Posted by Bob P (129.65.46.87) on January 21, 2000 at 10:37:37:
I noticed in your post down the board that you said natural melatonin drives 5-HT production. The link below states what I had read before, ie. Melatonin is produced "from" 5-HT. You're taking melatonin sups to regulate your 5-HT and I'm taking 5-HTP to boost my melatonin. I'm curious about your reasoning on melatonin sups?
I'm not trying to one up you. I'm still real confused about the whole 5-HT thing. It would seem to me that if you load 5-HT, it would be more likely to activate the 5-HT1D recetors and constrict the blood vessels. Doc Greg says loading 5-HT may cause a HA because it is not just 5-HT1D specific. Nowhere have I read that elevated 5-HT levels cause HA. Perhaps a CHers 5-HT levels are elevated (as Greg, Goads and drummer point out) because something is haywire in us that inhibits the release of 5-HT from the plateletts (hence the elevated 5-HT platelette levels). Like daming the stream. The stuff keeps building up in the plateletts because the plateletts lack some trigger mechanism telling them to release it.
I'm still of the belief that our blood vessels dialate because 5-HT has not been release in the neural snyapses, not because we have too much 5-HT in our systems. The central nervous system (& hypothalamus) sense the dialation of the blood vessels and instruct the systems to release 5-HT to re-constrict them to the correct size (at least this is how it supposed to work). I think the hypo is faulty for some reason and fails to detect this dialation and therefore fails to tell the CNS to fire some 5-HT to control the situation.
Just throwing this out for comment in the hopes that one day I'll get my head on straight (in more ways than one).
LYg
Bob P