I have been using 5 HTP to good effect

[5htpguy]

I have a chronic-fatigue-syndrome-type illness which I believe I was born with.

I have been using 5 HTP for about 4 years now and it has been pretty effective at treating my illness. Considering that I don't know what it's like to not have a CFS type illness, I can't say that the 5 HTP has done that much to completely resolve the illness.

One of the main things it has done for me is increase my potential for muscle strength. I mention this first because I always had some strange problems with muscle strength. I wasn't sure what it was at first but I think it has a lot to do with not being able to hold on to heavy objects to prevent them from moving as opposed to actually moving objects. I also like to use muscle strength as a measure of health because I can measure my muscle strength empirically whereas with something like energy, I don't know how to measure that empirically.

Other things that have gotten better are my energy (basically my stamina for work), blood flow, motor skills, and my ability to react to situations or things people say faster so I don't seem inept.

I am wondering if anybody else uses 5 HTP or knows about it and what you all think about it.

 

[Tammy7]

What symptom or symptoms prompted you to start taking 5 HTP?

 

[5htpguy]

Over time I figured out I had a CFS-like disease. The symptoms that affected me most were (1) an inability to make myself do more than a little bit of work every day (2) muscle weakness which is mild in terms of moving but seems to be severe in terms of holding objects in place that are moving.

I also had depression which is what got me into psychotropic drugs but it took a long time to figure out that 5 HTP was more effective than a lot of other stuff.

Thank you for responding! What kind of diseases do you have and what do you take? What do you think of 5 HTP?

 

[Tammy7]

Over time I figured out I had a CFS-like disease. The symptoms that affected me most were (1) an inability to make myself do more than a little bit of work every day (2) muscle weakness which is mild in terms of moving but seems to be severe in terms of holding objects in place that are moving.

I also had depression which is what got me into psychotropic drugs but it took a long time to figure out that 5 HTP was more effective than a lot of other stuff.

Thank you for responding! What kind of diseases do you have and what do you take? What do you think of 5 HTP?

I've had CFS .........coming up on 27 yrs? I have depression on and off but I think what caught my eye is that you said 5htp helped with your muscle strength to a degree. I also have problems with muscle weakness.
I know that 5 htp has helped others as far as depression and sleep go and it's something that I would be open to taking. How much do you take? Are you completely off the psychotropic drugs now?

What do I take? I take natural anti-virals and some other supplements to support my immune system. Also some food ingredients to help remove any heavy metals hanging around in my system.

 

[5htpguy]

5 HTP has helped with my muscle strength by somewhere between 10-40% in terms of moving weight, and I've been taking it for 4 years straight about 400 mg per day. It has worked over time and I also had to train with weights, but I was able to break through strength plateaus, meaning before I couldn't get any stronger past a certain point. I seem to still be getting maybe 1% stronger every month right now.

I take less psychotropic drugs now but I'm not off. But I need less now.

5 htp will give you a stomachache and possibly cause you to throw up if you take too much. Also there is the danger of serotonin syndrome which I have never had.

An example of how much stronger I got is I focus on doing curls and bench press which are basically tests, I don't consider it a real workout program. It's hard to say where exactly I was stuck at since your strength varies over your life and I wasn't always trying to max out on those lifts. But I can curl 65 pounds in 1 arm with good form 1 time and bench press 245 1 time. Without 5 HTP I could probably never get past 75% of those numbers.

I'm not sure how much better I am in terms of the more pathological aspect of the strength deficit, which has something to do with stabilization of my body and holding objects in place, I think. I never came up with a way to measure that.

 

[tatt]

Didnt do anything for me, maybe worse.

 

[JES]

Are you convinced your change in health is due to 5-HTP? Just wondering about the timeline and how quickly you noticed improvement from taking 5-HTP. Four years is a long time and gradual improvement over such a time could be due to many factors. Have you tried going on and off to see if it makes a difference? I guess you might not want to risk it.

I do find it it interesting that a serotonin promoting supplement would have an impact on muscles and make you feel more alert. To me they have the opposite effect of promoting sleepiness and not really doing much to improve the ME/CFS lethargic feeling I wake up with.

Since a couple of years ago I actually can not tolerate any serotonin promoting supplements well for some reason. I tolerate plain tryptophan somewhat better, I reckon because it requires an extra step to convert compared to 5-hydroxytryptophan. There is some speculation that something is dyregulated in the tryptophan/kynurenine pathways in ME/CFS, so maybe depending on this, patients will react differently to supplementation.

 

[5htpguy]

My change in health is definitely due to 5-HTP. I have learned not to talk about it to people because it apparently offends them that this is what has happened to me. The fact that people don't think it's possible offends me. Maybe I am the only person with the exact condition that I have genetically. There is no way for me to know.

It doesn't make me feel more alert, it makes me more able to withstand the desire to stop working when I have been working for a long time. Thus I end up working more. Again that is a controversial statement because a lot of people insist that the ability to work is completely a choice.

Also if you think you cannot tolerate something, that may be true, but my experience with some drugs/supplements including the serotonin is that you can't tolerate it at first because your body is adjusting to it, but then you can tolerate it after you've been taking it for a while. Also if you can't tolerate it at first, you can lower the dose to be miniscule until you don't notice the negative effects and try raising it a little bit later on.

Thank you for responding. It's good to hear from people.