Comment · Tue, August 11, 2015 · Ceretropic
Nurturing Aromatic L-Amino Acid Decarboxylase: The enzyme that makes some of our favorite chemical friends inside us (and why pyritinol is so intense?)--those with more understanding of it welcome
Original post in this thread
Debonaire_Death · 3 points
I was doing some research on the competition between L-Tyrosine and 5-HTP, and I ran across their main point of contention: aromatic L-amino acid decarboxylase, or AAAD. I had never heard about the enzyme before, but it was responsible for making both dopamine and serotonin in our bodies. ~~A short wikipedia read lead me to discovering that this enzyme is also responsible for making a lot of the other active intermediaries in our bodies for these monoamines, as well as PEA and histamine.~~
~~The first insight I got from this fact is that something like Tyrosine needs to be acted on by AAAD multiple times to be converted into dopamine, while L-DOPA only needs a single decarboxylation, which I presume would be less taxing for our AAAD reserves. The same would go for substituting Tryptamine instead of 5-HTP: the enzyme has to do double duty for the former. If my logic is correct, supplementing a chemical further along the pathway for these monoamines would reduce competitive inhibition.~~ EDIT: I appear to be a victim to poor Wikipedia editing: there are other intermediary enzymes involved in the conversio…
What they were answering
chris106 · 1 points
Would the same apply to long term supplementation with Phenylalanine rather than L-Tyrosine?
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb · Ceretropic
Yes, that is just one rate-limiting step back from L-Tyrosine.