Dr. Diane Mueller explains how tyrosine raises dopamine to ease OCD-like symptoms, but it competes with tryptophan for absorption. A 10:1 ratio (500 mg tyrosine to 50 mg tryptophan) works better than equal doses, and staggered meals help. SSRIs need caution due to serotonin syndrome risk.
May 22, 2023.
10 to 1 (tyrosine:tryptophan).
50 mg tryptophan and 500 mg tyrosine.
Hey, everybody. In this video, we're going to talk about tyrosine and OCD and the gastrointestinal tract. I'm Dr. Diane, and I'm answering questions that have come in recently from when I was the host of the Microbes and Mental Health Summit. So we had a question about somebody that was experiencing a lot of OCD types of tendencies and was noticing that tyrosine was. Was one thing that was actually helping with this tendency. So, tyrosine is an amino acid, it's a protein molecule and is a precursor to dopamine. So oftentimes, when we have things like OCD type of tendencies, there is a lower amount of dopamine in the body. Dopamine helps with happiness, but it also is reward and motivation. And we have things sometimes like OCD or tics or like obsessive types of behavior, adhd. Oftentimes this can occur due to a low dopamine level in the body. So when we give a dopamine precursor such as tyrosine, that can help restore dopamine levels. Now, it's important to realize that tyrosine, which is a precursor to dopamine, will compete for absorption in the gastrointestinal tract with something called tryptophan. Tryptophan is another amino acid, so it's another protein molecule. And tryptophan is the precursor to serotonin, one of our other brain hormones connected to happiness. Now, tyrosine and tryptophan will compete for each other, meaning if we take tyrosine to help our dopamine, we will tend to absorb less tryptophan 4 from our food because they compete for the receptors, they would compete for the absorption sites in our gastrointestinal tract. Higher amounts of tryptophan, less tyrosine, or higher amounts of tyrosine, less tryptophan gets absorbed, and vice versa. So oftentimes, if we're supplementing tyrosine for a long period of time, we want to take tryptophan at a different meal so that we can make sure that we're getting enough tyrosine to make our dopamine and enough tryptophan to make our serotonin. So we want to make sure we're keeping dopamine levels high, serotonin levels high, and we're not doing things that while helping the one will lower and deplete the other. So a really easy thing is take tyrosine at one meal, tryptophan and next. Most commonly, we take them in a 10 to 1 ratio, so we take, we take 50 milligrams of tryptophan. We would take 10 times the amount of tyrosine and dosage, so 500. But again, none of this is medical advice. Make sure you're always talking to your doctors about what the right thing is for you. And we always want to be cautious with using these things. But if we're taking any medications such as SSRIs for example. So always talk to your doctor before you're starting any of this. Just to make sure we get too much serotonin. We can get something called serotonin syndrome which is where we can get anxious and sweaty and feel a lot of different things. We want to make sure we're avoiding that. B6 is also needed to make serotonin and dopamine. So sometimes if you're feeling mental health wise like ah, you're not feeling totally right, taking a B6 supplement can often help with that as well. In addition, SAM E is a methyl donor. So methyls basically are a. They're a molecule that is a carbon and three hydrogen. We need this carbon hydrogen molecule to make enzymes all over the body work. Literally hundreds of reactions need this molecule. Well, the creation of serotonin and dopamine also needs this carbon hydrogen molecule known as a methyl donor. Same is a nutrient that will donate a bunch of methyl donors to the production of a variety of things, some of which are serotonin and dopamine. So we want to make sure that when we're considering building blocks and nutrients for the creation of serotonin and dopamine for our brain that we're considering a wide variety of nutrients that actually go into that. Alright everybody. I hope that helps. Please subscribe to this channel. If it's been helpful please do share this with your family and friends. Don't keep me a secret. Information about me and my clinic is in the show notes. I'll see you in the next video.
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