10 Years on and the government is still depriving us of natures most powerful tranquillizer and antidepressant

It was in autumn 1989 that governments across the world like the American Food and Drug Administration recalled the amino acid food supplement L-Tryptophan claiming that it caused an obscure and fatal flu-like condition known as Eosinophilia Myalgia Syndrome or EMS. Later on March 22, 1990 this matured into an all-out ban on its public sale as a food supplement.

Subsequent analytical work however conducted into EMS at the Centres for Disease Control and the Mayo Clinic effectively laid concerns to rest about L-tryptophan after they traced the autumn outbreak to by-products contaminating batches of the amino acid manufactured by a Japanese company Showa Denko. The contaminant identified as 1,1 ethylidenebis-tryptophan or EBT first appeared when at the end of 1988 their tryptophan manufacturing process was altered by using genetically engineered bacteria to increase yield. But astonishingly all of this has not convinced the FDA to allow L-tryptophan back on the market who now claim that tryptophan itself is a dangerous substance. This has prompted researchers to consider there are other forces at work maintaining the ironclad ban on this otherwise harmless amino acid that has been present in the food chain in bananas and turkey for millions of years.

That the FDA have pounced on Tryptophan because one batch became contaminated, critics say is part of a pro-pharmaceutical agenda driven to replace this cheap, powerful and safe natural substance with expensive, prescription-only drugs like Prozac with serious side effects.1 For decades Tryptophan had been safely and cheaply used by millions of Americans and Europeans to treat depression and other ailments and yet curiously within just a few days of its ban on March 26, 1990 as if by serendipity, Newsweek announced the arrival of what can only be described as its replacement - a whole new class of antidepressant drugs headed by the controversial Prozac.2

Millions have been forced elsewhere for solutions to control pain, depression, anxiety, PMS and to induce natural sleep

Tryptophan's potent antidepressant, analgesic and tranquillizing effects are due to its ability to raise brain levels of the "sunshine chemical" serotonin which also happens to be the modus operandi of the Prozac class of drugs. But after the shock of the tryptophan ban this connection went unnoticed by both the media and the public. According to Dr Dean Wolfe Maunders of the Cognitive Enhancement Research Institute "to those who understand the effective properties of L-Tryptophan and Prozac, the concurrence seems unbelievably coincidental" 2

The Prozac class of antidepressants including Paxil and Zoloft are known as Specific Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRI's) which means that they artificially prolong the life of struggling levels of serotonin at nerve endings in the brain. In contrast the amino-acid nutrient L-tryptophan supplies the body what it is missing to restore depleted serotonin levels back to normal. For this reason rather than going against the grain and trying to stretch a deficient brain, tryptophan promotes the synthesis of new serotonin which because it is cheaper than drugs and free of their side effects neuroscientists agree is a more effective strategy to treat depression and related conditions. Its more than a sour twist of fate then that because of the Tryptophan ban, millions have been forced elsewhere for solutions to control pain, depression, anxiety, PMS and to induce natural sleep because it inevitably means relying on highly addictive, expensive and sometimes dangerous drugs like Valium, Codeine and the Prozac range which can only be acquired through a doctor. The family of SSRI's including Prozac are now well known to cause a disturbing loss of sexual desire, nausea and vomiting in as much as 30 to 40% of users and in some cases can precipitate suicidal depression which has been the cause of much media attention in recent years.

"By publicly banning L-Tryptophan…the naked duplicity of FDA L-Tryptophan policy is revealed

The public ban on L-tryptophan might have seemed like a fortunate gap in the market for the pharmaceutical firms if it wasn't for some controversial facts of its continued use under certain exemptions in the USA and Western Europe.

Firstly despite preventing popular access to this powerful serotonin producer and placing it on import alert, the American FDA and British Medicines Control Agency (MCA) still surreptitiously allow some manufacturers to import Japanese L-Tryptophan to be sold on as tablets to compounding pharmacists nationwide. Except now it can only be purchased on prescription at more than 5 times the original retail cost! Many like Dr Maunders believe this to be a shameless double standard.

"By publicly banning L-Tryptophan from its dietary supplement status and price, while allowing L-Tryptophan to be sold as a high-priced prescription drug, the naked duplicity of FDA L-Tryptophan policy is revealed" He says. 2

Others speculate that the knee-jerk ban was a move to deliberately displace competition against the SRRI's. Admittedly the FDA Dietary Supplement taskforce states in their report on developing nutritional supplement policy that "The Task Force considered various issues in its deliberations, including... what steps are necessary to ensure that the existence of dietary supplements on the market does not act as a disincentive for drug development" 2

What's more at the Human Resources and Intergovernmental Relations Sub-committee hearing in July 18 1991 the FDA stated that its goal is "to develop a long term enforcement strategy for the regulation of amino acids and vitamin and mineral supplements". Moreover commissioner Kessler has emphasized that the FDA will not tolerate unsubstantiated drug claims for foods including amino acids and has urged doctors to stop recommending them to patients.3 To this end the FDA has not only been criticized for dereliction of duty to protect the public from corporate interests but has been condemned for colluding to assist them for the sake of encouraging innovation.

Secondly notwithstanding the public ban on L-tryptophan the FDA has selectively protected certain pharmaceutical interests by sanctioning its use in humans in hospital settings in the form of intravenous solutions, enteral products and more alarmingly even in baby formulas! The situation is the same in the UK proving that officials are well aware of L-tryptophan's role in growth and the prevention of malnutrition despite having black-brushed its safety for human use. This raises an important question that if it is safe enough for little children what is motivating the continued restriction for adults? The MCA and Food Standards Agency here in the U.K. are silent on this except to say that they now believe tryptophan only to be toxic at high doses hence the restriction to controlled amounts in infant formula.

Finally if all that wasn't enough there actually exists a U.S. government patent to use L-tryptophan to treat and cure EMS - the very same "deadly flu-like condition" which was the rationale for its removal from the market! This surely extricates the amino acid from blame and points to private interests motivating L-tryptophan's removal from the high street. Consequently the FDA have been heavily criticized for its propaganda peddling at their hearing on dietary supplements which took place at the National Institute of Health on August 29th 1990 in which "the FDA was shamelessly parading EMS victims up to the microphone for propaganda purposes" This comes as some shock when it is understood that at this time the FDA was well aware of the patented, peer reviewed nutritional protocol to treat EMS cases with the supposed poison itself4 and forces us to consider why a deadlock ban should continue unreviewed and uninvestigated in the face of so much contradictory evidence.

L-tryptophan was used by millions of Americans and Europeans for 30 years without a single case of EMS ever being reported.. According to the Chief Medical Officer of the Department of Health in the U.K. by November 1989 there had been not one single case of EMS identified. Similarly EMS was virtually unknown in the U.S. before 1989 which strongly suggests contamination and not the nutrient itself was responsible.5 All this is enough evidence for many that one poisoned Japanese batch has been used to sour its otherwise spotless reputation of L-tryptophan permanently to make way for rival drugs. Well whether intentional or unintentional by restricting the human use of L-tryptophan governmental action has inadvertently awarded the pharmaceutical industry countless billions of dollars in profits and ensured billions of unnecessary NHS pounds is misspent on inferior drugs.

Although L-tryptophan has been demoted to prescription only sales in the UK you may have a hard time persuading your GP to prescribe it over the marketing dazzle of the SSRI's after such a successful government-lead slur campaign. For now tryptophan fans may have to make do with its cousin 5-hydroxytryptophan (5HTP) available in the high street which is ordinarily made from tryptophan in the body and is a direct precursor to serotonin. Unfortunately it is much more expensive than tryptophan and despite being 10 times more effective for bolstering serotonin levels has been implicated in causing serious health problems. This is related to doubts that it may be converted into serotonin outside the brain which has the potential to cause heart spasms or cardiac arrest. It is commonly supplied in 50mg capsules and the recommended dosage is 1 capsule per day which should be supervised by a physician who can perform a simple urine test for serotonin metabolites to watch for potential problems.5

The L-Tryptophan fiasco highlights a staggering double standard where a dietary supplement judged now to be safe can remain permanently discredited as a health hazard, made publicly unavailable to people and yet beyond the public spotlight be fed to babies and smuggled into pharmacies under government protection for privileged prescription-only access.

References
1. The Return of Tryptophan Excerpted from Spectrum magazine. http://www.garynull.com/Documents/spectrum/return_of_tryptophan.htm
2. The FDA Ban of L-Tryptophan: Politics, Profits and Prozac by Dean Wolfe Manders, PhD
3. FDA and the Ongoing Ban on Tryptophan at Smart Basics Intelliscope. http://www.ehot.com/smartbasics/home.html
4. Life Extension foundation addendum to FDA Ban of L-Tryptophan: Politics, Profits and Prozac by Dean Wolfe Manders, PhD
5.The Tryptophan Story, Colorado Future science. http://www.webcom.com/cfsc/welcome.html
6. Blumenthal JA, Babyak MA, Moore KA, Craighead WE, Herman S, Khatri P, Waugh R, Napolitano MA, Forman LM, Appelbaum M, Doraiswamy PM, Krishnan KR. Effects of exercise training on older patients with major depression. Arch Intern Med 1999 Oct 25;159(19):2349-56
7. Babyak M, Blumenthal JA, Herman S, Khatri P, Doraiswamy M, Moore K, Craighead WE, Baldewicz TT, Krishnan KR. Exercise treatment for major depression: maintenance of therapeutic benefit at 10 months. Psychosom Med 2000 Sep-Oct;62(5):633-8

Other ways to fight depression:

If you cant find tryptophan you can quite easily get your kicks from a range of whole foods rich in this amino acid like spirulina seaweed, cottage cheese, chicken, turkey, peanuts and milk. An open faced turkey sandwich for instance rich in tryptophan can be a powerful soporific snack at bedtime. To maximize the anti-anxiety and antidepressant effect of tryptophan-rich foods during the daytime it is recommended that they be accompanied by a little carbohydrate like juice or crackers. This encourages insulin release from the pancreas which removes larger amino acids from the bloodstream and prevents them competing for uptake into the brain. In this way tryptophan doesn't have to fight to get converted to serotonin allowing its relaxing, mood brightening "brain massage" to be felt in under 30 minutes.

If you don't feel like binging on comfort-foods then you might consider exercise. Recent placebo controlled studies at Duke University Medical Centre in the U.S. show that over 16 weeks over 150 subjects assigned to either SSRI therapy, exercise or both do just as well on exercise as they do on drugs. What's more in a follow up study six months later subjects exercising were significantly less likely to relapse. Certainly food for thought!