Comment by duncancarroll
7 days ago
For what it's worth, I've had some success treating my Long Covid symptoms with a specific form of Tryptophan found in Hydrolyzed Whey Protein (a standard bodybuilding protein powder.) You can get it OTC from Amazon [1]. My symptoms are slightly different from yours but sound close enough.
A recent study showed that persistent viral infection can block normal tryptophan receptors [2] which causes a diminished ability to synthesize serotonin, which it turns out is pretty essential for a lot of things including alertness & sleep, etc etc.
The tryptophan found in hydrolyzed whey binds to a different receptor than normal dietary tryptophan, thereby allowing your body to reuptake it and produce serotonin as usual. (This is all in the study.)
A word of warning: If you do this, take only a very small amount to start, maybe a quarter serving, because even though the body rate-limits serotonin production your tolerance will likely be extremely low from not having much for years. I didn't know this and I took a couple servings per day (after all, it's just protein powder right?) but by day two I was hypomanic which was unpleasant and it took about a week to return to normal. So start with maybe a quarter serving, wait a few days, and repeat until your serotonin normalizes.
Also DON'T TAKE THIS if you're on any medication that interacts with serotonin such as an antidepressant, SSRI, MAOI, or what-have-you. I am not a doctor and this is not medical advice, just something that helped me after many years of difficulty.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002QZORGK [2] https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(23)01034-6
I just read through the study. I corroborate your summary.
> The tryptophan found in hydrolyzed whey binds to a different receptor than normal dietary tryptophan, thereby allowing your body to reuptake it and produce serotonin as usual. (This is all in the study.)
Took me a bit to find the quote.
> If tryptophan uptake was abrogated by poly(I:C) treatment, tryptophan supplementation should elevate serotonin levels even during viral inflammation. To corroborate this, we used a diet containing a glycine-tryptophan dipeptide, which bypasses the need for B0AT1 and enables tryptophan uptake via dipeptide transporters.33 This diet compensated for impaired uptake in poly(I:C)-treated mice and led to an increase in both tryptophan and serotonin levels in systemic circulation
Now I need to ensure that whey protein contains some glycyl-L-tryptophan. The study used a lab rat diet "TD.210749" (unsearchable, maybe a custom diet) from Envigo/Inotiv. The citation used pure glycyl-L-tryptophan "G0144" from TCI Europe (~$100/g haha nope).
I can't find anything on glycyl-L-tryptophan content in hydrolyzed whey (maybe you can help?), but found one on other tryptophan dipeptides, alanyl-tryptophan and tryptophanyl-tryptophan. The ACE receptor inhibition seems relevant, too. The PepT 1 protein appears to transport the dipeptides.
"Selective release of ACE-inhibiting tryptophan-containing dipeptides from food proteins by enzymatic hydrolysis" Diana Lunow et al. - https://doi.org/10.1007/s00217-013-2014-x
I'll try this out for my early waking insomnia, mildly reduced energy, and digestive problems (started after I got Covid, almost exactly 2 years ago). I need to find one without artificial sweeteners (hate the taste). I'll report back in exactly 2 weeks (sets calendar).
If its dipeptide transporter, seems like any dipeptide would do.
Adding bromelain to mix might help.
Yeah, thinking about this a bit more, shouldn't stomach proteases break the protein sources into dipeptides? I found a few comments online arguing that hydrolyzing doesn't matter and may cost more. If that's true, then we should only care about the protein types of whey, especially the alpha-lactalbumin content (higher tryptophan). I think bromelain would only help people with reduced protease production, and it likely won't break apart hydrolyzed protein any further. Of course, theory requires a test, but I won't add bromelain to my hydrolyzed whey test.
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Aw, too bad I can't have whey because of my lactose intolerance. :(