MyDoorsAreOpen
Bluelight Crew
- Joined
- Aug 20, 2003
- Messages
- 8,549
As an aside, I'd love to see some sources on how much 5-HTP actually does make it to the brain with or without the use of a peripheral decarboxylase inhibitor. I suspect that a significant amount does, since so many people find it therapeutic -- it seems unlikely to me that it's all completely placebo, heh.
Radiolabeled 5-htp and a CT scan, anyone? Seems to me this would be a fairly simple scientific experiment, other than synthing 5-htp with a radioactive atom in it.
I bet the lion's share never makes it to the CNS, simply because there are so many tissues in the periphery that use serotonin, and are a lot more accessible to albumin-bound amino acid precursors than the brain. However, since there aren't really all that many cells in the brain that use serotonin, relatively speaking, even if only a fraction of the dose makes it there, I bet each serotonin neuron sees a measurable rise in its stores of it after a dose of 5-htp.