L-TRYPTOPHAN

[RoboCop]

Hey everyone! Good to view the forum again, love the changes. (For anyone interested im still in jail but it isn't so bad I get out all the time for community service etc.)
Anyways a few people I do service with have something called L-TRYPTOPHAN tablets, anyone hear of these or try them? They may not be to worth it but since i haven't gotten high in a while i can't wait to try them. This is what the legal high database has to say about them.

L-TRYPTOPHAN -- 1-alpha-aminoindole-3-propionic acid. Material: Amino acid essential to human nutrition. Usage: 5-8 grams are ingested on empty stomach. Effects: Drowsiness, euphoria, and mental changes similar to mild (5 mg) dose of psilocybin. Contraindications: Tendency to fall asleep. Excessive use could cause dietary amino acid imbalance. Supplier: CS, 500 mg tablets from some heatlh food stores.

Anyone done this or have any responses? I'd LOVE to hear it as this has never been mentioned here from what I know.

[anjin]

L-tryptophan is a precursor for serotonin (a brain chemical)
The enzymatic reaction: L-tryptophan -> 5-HTP -> 5-HT (serotonin)

Serotonin influences o.a your mood, sleeping and eating paterns and sex drive. Its also the same chemical that is massively released when on E. (thats why you feel so good).
Problem is that it is only replenished slowly and hence the 'dip' after mdma use.

L-tryptophan and 5-HTP are food supplements to replenish your serotonin supply, esp after using E.
However l-tryptophan is also a precursor for o.a Vit B. So only a small percentage makes it to the brain as serotonin.

Conclusion: You wont get high from L-tryptophan. Its a food supplement that can help you sleep and shortens, lessens the depressed feelings after partying on E. Its prohibited in the U.S but you can buy 5-HTP instead.

[Neo1]

I use tryptophan from time to time.



It's not a high, but it does give me a mellow, relaxed feeling.



It's also good for pre/post 'E' dosing if you haven't got any 5-HTP on hand.



Most Westerners are deficient in tryptophan 'cos there's not enough of it in our junky diets.

[RoboCop]

Hmm so it is not a high? that bums me out, my friends know a place to buy pure tryptophan pills from the net, yes I know it is prohibited but there are still sites that sell pure tryptophan pills as veternary medicine. And they have done so several times, however they told me it had gotten them a buzz.

[djryand]

Off topic, but how do get online whilst in jail? Do you have computer access there? If so, that's pretty fucking cool. Get you some research chems mailed to you there.

[Micklemouse]

Although it won't make you high, l-tryptophan is quite sedating, and being a serotonin agent, probably quite fluffy, although it may also give you the squits(most of the bodies serotonin receptors are in the gut(which is why a lot of people puke on E) and in the genitals(which is why it's so hard to get hard!).

Anyhoo, here's one for all you conspiracy theorists out there...


This article first appeared in Social Policy magazine, Vol. 26, No. 2, Winter 1995. Reprinted here with permission.
Copyright (c) 1995, 1997, 2000 by Dean W. Manders. All Rights Reserved.
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Smart Drug Update:

The FDA Ban of L-Tryptophan:
Politics, Profits and Prozac
by Dean Wolfe Manders, Ph.D.


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In the fall of 1989, the FDA recalled L-Tryptophan, an amino acid nutritional supplement, stating that it caused a rare and deadly flu-like condition (Eosinophilia-Myalgia Syndrome — EMS. Symptoms are insomnia, chronic pain, depression). On March 22, 1990, the FDA banned the public sale dietary of L-Tryptophan completely. This ban continues today. On March 26, 1990, Newsweek featured a lead article praising the virtues of the anti-depressant drug Prozac. Its multi-color cover displayed a floating, gigantic green and white capsule of Prozac with the caption: “Prozac: A Breakthrough Drug for Depression.”

The fact that the FDA ban of L-Tryptophan and the Newsweek Prozac cover story occurred within four days of each other went unnoticed by both the media and the public. Yet, to those who understand the effective properties of L-Tryptophan and Prozac, the concurrence seems “unbelievably coincidental.” The link here is the brain neurotransmitter serotonin — a biochemical nerve signal conductor. The action of Prozac and L-Tryptophan are both involved with serotonin, but in totally different ways.

Elevated levels of serotonin in the body often result in the relief of depression, as well as substantial reduction in pain sensitivity, anxiety and stress. Prozac, as well as other new anti-depressant drugs such as Paxil and Zoloft, attempt to enhance levels of serotonin by working on whatever amounts of it already exist in the body (these drugs are known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors). None of these drugs, however, produce serotonin. In contrast, ingested L-Tryptophan acts to produce serotonin, even in individuals who generate little serotonin of their own. The most effective way to elevate levels of serotonin would be to use a serotonin producer rather than a serotonin enhancer.

The continuing FDA public ban of L-Tryptophan prevents popular access to this most effective serotonin producer. The millions of Americans who for decades safely had relied upon L-Tryptophan to relieve depression, anxiety and PMS, as well as to control pain and induce natural sleep, have been forced elsewhere for solutions. Routinely, such solutions are pharmaceutical in nature: people are forced to use either often highly addictive, expensive, and sometimes dangerous drugs like Xanax, Valium, Halcion, Dalmane, Codeine, Anafranil, Prozac, and others, or, simply suffer.

Present FDA public policy maintains that L-Tryptophan is an untested, unapproved and hazardous drug. The analytical work done a few years ago by the Centers for Disease Control and the Mayo Clinic, research which traced the fall 1989 outbreak of the serious flu-like condition to contaminants found in batches of L-Tryptophan made by the Japanese company Showa Denko, has not convinced the FDA to allow L-Tryptophan back on the market. This decision is based primarily on the research of FDA and NIMH scientists who state that L-Tryptophan itself, irrespective of contaminants, is a dangerous substance. Other university-based research scientists disagree with these findings.

The public availability of L-Tryptophan is too important an issue only to be argued and shrouded within a scientific debate that remains, ultimately, mystifying to the vast majority of Americans. There are many obvious facts worthy of public attention, and public concern. For example, consider the following:

On February 9, 1993, a United States government patent (#5185157) was issued to use L-Tryptophan to treat, and cure EMS, the very same deadly flu-like condition which prompted the FDA to take L-Tryptophan off the market in 1989.
Notwithstanding its public ban and import alert on L-Tryptophan, the FDA today allows Ajinomoto U.S.A. the right to import from Japan human-use L-Tryptophan. Distributed from the Ajinomoto plant in Raleigh, North Carolina, the L-Tryptophan is then sold to, and through, a network of compounding pharmacies across the United States. Purchased by individuals only under a physician's order, L-Tryptophan emerges as a new prescription drug in the serotonin marketplace; one hundred 500 mg capsules cost about $75 — approximately five times more than if they were sold as a dietary supplement.
Since the FDA holds the political mandate and power of a public regulatory agency established, ostensibly, to protect people from raw corporate interests in drug production and distribution, the actions of the FDA in concert with Ajinomoto U.S.A. are illuminating. By publicly banning L-Tryptophan from its dietary supplement status and price, while allowing L-Tryptophan to be sold as a high-priced prescription drug, the naked duplicity of FDA L-Tryptophan policy is revealed.
During and after the 1989 EMS outbreak, the FDA did not totally ban the use of L-Tryptophan in humans — then, as today, the FDA has granted the pharmaceutical industry the protected right to use L-Tryptophan in hospital settings. Manufactured by Abbott Laboratories, the amino acid injectable solutions Aminosyn and Aminosyn II contain as much as 200 mg of L-Tryptophan. (Moreover, L-Tryptophan has never been removed from baby food produced and sold within the United States.)
While the FDA has banned the public sale and use of safe, non-contaminated, dietary supplement L-Tryptophan for people, the United States Department of Agriculture still sanctions the legal sale and use of non-contaminated L-Tryptophan for animals. Today, as in the past, feed grade L-Tryptophan continues to be used as a nutritional and bulk feed additive by the commercial hog and chicken farming industry. Additionally, L-Tryptophan is now available for use by veterinarians in caring for horses and pets. Outside of the United States, in countries such as Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, England, and others, L-Tryptophan is widely used. Nowhere, have any serious or widespread health problems occurred.

At bottom, the FDA public ban of safe, non-contaminated L-Tryptophan is uneven, expensive, and biased in favor of the pharmaceutical industry. The FDA proscription effectively awards billions of dollars in profits to pharmaceutical companies and their suppliers in the same proportion as it adds billions of unnecessary dollars to the nation's already bloated health care expenditures.

On June 15, 1993, the FDA Dietary Supplement Task Force published a report on the work it had been doing in the area of developing FDA policy around nutritional supplements. On page two, the report admits, “The Task Force considered various issues in its deliberations, including... what steps are necessary to ensure that the existence of dietary supplements on the market does not act as a disincentive for drug development.”

In this case, the FDA has succeeded in carrying out its stated policy goal. With competition from publicly available L-Tryptophan removed, the rapidly expanding market in prescription serotonin drugs — now among them L-Tryptophan itself — contains no major “disincentives” for the massive accumulation of pharmaceutical industry profits.

It is now time for appropriate congressional committees to review openly and aggressively the entire matter of L-Tryptophan. This will provide a needed forum where political, corporate, and scientific issues of FDA L-Tryptophan regulatory policy may be addressed. There exists ample precedent for such hearings: in the 1980's and early 1990's, for example, such investigations uncovered FDA favoritism in the approval of generic drugs and the bribery of FDA officials.

The story of L-Tryptophan illustrates a sad and perverse picture of the politics and priorities of public health in America: A safe, dietary-supplement serotonin producer is publicly unavailable to people, while daily fed to animals by corporate agribusiness. A drug patent is approved to use L-Tryptophan to cure the very condition the FDA claims it caused. And, while publicly exclaiming that L-Tryptophan is a dangerous and untested drug, the FDA, more quietly, allows human-use L-Tryptophan to be imported, and then marketed and sold by the pharmaceutical industry.

To allow the FDA ban of L-Tryptophan to continue unreviewed and uninvestigated condemns millions of Americans to unnecessary financial expenditures and needless suffering.


Copyright (c) 1995 by Dean W. Manders. All Rights ,Reserved. Used with permission.


Don't ya just love it? Nearly all of the original cases of ems were traced to one Japanese petrochemical company, Showa Denko K.K., who made their product from a genetically engineered bacterial strain. Ems is also listed as a rare but possible side effect for many - you guessed it!- SSRI's.

Big Pharma and the FDA, in a tree,
- K - I - S - S - I - N - G!

Bastards. !

[Ximot]

Apparently you do get high on several g's of tryptophan. But I just use between 200 amd 500mg in times of emotional/mood-related hardship and it tends to sort me out within a couple of days. THE antidepressant of choice for me. Take at night for nice sleep.

If using 5-htp, make sure you adjust the dose, it is much more potent. tryptophan is converted into 5-htp in (by) the body. One food I know that contains a high amount of tryptophan is bananas.

[hacnslash]

i heard turkey meat contains tryptophan...not really sure if that's true or not though.

[JimtheCactus]

Turkey meat does contain tryptophan, its what makes people tired after they eat a bunch of turkey.<!--
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[anjin]

although it may also give you the squits(most of the bodies serotonin receptors are in the gut(which is why a lot of people puke on E) and in the genitals(which is why it's so hard to get hard!).

Serotonin only naturally occurs in the brain. There are no serotonin receptors anywhere else in the body. It is even dangerous to have serotonin in the bloodstream outside of the brain, it may lead to heart(valve) damage.

I very much doubt you can get high of several grams of l-tryptophan. Like i mentioned before, its a precursor for many other reactions in the human body. Your body will just downregulate the reaction that leads to serotonin if enough has been made allready.

[Micklemouse]

From 'Prozac Backlash', by Joseph Glenmullen:

'In humans only about 5% of serotonin is found in
the brain. The other 95% is distributed throughout
the rest of the body. The majority is in the gastro-
intestinal tract, where serotonin modulates the
rhythmic movements kneading food through the stomach.
In the cardiovascular system, serotonin helps
regulate blood vessels to control the flow of blood.
Serotonin is also found in the blood cells and plays
an important role in clotting. In the reproductive
system, serotonin's influence on the genitals
accounts for it's sexual effects. Serotonin plays
a significant role in in controlling a host of
hormones that regulate...physiological processes.'

Serotonin originates in the brain stem, the oldest part of the brain, and is the largest of our neural networks, but that neural network is spread throughout the body via the central nevous system.

[Bodhisattva500]

does turkey contain enought tryptopahn that you would actually get tired from eating the amount you eat

[Ximot]

(copy paste from a googled site)

What is tryptophan?

Tryptophan is an essential Amino Acid. It is a precursor for serotonin (which aids sleep and anxiety),and helps in niacin (B vitamins) production. Foods that are considered sources of tryptophan are dairy products, beef, poultry, barley, brown rice, fish, soybeans, and peanuts.

L-tryptophan is a natural sedative. It is normally found in turkey meat, and many people believe it to be the cause of a sleepiness common after a Thanksgiving feast.

Tryptophan is a component of many plant and animal proteins, and a normal part of the diet that humans must get from outside sources. It also happens to be the precursor (starting material) from which our brains make serotonin, which calms you down and makes you sleepy.


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Is tryptophan safe as a dietary supplement?
L-tryptophan was a very popular sleeping aid in the United States until recently, and was also used for premenstrual syndrome and depression. The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) removed it off the market in 1990 because of a sudden outbreak of eosinophilic-myalgia syndrome among people who had taken the supplement. About 5,000 people got sick and 27 died.

The ailment Eosinophilic-myalgia is characterized by muscle pain, weakness, and joint pain. It is serious and sometimes fatal. An investigation into the connection with L-tryptophan traced the problem to a contaminated batch of the supplement made by a Japanese company, Showa Denko KK, which had changed its fermentation process to incorporate genetically engineered bacteria, and had also lessened the amount of charcoal it used to purify the product. Nevertheless, the FDA did not relax its ban, reasoning that it's still not clear whether manufacturers can make a product that isn't toxic. However, L-tryptophan is still available by prescription in Canada.


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The Answer
Now, back to our original question. Does the tryptophan in turkey make you sleepy after eating a big Thanksgiving turkey dinner?

Sorry to say, that if you're looking for the sedative effect, it's unlikely you'll get it from eating meats like turkey. L-tryptophan doesn't act on the brain unless you take it on an empty stomach with no protein present. So it probably isn't at fault for the sudden drowsiness that hits right after the meal when the football games come on, and the dishes are waiting!

It's more likely due to the combination of drinking alcohol and overeating - not just turkey, but also mashed potatoes, ham, creamed onions, cranberries, sweet potatoes, peas, stuffing (or dressing, if you prefer), carrots, bread, pies, and whipped cream - all of which have the effect of puling the blood away from your brain to help your digestive tract do it's work, and the sugar/insulin effect.

On the bright side, more evidence suggest that caffeine is not only not bad for you; it actually helps many brain functions, alertness, learning, memory and countering Alzheimers... so as long as you don't become a total, jittery addict... have a cup of coffee or tea! (yeah, green tea if you really want to claim additional health benefits! )!


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Recommendations
What can you do? Meals heavy in carbs such as simple sugars and simple starches will indeed cause an insulin effect and trigger sleepiness a short while later. So eat a balanced meal, more fresh or steamed vegetables, lean proteins anddon't pig out - too much - or just plan on a nap.

But take care of the dishes first!



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PS I think bananas are also said to cintain a fair bit of it.