5-Hydroxy Tryptophan (5-HTP)

Help or Hype? Can One Pill Cure Depression, Obesity and Insomnia?

SAM DONALDSON, ABC NEWS Did you know that one-third of adults in the United States take dietary supplements? And according to the American Dietetic Association, that adds up to $4 billion of business every year. And now, there is a single supplement that’s being called the answer to a number of very prevalent problems. Is it a miracle drug or just the latest hype? Dr Nancy Snyderman takes a look at what you need to know about a promising, yet controversial pill.

DR NANCY SNYDERMAN, ABC NEWS (VO) Alicia Uyeda is a model. Her face and her figure help pay the rent and put food on her table.

ALICIA UYEDA, MODEL So it’s very important to keep the weight down.

DR NANCY SNYDERMAN (VO) Important, yes, but not easy. Alicia has always craved carbohydrates.

ALICIA UYEDA Yes, all the sweets, the candies especially, starches, I think it just — it’s very satisfying. I’ve tried everything under the sun. Just about every diet product there is out there, and I found that they pretty much all work about the same, suppressing the appetite, but it causes a yo-yo effect.

DR NANCY SNYDERMAN (VO) Linda Renner had a craving, too — for a good night’s sleep. But she couldn’t get any. For five years, Linda suffered from insomnia.

LINDA RENNER, OFFICE WORKER I would be up just tossing and turning, falling asleep, oh, about 4:00. Time to get up at 5:00 in the morning, still very exhausted, very tired.

DR NANCY SNYDERMAN (VO) Both these women say they found help in this bottle, an over-the-counter dietary supplement called 5-HTP or 5-hydroxytryptophan. They found out about it from this man, Michael Murray, a natural health practitioner who has just written a book “5-HTP, Boost Your Serotonin Levels the Natural Way To Overcome Depression, Obesity and Insomnia.” How could this little chemical with a strange name do all those things? Because the brain takes 5-HTP and makes it into another chemical called serotonin, which functions as a neurotransmitter or master switch for all sorts of brain functions.

MICHAEL MURRAY, ND, NATUROPATH When serotonin levels are low, you can suffer from such things as depression, anxiety, insomnia. You can have craving for carbohydrates, and you can be more sensitive to pain, such as in migraine headaches and a condition known as fibromyalgia.

DR NANCY SNYDERMAN (VO) Serotonin is vitally important to your brain, where it helps regulate activities from eating and sleeping to pain and moods. In fact, anti-depressant drugs, such as Prozac and Zoloft, work by raising the levels of available serotonin in your brain.

DR MICHAEL MURRAY You can think of serotonin like the central star in a play. All the other actors are important, but if the main actor isn’t functioning up to par, the play’s not going be very good. Your brain chemistry isn’t going be very good if you have low serotonin levels.

DR NANCY SNYDERMAN (VO) Murray put Alicia on 5-HTP for weight control.

ALICIA UYEDA Immediately, I started noticing my cravings diminishing for carbohydrates. I was eating much less quantity of food each time. So it was very easy to drop the weight.

DR NANCY SNYDERMAN (VO) And Linda took it in order to sleep.

LINDA RENNER No waking up at 3:00 in the morning. I sleep straight through. It’s wonderful. I have not done this for five years.

DR NANCY SNYDERMAN (VO) And both noticed their moods improved, too.

ALICIA UYEDA I don’t have my emotional ups and downs.

LINDA RENNER I feel no pressure. I can take whatever comes along.

DR NANCY SNYDERMAN (VO) With the stresses of modern life, Dr Murray believes that serotonin deficiency is epidemic among Americans, and he says rather than put us all on Prozac, why not try 5-HTP? It has a long history of use in Europe and its side effects, nausea or fatigue, usually resolve after a short time.

DR MICHAEL MURRAY 5-HTP is a substance that your body naturally produces. It does not appear to have any long-term serious side effects. That can’t be said about these standard anti-depressant drugs.

DR NANCY SNYDERMAN (VO) Our bodies make 5-HTP from the food we eat. After breaking proteins down into amino acids, one of them tryptophan, is converted into 5-HTP, and it ultimately is converted into the master chemical, serotonin. Taking 5-HTP in a pill, says Dr Murray, ensures your brain has an adequate supply to make serotonin.

Murray is a naturopathic doctor — an ND, not an MD. Only three colleges in the United States grant degrees in naturopathy. NDs are currently licensed to practice primary care medicine in 11 states and the District of Columbia. Their treatments are based on prevention, diet, exercise and a holistic approach using vitamins, minerals, herbs and other natural products. Those who use these supplements swear they help. But some nutritional researchers don’t believe the hype or the patients. Victor Herbert, a world-famous scientist at Mount Sinai Medical School in New York, is one of the doubters.

VICTOR HERBERT, MD, JD, NUTRITION RESEARCHER Dr Murray is full of baloney. He’s not a scientist. He’s just a supplement salesman. If you talk to any scientist, they’ll tell you that most of us make appropriate amounts of serotonin all the time.

DR NANCY SNYDERMAN (VO) And another researcher, Dr Richard Wurtman, an expert in tryptophan and similar chemicals at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, disputes Michael Murray’s claim that 5-HTP is “safe and natural.”

RICHARD WURTMAN, MD,
CLINICAL RESEARCHER It may or may not be safe, but it is certainly not natural. You don’t naturally have 5-HTP in your bloodstream. It’s true that certain parts of your brain make it, but the same cells that make it immediately destroy it, convert it to something else. So no, it’s not naturally present in the blood, and it’s not naturally delivered all over the body the way it is when you take a pill of it.

DR NANCY SNYDERMAN (VO) Dr Murray’s book is filled with footnotes on 5-HTP studies, but the merit of this research often leaves American investigators unimpressed. Drugs in Europe don’t have to pass the same proof of effectiveness tests that they do here in the US. (on camera) So is 5-HTP a miracle drug or just snake oil for what you think ails you? Is Michael Murray a visionary or just a supplement salesman? The fight over supplements is one that mainstream medicine and complementary practitioners have been fighting for years, and 5-HTP is just the next skirmish in that battle for the hearts, minds, health, even the pocketbooks of the American public.

DR MICHAEL MURRAY Many doctors have been told that natural medicines, alternative medicines, they don’t work. Don’t investigate them. Stay away from them. But now through information and their own experiences as well the experiences of their patients, they know that’s not true.

MEHMET OZ, MD, HEART SURGEON I learn from almost all my patients. And I think once you stop learning from your patients, as a physician, you’re washed up.

DR NANCY SNYDERMAN (VO) Dr Mehmet Oz of Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York is one of the country’s top heart surgeons. Despite the fact that he practices some of the highest-tech medicine in the world, he prescribes supplements, too, like St. John’s Wort or 5-HTP for depression. He says too many physicians close their minds to new ideas.

DR MEHMET OZ The whole beauty of medicine that you and I practice is that it’s pretty well established what’s normal and not. And like a large company, sometimes it’s hard to move one direction or another, even if the evidence is pretty strong that there are beneficial aspects of a new therapy. In many ways, these new ideas come to us driven by patients who are demanding that we at least look with an open mind toward topics that they think make sense to them.

DR NANCY SNYDERMAN (on camera) The battle over supplements is not only medical, it’s political as well. In 1994, Utah senator Orrin Hatch pushed through legislation exempting natural supplements from the same FDA oversight that drugs face. That means there is no governmental regulation over the manufacture of supplements or even the promotions that they work.

PETER JENNINGS, ABC NEWS The FDA has called for a popular dietary supplement to be taken off the market.

DR NANCY SNYDERMAN (VO) It was a manufacturing problem that led the United States government to ban the popular sleep supplement L-tryptophan in 1990 after contaminated pills led to a rare muscle disease that sickened thousands and killed more than 30 Americans.

DR RICHARD WURTMAN Nothing is required about safety until something goes wrong.

DR MICHAEL MURRAY That is a problem. We have to rely on the integrity and on the manufacturing procedures of the companies we are buying product from. With 5-HTP, I know the raw material manufacturers, and I know that they do adhere to good quality control. For good reason, because of the tryptophan problem, they want to be assured that they’re not going to repeat that catastrophe.

DR NANCY SNYDERMAN (VO) Since nutritional supplements are naturally occurring compounds that cannot be easily patented, there is little incentive for drug companies to do extensive and expensive studies to prove safety and effectiveness. And without the studies, many mainstream physicians will not embrace them.

DR RICHARD WURTMAN 5-HTP is a drug. It’s not something present normally in the bloodstream. When it’s taken, it has major effects on the brain — not only, by the way, on brain serotonin. If you give 5-HTP to an experimental animal, it also releases dopamine, norepinephrine, lots of other stuff. It doesn’t belong in the health food stores.

DR MEHMET OZ Part of the problem with the complementary medicine is that the material is presented us to in the form of new books written by authors, and your immediate response is “It’s not reviewed by a group of my peers.” But the unfortunate reality is many times that’s the only way to get these novel ideas into the mainstream.

DR NANCY SNYDERMAN (VO) All Linda knows is that she’s sleeping and has lost nine pounds as a bonus.

LINDA RENNER Anything that can do two wonderful things for me at the same time, I’m just very thrilled.

DR NANCY SNYDERMAN (VO) And Alicia has lost 25 pounds and dropped a dress size, something even her photographer notices when she shows up for a shoot.

ALICIA UYEDA Every time I walk in the door, they’re like, “Wow, I can’t believe you’ve really dropped your size.” You know, none of the clothes they picked out for me fit anymore.

SAM DONALDSON In response to some of the criticism, Dr Murray pointed out to us that he has no financial interest in the sale of 5-HTP. People with serious illnesses should consult their doctor before taking 5-HTP. And of course, if you’re thinking of beginning any supplement regimen, you should first ask your doctor about it.