Sunday, August 28, 2005
Fat and Grumpy is a Bad Combo
Years back, a doctor tried to prescribe Prozac for my wife's weight issues. She was so incensed that she dumped the doctor. Granted, Prozac is a lousy drug unless you want to feel good about taking to the bell tower and mowing down the citizenry with a semi-automatic rifle. Nevertheless, the doctor may have been onto something with the wrong drug for the wrong reason.
Problems and solutions travel in constellations. It's why a disease has several symptoms. It's why a cure has the desired effect plus side-effects. Several factors combine to make up saiety:
There may be a therapy that can attack this issue on a few fronts at once: 5-HTP. 5-HTP or 5-hydroxy tryptophan is a supplement that is made from Griffonia seeds, a cactus from South Africa.
Often used as an antidepressant, evidence from small double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trials suggests that 5-HTP may also help people lose weight. It is thought to work by raising levels of serotonin may influence eating behavior. L-Tryptophan is converted to 5-HTP before becoming serotonin; taking 5-HTP bypasses this first step of the process. What's more wild: there is evidence that 5-HTP boosts leptin levels. As I wrote in an earlier piece, leptin is a big deal.
So, I am starting a one month trial of 5-HTP. I am going to take 50mg of 5-HTP three times a day for 30 days. If the research is on target, leptin should help me feel full. More than that, leptin stimulates metabolization. If it works, what I eat will give me more energy. Less food plus more energy is a good combo for weight loss.
Problems and solutions travel in constellations. It's why a disease has several symptoms. It's why a cure has the desired effect plus side-effects. Several factors combine to make up saiety:
- Fullness-- is your stomach full?
- Leptin-- a protien released by fat cells. Receptors in your brain are told you're full
- Gehrlin-- released by the stomach lining. The more gehrlin in circulation, the hungrier you feel. When people go in for stomach stapling, the stapled-- omitted part of stomach doesn't release gerhlin.
- Psychology-- what triggered the eating? Hunger? Mood? Obsessive-compulsive disorder?
There may be a therapy that can attack this issue on a few fronts at once: 5-HTP. 5-HTP or 5-hydroxy tryptophan is a supplement that is made from Griffonia seeds, a cactus from South Africa.
Often used as an antidepressant, evidence from small double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trials suggests that 5-HTP may also help people lose weight. It is thought to work by raising levels of serotonin may influence eating behavior. L-Tryptophan is converted to 5-HTP before becoming serotonin; taking 5-HTP bypasses this first step of the process. What's more wild: there is evidence that 5-HTP boosts leptin levels. As I wrote in an earlier piece, leptin is a big deal.
So, I am starting a one month trial of 5-HTP. I am going to take 50mg of 5-HTP three times a day for 30 days. If the research is on target, leptin should help me feel full. More than that, leptin stimulates metabolization. If it works, what I eat will give me more energy. Less food plus more energy is a good combo for weight loss.
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Hi Mike - just curious to know how your 1 month trial went with 5-HTP. I'm struggling to loose weight and have been reading out leptin therapy, and came across your blog.
Hi Jennifer,
5-HTP has some interesting effects. On the good side: It did help with my diet, making it easier to keep weight off. I found I was able to run on less sleep. While on 5-HTP I didn't get colds (go figure).
On the bad side: you get to a saturation point. After a few months, I felt sick from them (headache, irritable). I stopped taking them for a while; those side effects stopped and I picked up a cold.
Overall for weight loss, 5-HTP was a step in the right direction. I look forward to something that has a more direct effect on leptin. I am still looking forward to the "silver bullet" combination of diet, exercise, vitamin/supplement therapy. I'm still trying to dial it in.
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5-HTP has some interesting effects. On the good side: It did help with my diet, making it easier to keep weight off. I found I was able to run on less sleep. While on 5-HTP I didn't get colds (go figure).
On the bad side: you get to a saturation point. After a few months, I felt sick from them (headache, irritable). I stopped taking them for a while; those side effects stopped and I picked up a cold.
Overall for weight loss, 5-HTP was a step in the right direction. I look forward to something that has a more direct effect on leptin. I am still looking forward to the "silver bullet" combination of diet, exercise, vitamin/supplement therapy. I'm still trying to dial it in.
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