become serotonin-- a decarboxylation. The sequence is:

Tryptophan --> 5-HTP --> Serotonin.

An exactly analogous sequence is:

Tyrosine --> L-DOPA --> Dopamine


In both cases the end product neurotransmitter does not get
across the blood brain barrier very well, but all of the
precursor molecules above are transported by the brain's large
neutral amino acid pump, and they get into the brain fine. Thus,
if you are a Parkinson's patient who wants to raise dopamine
levels, you must take L-DOPA, not dopamine. Similarly, it would
do you no good to take serotonin-- you must take tryptophan or
5-hydroxytryptophan (5-HTP).

Now for the complications. (Aren't there always complications
in life?) The final reaction to the neurotransmitter in both the
case of dopamine and serotonin, is decarboxylation, and the same
enzyme (the aromatic L-amino acid decarboxylase) is involved in
both conversions. This decarboxylase enzyme is present in the
liver, and it acts in the case of L-DOPA to convert the compound
to dopamine before it can make it into the brain (and if this
happens, the L-DOPA is wasted). The decarboxylase enzyme uses B6
as a cofactor for this reaction, and for this reason a
Parkinson's disease patient taking L-DOPA cannot take more than
the RDA of B6, because doing so would act to neutralize
oral L-DOPA too quickly. These days, almost all Parkinson's
patients on L-DOPA take the drug in a combination with an
artificial decarboxylase inhibitor, called Carbidopa (the
combination is called Sinemet). But even with Carbidopa,
Parkinson's patients are advised not to exceed a daily dose of B6
of 25 mg, since more will overwhelm the Carbidopa effect, and
cause pharmacologic L-DOPA to be destroyed in the liver before it
can get into the brain.

Now, Carbidopa, because it acts on the same metabolizing
enzyme in the liver, performs exactly the same preservative
service for 5-HTP as for L-DOPA. For this reason, neurologists
have experimented with giving Carbidopa to people who needed to
take 5-HTP to raise brain serotonin (this in the days before
selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor antidepressants like
Prozac were available). The problem today with 5-HTP-selling
companies bypassing doctors and going to laymen, is that a lot of
health enthusiasts with problems who are enthusiastically taking
5-HTP are NOT taking Carbidopa, but they ARE taking a lot of B6
in one form or another. Yet without Carbidopa, more than a few
milligrams of extra B6 per day would be expected to insure that
most dietary 5-HTP gets turned into serotonin before it can get
into the brain.

Alas, one company I know packages their 5-HTP in 50 mg
capsules with 10 mg of B6. They do this ostensibly so that 5-HTP
can be converted to serotonin in the brain. Duh. This insures
that any 5-HTP will get converted to serotonin in the liver
instead, and thus never make it to the brain. Vitamin B6 is the
*LAST* thing you want in an 5-HTP product.

At the very best, people who take B-vitamins with 5-HTP, or
who take 5-HTP products with B6, waste their money. All this
would be merely humorous (caveat emptor) were it not for some
other facts. At worst, ignorant people fooling with 5-HTP
actually risk their health, since serotonin in the peripheral
blood is not benign. Serotonin causes not only harmless flushing
and diarrhea, but people with serotonin secreting tumors (hindgut
carcinoids) also have problems with fibrosis of the endocardium
and valves in their right hearts, which can cause heart failure.
This fibrosis is caused by the serotonin. This effect can also
be seen with dietary intake of only modest amounts of serotonin,
and there has actually been described in the medical literature a
tribe of South Sea islanders with right heart fibrosis as a
result of eating green banana mash (matuki), which poisons them
with its serotonin content. No, I'm not making this up. The
hydroxylation of tryptophan is a rate-limiting step in the
peripheral production of serotonin, and one bypasses it at one's
peril.

How much does it take? Several hundred milligrams of 5-HTP
taken per day, if converted to serotonin, would result in a
urinary excretion of the serotonin metabolite 5-hydroxyindoleac-
etic acid (5-HIAA) of several hundred milligrams also-- an amount
well within the urinary excretion range of the average person
with a serotonin producing carcinoid. Such a dose of 5-HTP
certainly would result in a serotonin blood load comparable to
that of green-banana-diet eating people who have
serotonin-induced heart valve disease. Normally, people do not
excrete breakdown products of more than 10 mg of serotonin
metabolites per day. If you take one capsule per day of 50 mg
5-HTP with 10 mg B6, however, you would be expected to go to at
least 50 mg per day of 5-HIAA in the urine. Less metabolism in
the liver (less B6) would result in less 5-HIAA in the urine. If
you are going to take 5-HTP, therefore, you probably need 5-HIAA
urine monitoring, to figure out just how big a dose of systemic
serotonin you're actually getting (and incidentally, how much
5-HTP you're wasting). See a doctor!

For all the reasons outlined above, I am presenting those
vitamin companies who sell 5-HTP with B6, or who sell it alone
but don't warn their customers about 5-HIAA monitoring or B6
intake, a special award: the Green Banana Award. This honor is
for those supplement-sellers who monkey around with people's
health before consulting with some really good nutrition and
medical specialists to make sure they don't f*&% up and hurt
somebody. Hopefully, companies which receive the Green Banana
Award will contemplate its message, and will thereby change their
behavior in order to avoid some of the less-coveted awards which
otherwise await them in the future: the Civil Damage Award, for
instance, or even the All-Expense-Paid Guest of the Federal
Government Award.


Steven B. Harris, M.D. Tweet