Insomniac and Asthmatic - Why can't I take Tryptophan?

March 5, 2018 9:01 PM

I see the warnings everywhere, I googled the studies, but I still don't understand what happens that makes these herbs contraindicated with asthma.

I have had severe insomnia for a year. NOTHING works. I just started L-Tryptophan and I sleep like a baby, but, it turns out because I have asthma, I'm not supposed to take it. I've googled everything I can and there is no layman's explanation of why. I found several studies, but it's like reading Klingon. Things get uptaken and downtaken and cross regulated. Can anyone explain to me in simple terms what Tryptophan does to asthma? Does it make it worse? If so, how?

posted by generic230 to Health & Fitness (3 answers total)

Best answer: I'm a biochemist, but not a doctor. Tryptophan is just an amino acid (not a herb), part of the makeup of most proteins. It's super common and you eat tons of it in a Western diet - a therapeutic capsule with like a gram of tryptophan is about how much you'd get from eating a really big omelette. In your body, it's used to make more muscle, and as the building block for a lot of biologically useful chemicals - one of them, melatonin, is presumably where the sleepy effects come from, and also serotonin. There's apparently some correlation between serotonin levels and asthma symptoms, but to me it doesn't look well-understood. Besides that, the levels of these chemicals are regulated in various ways - it's not automatic that if you provide x amount of tryptophan you'll always produce y amount of serotonin in response.

If you're not experiencing any worsening of your asthma when you take tryptophan I wouldn't worry about it, particularly if you already eat a lot of meat and don't notice that doing anything to your symptoms. If you're really worried about it, just take melatonin instead of tryptophan, which should more or less replicate the effects you're seeing without the possibility of extra serotonin being made.
posted by nicolas léonard sadi carnot at 4:12 AM on March 6, 2018 [1 favorite]

Anecdata: I've had asthma my entire life. I've also taken tryptophan and melatonin without any issues whatsoever. I'd never heard that either could be problematic.
posted by The Almighty Mommy Goddess at 8:19 PM on March 7, 2018

Where did you hear your not supposed to take L-Tryptophan with asthma?

That makes no sense since Tryptophan is an ESSENTIAL amino acid. You have to have it or youll have much worse problems than asthma.
posted by Takeyourtime at 10:18 AM on April 11, 2018