Hello More Meat,
It would appear that you have no clue as to what 5 HTP is, and what it is used for. You have taken a massive dose, and while you will not really hurt yourself, it will take a few days for the "upregulation/downregulation" effect to bring you down to where you need to be.
Serotonin is a neurotransmitter. Basically a neurotransmitter takes the message from one side of a receptor (where the nerve ends) to the other side of the receptor (where the nerve begins again). I like to use the analogy of a wheelbarrow to describe the function. Serotoinin is the wheel barrow that moves the signal from one side to the other side. The amount of wheelbarrows in the "synaptic cleft" (synapse for short) determines the efficiency of the neurotransmission.
5 HTP is chemically "hyroxylated tryptophan." Tryptophan is a an amino acid. It is one of 20 that your body uses and is collectively "protein." Hydroxylation is the process of where a hydroxyl (two hydrogen atoms in a particular shape) is added to the molecule. In humans, it is done in the liver for Tryptophan. It requires, Tryptophan, two enzymes and a hydroxl donor. When the process is done, you have 5 HTP, or Hydroxylated Tryptophan.
The conversion to Serotoin takes place usually in the serotonin receptor. The process is called "decarboxylation" and it is the removal of a carboxyl (cooh) through an enzyme action. And enzyme is like "chemical scissors" that are used once.
The decarboxylation enzyme is a non saturated enzyme, meaning that your body has a lot more than you need. What this means is that when you take 5 HTP in large amounts, you will exhaust that enzyme, therby raising your serotonin levles systemically, and for the rest that cannot be coverted, you will excrete it.
As you raised your levels of Serotonin without reason, the brain reacts in an effort to balance the overall response of all of the receptors, and "turns down the volume of those receptors" by a process called "upregulation/down regulation"
So, you took a ton of 5 HTP, causing a rapid increase in Serotoin, until you exhaused the decarboxylation enzymes, causing your body to react by using downregulation to bring the signal strength back to normal, and having you piss out every bit of the 5 htp that could not be converted.
The result in this case is not very harmful to you. You will feel a bit sluggish for a few days while your brain goes through upregulation. Your pocket book has been lightened by the money that you wasted in your experiment and you will not sleep any better because the conversion of serotoinin into melatonin is a feedback controlled reaction. Which means that if you don't need it, the body won't convert it.
There is a good side to this, and hopefully one for you to ponder for some time. If you had done this experiment with Tylenol instead of 5 HTP, you may already be dead. Tylenol is quite safe when USED AS DIRECTED. If you do not follow the instructions, you will wipe out your liver. This can happen, HAS HAPPenis EnlargementNED, AND WILL HAPPenis EnlargementN IN THE FUTURE. And for the victim, the only thing that can be done is a liver transplant. I would think in that situation that your penis would be far from your thoughts.
Please know that knowledge is power. Be smart. KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DEALING WITH. IT CAN HURT YOU IF YOU DO NOT KNOW!!!
Best of luck,
Stage
