Tuesday, August 28, 2012

HERE'S a thyroid-adrenal connection for you....

It's my favorite non-essential amino acid.  It's one of the two building-blocks of thyroid hormones.  It's an important precursor to catecholamines too, i find.  It's tyrosine.

Tyrosine is created in the body from phenylalanine, with iron as a part of the catalysis, and oxygen.  If something is missing -- voila, hypothyroidism and STRESS in capital letters.  It makes me want to take the "iron-overload" alarmists by the throat and shake.  HARD.

I've been supplementing with tyrosine for months now, and i'm very pleased with how it has improved my native thyroid production.  I had no idea it was important in stress-management, too, through its role in norepinephrine and dopamine production; it alleviates depletion of brain catecholamines when administered to animals (including humans) who are subsequently exposed to stresses of various kinds.

Of course, i like best those trials which are decently designed and controlled, and use PEOPLE, who (for the most part) differ from mice.  ;-)  In one, the subjects were kept up all day and night, and given some mood and performance tests, in which tyrosine beat placebo for both kinds of "decline."  In another, tyrosine beat placebo again when tried on cadets undergoing combat training, and lowered blood-pressure as well.  Yet another showed that tyrosine buffered subjects from the mood and memory decreases in people stressed with cold exposure.

Hmmmm, cold exposure....  Maybe if i up my tyrosine supplementation, i can actually try (and perhaps benefit from) CT?

Well, CT or no CT, i DO plan to increase my daily dose.  Who knows what all will improve -- i'll keep you posted.

4 comments:

  1. How much tyrosine are you currently taking, and what are you increasing it up to?

    ReplyDelete
  2. i've been taking one 500mg capsule every morning, and today i took a second one in the early afternoon.

    ReplyDelete
  3. interesting, and I am glad that you have found something that works for you, but why wouldn't just eating foods with tyrosine be just as helpful? I guess I have never understood amino acid supplementation.

    ReplyDelete
  4. the tricky bit is, when you eat a food with lots of different amino acids in it, they compete for absorption. if you take a single AA in a supplement, you do it before you eat anything else and you can count on it being absorbed. in the morning i take tyrosine before i take carnitine, even.

    in addition, both of these AAs are converted in the body from others. if you don't convert well, or if you're missing or short on the enzyme, you can't count on getting as much as you need.

    ReplyDelete