5-HTP

5-HTP
THE NATURAL WAY TO OVERCOME
DEPRESSION, OBESITY, AND INSOMNIA
Michael Murray, ND
New York: Bantam Books, 1998
288 pages, hardback, $23.95
ISBN 0-553-10784-4

5-HTP
NATURE'S SEROTONIN SOLUTION
Ray Sahelian, MD
Garden City Park, NY: Avery Publishing Group, 1998
210 pages, paperback, $6.95
ISBN 0-89529-903-8

Reviewed by Lynne Lamberg

These books are essentially "advertorials" for 5-HTP, a food supplement sold in health food, drug, and grocery stores. The authors assert 5-HTP boosts levels of serotonin, a chemical messenger in the brain that plays a key role in regulating mood, sleep, and appetite.

Murray, a naturopathic doctor, identified on the book jacket as "one of the world's leading authorities on natural medicine," contends that 5- HTP, short for 5-hydroxytryptophan, can alleviate "plunging moods, health-threatening food cravings, ruined sleep, skull-cracking headaches, overwhelming body pain, and just plain exhaustion."

These symptoms, Murray says, are the consequences of a serotonin deficiency syndrome, "one of the most widespread and debilitating medical problems of our time."

Sahelian, whose prose is less gassy, is no less ardent. A family physician, and author of Melatonin: Nature's Sleeping Pill, Sahelian tried 5-HTP in various doses himself, claiming it improved his sleep, boosted his mood, made him calmer, and caused him to lose three pounds "in a short period of time."

I was surprised to find no assertions that the 5-HTP grew hair or made wrinkles disappear.

Scientific evidence to back the authors' claims is scanty. It is true that medications that boost serotonin such as Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxil, ease depression. Whether 5-HTP offers the same benefit, and others alleged here, has not been shown. The scientific publications listed as references in these books include few that specifically address the books' prime assertion.

My online search in the MEDLINE database at the National Library of Medicine turned up only eight articles pertaining to 5-HTP and sleep in humans in the past five years, one suggesting it caused sleeplessness instead of improving it. None of the others supported extravagant claims.

More worrisome is the finding by Mayo Clinic researchers that off-the-shelf bottles of six different brands of 5-HTP contained low levels of a potentially harmful contaminant. Writing in the Sept. 1, 1998 issue of Nature Medicine, the researchers suggested the contaminant posed a risk for the development of eosinophilia myalgia syndrome, a painful, persistent, and sometimes fatal disease. This is the same disorder associated with a contaminated batch of a similar supplement, L-Tryptophan, prompting its removal from the market in 1989.

It's only human to want a quick fix for what ails us. Anyone seeking it through 5-HTP and other dietary supplements should know that claims for their benefits typically are exaggerated and unproved. So-called "natural" substances are not risk-free. A glitch in federal law permits marketing of such substances without the demonstration of safety and efficacy required for both prescription and non-prescription medications.

Take these books with a hefty dose of skepticism.