Low Catecholamines

Hi Klauss

Thank you for posting this.
Sorry for not replying to you earlier but I got preoccupied with my saliva test results, so I almost completely fogot about this issue.

I'm glad to hear that I'm the only one experiencing low catecholamines symptoms. I'm not depressed either but like I mentioned before I now take Wellbutrin 75 mg XL and it's helping tremendously. I have plenty of adrenaline rushes, anxiety attacks and sleep problems when I'm on it but it completely "cured" those anhedonia symptoms. I never thought I could be so happy about having my anxiety back. It's like welcoming a good old friend:)
The way I think of catecholamines (dopamine/norepinephrine/epinephrine) is that dopamine is more responsible for mood elevation, motivation and it's lack will manifest itself as Depression and apathy. Norepinephrine works more on maintaining the normal physiological functioning of the body like heart beat, blood pressure and maintaining the balance when standing, walking etc. Epinephrine is a true fight or flight responder and is what gives you panic attacks.
However norepinephrine also gives us the feeling of joy and the ability to physically feel pleasure from life events. And that's what I think is missing.
Because I'm not depressed and even get some motivation sometimes I assume that I might have some dopamine although not sufficient - but for some reason it doesn't get converted into norepinephrine in the body at the rate that it should. I read somewhere that the body favours production of norepinephrine over maintaining higher dopamine levels because norepinephrine is more relevant for survival.
Norepinephrine signals the hypothalamus to activate the HPA axis and when its low the adrenals won't be able to get the signal to make the hormones like cortisol, aldosterone and DHEA.

Did you have your DHEA levels checked? Mine is extremely low for my age and it makes me wonder if it has anything to do with it.

I also have terrible salt wasting issues when my norepinephrine/dopamine drops which makes me believe that the adrenals stop producing mineralocorticoids as well.

Did you try the herb Mucuna Pruriens? It has L-Dopa in it which is a direct precursor to dopamine. I found it the most helpful so far - much better than most amino acids like phenylalanine and phenylathylamine(PEA).

By the way where can you get a test like that done?

Thank you
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