Supplement Facts Serving Size: 1 Capsule
Ingredients	Amount	%DV
5-Hydroxytryptophan (from Griffonia simplicifolia) (seeds)	50 mg	†
Other Ingredients: Rice Powder, Gelatin, Silica, Magnesium Stearate.
NO Yeast, Wheat, Corn, Milk, Egg, Soy, Glutens, Artificial Colors or Flavors, Added Sugar, Starch or Preservatives. †: Daily value not established.

More on 5HTP:

What is 5-HTP?

5-Hydroxytryptophan (5-HTP) is an amino acid that is the intermediate step between tryptophan and the important brain chemical serotonin. There is an overwhelming amount of evidence that suggests that low serotonin levels are a common consequence of modern living. Daily stress and poor diet habits have lead many people living in this stress-filled era to have much lower levels of serotonin within the brain. As a result, many people are overweight, have many highs and lows on a daily basis and experience bouts of depression. They also get frequent headaches, and have vague muscle aches and pain on a weekly or daily basis. All of these maladies are correctable by raising brain serotonin levels.

Although 5-HTP may be relatively new to the United States health food industry, it has been available through pharmacies for several years and has been intensely researched for the past 35 years. It has also been available in several European countries as a medicine since the 1970s.

There are many advantages of 5-HTP over L-tryptophan. First of all, because it is one step closer to serotonin, so 5-HTP is more effective than L-tryptophan can be. 5-HTP is also inherently safer as studies have shown. Although L-tryptophan is safe if properly prepared and free of the contaminants linked to severe allergic reaction known as eosinophilia myalgia syndrome (EMS), L-tryptophan is still produced with the help of bacterial fermentation (a situation that lends itself to contamination). In contrast, 5-HTP is isolated from a natural source - a seed from an African plant (Griffonia simplicifolia).

Evidence that this natural source of 5-HTP does not cause EMS is provided by researchers who have been using 5-HTP for over 25 years. They state that "EMS has never appeared in the patients of ours who received only uncontaminated L-tryptophan or 5-hydroxtryptophan (5-HTP)"(1). Furthermore, researchers at the NIH studying the effects 5-HTP for various metabolic conditions have also not observed a single case of EMS nor has a case of elevated eosinophils been attributed to 5-HTP in these studies.

As far back as 1975, researchers demonstrated that administering 5-HTP to rats that were bred to overeat and be obese resulted in significant reduction in food intake, it turns out that these rats have decreased activity of the enzyme that converts tryptophan to 5-HTP and subsequently to serotonin. In other words, these rats are fat as a result of a genetically determined low level of activity of the enzyme that starts the manufacture of serotonin from tryptophan. As a result, these rats never get the message to stop eating until they have consumed far greater amounts of food than normal rats.

There is much circumstantial evidence that many humans are genetically predisposed to obesity. This predisposition may involve the same mechanism as that observed in rats genetically predisposed to obesity. In other words, many people may be predisposed to being overweight because they have a decreased conversion of tryptophan to 5-HTP and, as a result, decreased serotonin levels. By providing preformed 5-HTP, this genetic defect is bypassed and more serotonin is manufactured. 5-HTP literally turns off hunger.

The early animal studies that used 5-HTP as a weight loss aid have been followed by a series of three human clinical studies of overweight women, conducted at the University of Rome. The first study showed that 5-HTP was able to reduce caloric intake and promote weight loss despite the fact that the women made no conscious effort to lose weight. The average amount of weight loss during the five-week period of 5-HTP supplementation was a little more than 3 pounds.

The second study sought to determine whether 5-HTP helped overweight individuals adhere to dietary recommendations. The twelve-week study was divided into two six-week periods. For the first six weeks, there were no dietary recommendations; for the second six weeks the women were placed on a 1,200-calorie diet. The study found that the women who took the placebo lost 2.28 pounds, while the women who took the 5-HTP lost 10.34 pounds. As in the previous study, 5-HTP appeared to promote weight loss by promoting satiety-the feeling of satisfaction-leading to fewer calories being consumed at meals. Every woman who took the 5-HTP reported early satiety.

In the third study involving 5-HTP, for the first six weeks there were no dietary restrictions, and for the second six weeks the women were placed on a 1,200-calorie-per-day diet. The results from this study were even more impressive than the previous studies for several reasons. The group that received the 5-HTP had lost an average of 4.39 pounds at six weeks and an average of 11.63 pounds at 12 weeks. In comparison, the placebo group had lost an average of only 0.62 pounds at six weeks and 1.87 pounds at twelve weeks. The lack of weight loss during the second six-week period in the placebo group obviously reflects the fact that the women had difficulty adhering to the diet.

5-HTP does not disrupt the normal process of serotonin release, reabsorbtion, and elimination from the body. 5-HTP is not a synthetic drug; it is an amino acid produced naturally by your body's metabolism and therefore can be higher in some people and lower in others.

5-HTP may prove to be better than melatonin. Several clinical studies have shown 5-HTP to produce good results in promoting and maintaining sleep in normal subjects as well as those experiencing insomnia. One of the key benefits with 5-HTP in the treatment of insomnia is its ability to increase sleep quality.

To aid in mild to moderate depression, We recommend using 5-HTP along with St. John's wort. Be sure to use the St. John's wort extract standardized for 0.3% hypericin. The dosage for this extract is typically 300 mg three times per day. When using it in combination with 5-HTP we recommend 50-100 mg of 5-HTP and 150-300 mg of St. John's wort extract three times daily. A popular combination can be found in Mood Aid by Nature's Way.

There is excellent documentation that 5-HTP is an effective antidepressant agent. 5-HTP often produces very good results in patients who are unresponsive to standard antidepressant drugs. One of the more impressive studies involved 99 patients described as suffering from "therapy resistant" depression. These patients had not responded to any previous therapy including all available antidepressant drugs as well as electro convulsive therapy. These therapy resistant patients received 5-HTP at dosages averaging 200 mg daily but ranging from 50 to 600 mg per day. Complete recovery was seen in 43 of the 99 patients and significant improvement was noted in 8 more. Such significant improvement in patients suffering from long-standing, unresponsive depression is quite impressive prompting the author of another study to state "5-HTP merits a place in the front of the ranks of the antidepressants instead of being used as a last resort.

The real advantage of 5-HTP in this study was the low rate of side effect. Here is how the physicians described the differences among the two groups:

"Whereas the two treatment groups did not differ significantly in the number of patients sustaining adverse events, the interaction between the degree of severity and the type of medication was highly significant: fluvoxamine predominantly produced moderate to severe, oxitriptan [5-HTP] primarily mild forms of adverse effects."

The most common side effects with 5-HTP were nausea, heartburn, and gastrointestinal problems (flatulence, feelings of fullness, and rumbling sensations). These side effects were rated as being very mild to mild. In contrast, most of the side effects experienced in the fluvoxamine group were of moderate to severe intensity.