5HTP help to gather info on safety & what to watch out for

Hi am planning to try taking 5-HTP, it's not for ME/CFS but I searched it on here & saw a few people mentioning it.

I'm too ill do any proper research or read poperly, but after a brief google i saw a few alarming things, but am VERY fuzzy mentayll so i cant assess.

Asked phramacist but he knew absotulety nothing

wondering if anyone who is capable of looking or who knows, can either tell me or direct me to good info re safety, side effects, things to eb aware of etc ect.

thanks any helpp much appeciated

 

I briefly took 5HTP in 2012 after my onset of CFS-like symptoms, many years before meeting ME criteria. I can't even remember why now, but I suspect low mood, given I didn't want to try an anti-depressant at that stage. I don't think I stayed on it very long, and I can't remember how it went.

I would say just go low and slow as 5HTP has to do with serotonin synthesis which also involves tryptophan. I assume you are not on anti sort of anti-depresant.

 

I took 5-HTP religiously every night for about 10 or 11 years, but have cut down in the last couple of years. I have never taken more than 50mg per night which is a low dose. If I took more than that it made me jittery. I have read that 5-HTP raises cortisol. I have high cortisol anyway which is probably why I got jittery if I took more than 50mg. I found that 5-HTP worked better for relieving my depression than SSRIs or any other things I was prescribed with or experimented with.

Can you give me a clue what the alarming things were?

 

The concerns about 5-HTP seem to be that it might actually work. It can increase serotonin levels, which may or may not be desirable. Might be worth consulting the GP first, @JemPD, specially if you've tried antidepressants in the past and found they didn't suit you.

It could have been the media stories from about 30 years ago—a tryptophan supplement made a lot of people very ill, and some of them died. It was thought to be due to a contaminant, and I don't think anything like it has happened since.

 

Anything can have harmful effects for some people, but I had the impression that 5-HTP was really low risk. I took it without any negative effects. Your body produces 5-HTP naturally, so it's not like trying something completely foreign to your body. The supplement just raises your blood level of it a bit more.

FWIW, I found it to help my sleep about equally as melatonin, meaning not very effective or reliable.

There are false or misleading alarmist articles about just about everything. Alarmist articles are an industry. I'd check the wiki first, since I think that's less likely to have someone trying to profit from misleading info.

Just checked the wiki. No serious risk noted. "Excess 5-HTP, especially when administered with vitamin B6, is thought to be metabolized and excreted."

 

no strength to reply properly atm, but this is all massively helpful thanks so so much!

Is WebMD reliable then @Sly Saint ? I always hear it talked of when ridiculing people with 'cyberchondria'

wish i were well enough to explain & say more but you've helped me more than you know

 

I read those stories years ago and the stories I heard were...

In the late 80s or early 90s a lot of tryptophan supplements were made in Japan. One company tried to create a new method of developing tryptophan that would save them money but something went wrong - some substance in the process got contaminated with bacteria. As a result there were a lot of deaths around the world, particularly in the USA where tryptophan was very popular as a cheap non-prescription anti-depressant. Inspectors tried to find out what had gone wrong but the company cleaned up and quickly removed all evidence of their new process for developing tryptophan. With no evidence left nothing much could be learned.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tryptophan#Showa_Denko_contamination_scandal

For quite a long time tryptophan was banned around the world, and it was because of that that 5-HTP began to be used instead. 5-HTP is one of the products that tryptophan is converted into in the body.

See this diagram :

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/Tryptophan_metabolism.svg

For probably murky reasons to do with Big Pharma profits from SSRIs, 5-HTP got tarred with the same brush as tryptophan even though it hadn't ever been contaminated and it helped a lot of people. I remember when I first heard about 5-HTP many years ago there was a peculiar man on the internet who was doing his best to ruin the reputation of 5-HTP and get it banned for some unknown reasons of his own. He ranted about 5-HTP a lot.

Tryptophan was "unbanned" some time ago in the UK but I don't know exactly when.

I know that some 5-HTP products are combined with vitamin B6 for "reasons" but I don't know what they are. I've never bought a combined B6 and 5-HTP product myself.

Regarding serotonin syndrome, yes, 5-HTP can cause it, as can many other prescribed medications, supplements, and drugs when taken at high doses or in combination.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serotonin_syndrome#Causes

Some companies selling 5-HTP now are creating the conditions that could get 5-HTP banned in future. They are creating products with higher and higher doses. When I first bought 5-HTP most products were sold in a dose of 50mg - 200mcg per tablet/capsule. Since then the doses have got higher and higher and it is actually quite hard to find products containing only 50 mcg, while some dangerous people are selling 800mg doses. I suspect that the number of cases of serotonin syndrome are going to rise and Big Pharma will want it banned.

I've been taking 5-HTP since 2011 at a low dose of 50mg per night. Higher doses give me the jitters. 5-HTP is known to raise cortisol, and since mine is already high it is probably why I can't take more than 50mcg. I decided about 2 or 3 years ago that I wanted to cut down on my dosage of 5-HTP, and I have done that without any evidence of a withdrawal reaction, so it isn't addictive, in my opinion.

 

I don't take 5-HTP, but see that in addition to capsules, it's also available as powder and drop forms to allow flexibility in dosing.