Give me dopamine, or give me death.

October 24, 2007 7:51 PM

What's a good source of GABA tablet supplements?

I've heard GABA is an excellent supplement for people who have difficulty enjoying life, ie, depressoids. I'd like to try it. I don't see it at the health food store here in Canada. Can you suggest a good place to buy it online? A search of online supplement dealers simply makes me want to have a bath and purify myself, as they seem more than a tad slimy, but maybe there's something decent out there.

posted by Listener to health & fitness (11 comments total)

A labmate and I were discussing this; we're not convinced that GABA gets absorbed orally.

We got a 50g bottle from Sigma Aldrich for around $14. Probably less accessible than mail-ordering it from the 'states/on-line supplement stores.
posted by porpoise at 8:12 PM on October 24, 2007

Oh, whoops - yes indeed, it's likely orally absorbable via a proton exchange pump.
posted by porpoise at 8:13 PM on October 24, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

Thank you, 517 and porpoise. GABA was recommended as a lifesafer by someone in the US who beat alcoholism. Alcohol is not an option for me. Oral GABA worked for him. I want to try that; however, he was in the US, so I want a source that works for Canada. Normaloid drugs tend not to work for me, in my experience, but thanks for your concern.
posted by Listener at 8:30 PM on October 24, 2007

My mother, a woman so damaged and generally odd that I wouldn't expect something that worked for her to work for anyone else, has recently gone on clonipin which I always thought was just another addictive benzodiazepine but as such should produce the same effect as GABA. It is a depressant, of course, but according to my mad mother is the only benzodiazepine to have an anti-depressant (mood) effect. I don't know much about these things and am somewhat skeptical but she seems happy. You might get a prescription and give it a go.
posted by Grod at 9:58 PM on October 24, 2007

This less slimy site is selling direct to Canadians. The company does appear to have a proper brick-and-mortar operation in Winnipeg.

(I personally make online orders through Vitacost. They seem happy to ship to Canada, but I don't have any experience of getting supplements through the oddnesses of customs, border inspections, etc., of course. Maybe others can comment.)
posted by gimonca at 9:58 PM on October 24, 2007

I suggest trying a store that sells Source Naturals and asking for them to special order you some Gaba Calm, the natural foods store i work for does this...and i believe Whole Foods carries Source Naturals, but i am not positive. Depending on how close to the border you are, you can easily bring it back over with you, i did for over a year.

The Source Naturals stuff is quite nice, and works wonders (at least for anxiety).
posted by furnace.heart at 10:23 PM on October 24, 2007

Listener - I'm not sure that that is how it works.

GABA is a neurotransmitter; it's something that cells use as a messenger. It'a continuously being made and moved into vessicles (small balloons of fat inside cells) in neurons (and some other cells). Neurons will release these vessicles in a very tightly controlled manner. The amount of GABA in you is not a limiting factor. GABA deficiency is only a consideration for those with mutations in their GABA-synthetase genes.

Eating GABA, I don't think, is going to do what you think it might do. I've mostly heard of GABA as a dietary supplement for body building but I've never heard of a plausible explaination of why it might help.

I really suggest exercise over "dietary supplements." I'm a diagnosed bipolar type II and I'm keeping on going with daily exercise and keeping really good people around me.

517 - yeah, but there are inhibitory neurons that inhibit inhibitory neurons and that lets excitatory neurons fire. That's partially why a little bit of alcohol gets people a little giggly/uninhibited.
posted by porpoise at 10:58 PM on October 24, 2007

Ingested GABA gets metabolized quickly; it doesn't make it into your central nervous system.

Also, don't eat something you ordered from Sigma-Aldrich. It may be very pure USP reagent grade, but the impurities that are present have not been tested for food safety.
posted by ikkyu2 at 9:51 AM on October 25, 2007

Alcohol hits the same receptors in the brain as GABA does, so it isn't surprising it would help an alcoholic to not drink. Taking an addictive substance as a "health supplement" is a really bad idea. Despite all the wild claims you've heard about SSRIs, they are really a better and more effective treatment for depression.

GABA is taken by bodybuilders because some of them believe it increases production of HGH. I seriously doubt it does, but a lot of bodybuilders seem willing to ingest just about anything to get a little bigger.

Yes, don't ingest anything from Sigma-Aldrich. But I'd wager the purity of their products is far, far above what you'd likely get "on the street," which hasn't been tested for food safety, either.
posted by Thoughtcrime at 2:08 PM on October 25, 2007

> Ingested GABA gets metabolized quickly

What if you stick it under your tongue? I found when I used melatonin, I used about 1/10th of a capsule that way and it had a very strong effect. As I've mentioned before, ikkyu, I'm extremely sensitive to small bits of various things. And I don't do nut drugs, so I wish people would leave them out of this thread I'm not asking about that, and I am not clinically depressed or anything like that. Depressoid is not a clinical term. It's a term I made up to capture various things such as in this case moderate anhedonia.

I think the way this GABA must purport to work in this case, given what people have said, is that it may assist in reducing the anxiety related to what I'll call addictive personality, which I hope is not a clinical term either, because I didn't come here for medical advice. This tension gets in the way of pleasure. Being able to relax more (without taking downers) may be what is needed to allow better contact with the pleasures of life. I see some similarities between me and the guy I had spoken to, although alcohol isn't the same issue for me it was for him.
posted by Listener at 7:09 PM on October 25, 2007

GABA is the bomb. It made a tremendous difference.
posted by Listener at 7:02 PM on February 18, 2008