"Andrew" wrote in message
ups.com...
My mom knows a doctor in Taiwan who wrote a book called "Banana
Therapy". The doctor insists you can treat and/or cure
depression/anxiety symptoms by increasing your intake of bananas, which
are high in tryptophan. He also recommends eating turkey instead of
chicken because of the tryptophan. Is there any truth in this?
According to the amount listings in the book I am eating roughly 30g of
tryptophan per day.


Tryptophan is a precursor to melatonin and melatonin is a precursor to
serotonin which does affect mood. There is a connection. However,
anti-depressant prescription medications such as Prozac, Zoloft, etc., are
serotonin receptor inhibitors. Therefore, one would expect that if your
goal is to reduce depression you would want to NOT ingest additional
tryptophan. Moreover, we all know the effects that tryptophan has on us at
Thanksgiving - putting us to sleep after a big turkey meal. And melatonin
has been used effectively for quite some time as a sleep inducing
medication. Therefore, common sense would dictate that you would actually
want to do just the opposite. Avoid the tryptophan-melatonin-serotonin
connection to reduce symptoms of depression.

But that having been said, your mother needs to go to a physician if her
depression is such that she feels it needs to be treated. Playing
do-it-yourself with this kind of stuff is useless at best and dangerous at
worst.

chula