My general and total lack of motivation over the past year or so led me to try taking the amino acid L-Tyrosine.
What’s that?
It is a precursor to dopamine. Dopamine is generally considered to not only be a feel good neurotransmitter (dopamine is released when someone gets high, eats sugar, gets a facebook notification, drinks diet coke, takes cocaine, etc.) but it’s also considered to be the motivation neurotransmitter.
(This is me wishing I had started posting here earlier because I did tons of research on dopamine and tyrosine months ago. My apologies.)
Because I was lacking motivation, I thought I’d give it a try. I took 500mg/day off and on for a while but it really didn’t do anything for me…
…until recently.
You see when I started taking Pantethine for adrenal burnout and high cholesterol just a few days ago I started to feel much better. But then I quickly started to feel overstimulated and too motivated. It wasn’t the calm motivation that we all want. I was rather amped up. It wasn’t good. What’s worse is that yesterday at about 4pm I had a huge crash after feeling overstimulated all morning. It was weird…
My initial thought was that it was the pantethine, but since pantethine has made a more profound affect on my mood and motivation, not to mention its potential benefits for other issues I have, than anything else, I didn’t want to give it up just yet.
To the interwebs I went to search for more info on pantethine side effects and what I could do to mitigate them in the hopes of not having to give it up. I found a random forum post in which a woman complained of being over stimulated on pantethine. She was also on a bunch of other supplements and another commenter suggested she go off the tyrosine and other supplements supporting dopamine. Another poster chimed in that too much dopamine gave him similar symptoms.
That and other research led me to believe that it’s either too much dopamine or too much adrenaline (also produced by the adrenal glands and potentially stimulated by pantethine). So, today I’m testing the dopamine/tyrosine theory.
It seems to be working because I’m feeling better than average and not nearly as amped up as yesterday! The only thing I changed was that I didn’t take any tyrosine this morning.
Why did this happen?
My guess is having more cortisol from the pantethine upregulated the conversion of tyrosine to dopamine. Maybe I won’t need any more dopamine as my cortisol improves.
Great news as I’m already taking way too many supplements!