Supplementing Dopamine or Feeding Adrenaline?
What we Can Learn About "Dopamine Deficiency" Conditions from the Slow COMT Gene Folks
The below is a modified version of a lesson from the module “Optimizing Dopamine” of my Calm Your Nervous System, Transform Your Life course.
We have said several times now that [nor]adrenaline is created from dopamine, and hence getting stressed necessitates using up dopamine supplies.
Yet another way to say this, with a somewhat different nuance, is that phenylalanine, tyrosine and l-dopa are not only the chemical precusors/feedstocks/building blocks of dopamine, but are also those of adrenaline, via the basic biochemical pathway:
Phenylalanine → Tyrosine → L-Dopa → Dopamine → Noradrenaline → Adrenaline
As far as I am aware, there are no targeted food, supplemental or medicinal versions of these precusor chemicals which are guaranteed to end up as dopamine, and not end up as adrenaline.
So when we ingest them (phenylalanine, tyrosine, l-dopa), whether they end up being converted to dopamine or become adrenaline is anyone's guess, and depends on many other factors, especially on nervous system and stress states. The main point here being we may think we are supplementing for dopamine, but we may actually just be feeding adrenaline and hence our stress.
While the linkages between dopamine and adrenaline, and their ramifications, have been, until recently, largely missed by the various communities with “dopamine deficiency” conditions (Parkinson’s, ADHD, dystonia, Fibromyalgia, EDS, etc), we can learn a lot from the “slow COMT gene” community, who grasped these links, and understood the ramifications, some time ago.
COMT is an enzyme used in the breakdown of not only dopamine, but also noradrenaline and adrenaline into inert waste products which are excreted via urine. In those folks with the so-called “slow COMT gene”, their COMT enzyme doesn’t work as well, or there is not enough of it produced. This means their bodies and brains are slow to breakdown dopamine and adrenaline, and these tend to build up in the body.
At first glance being slow to breakdown dopamine sounds like a wonderful thing. Unfortunately, there is still nothing to prevent it being converted to adrenaline, and thus having a stockpile of dopamine just means there is more to convert to adrenaline if you get stressed. Under the stresses of the modern world, therefore the slow COMT gene folks just end up with lots of adrenaline that they are also slow to breakdown. This outweighs any benefits of being slow to breakdown dopamine. Living with constantly high levels of adrenaline is why they find it very hard to deal with stress, and suffer so much from the wide range of known symptoms of chronic stress.
Thus the "slow COMT gene" community of folks have been telling each other for some years that ingesting foods/supplements/drugs with high levels of phenyalanine, tyrosine and l-dopa should actually be avoided. While this at first glance means they will then have less precursor building blocks for creating dopamine, the stressors of the modern world means most of the precursors are just going to create adrenaline anyway, which their nervous systems find so difficult to deal with.
The answer to the slow COMT gene problem is the same as for “dopamine deficiency” conditions: to learn to inhabit calm, relaxed states, so that adrenaline is not needed as much, and the limited diet of precursors can then largely go towards ending up as dopamine. Under these circumstances "slow COMT gene" becomes a blessing in disguise, because the dopamine stays around for a long time, meaning, ironically, that less of the precursors are needed to be ingested in the first place than for folks without the genetic variation.
In my view, the lesson for “dopamine deficiency” folks is that, if we are going to try to supplement dopamine by ingesting precursors (e.g. l-dopa for Parkinson’s), we need to be sure we can inhabit the calm, relaxed states for much of the time as possible, and to do everything we can to manage and reduce stressors, otherwise we will in actuality just be feeding that stress due to our turning the precursors into adrenaline instead.
Very interesting.
as always, very interesting, Gary.