Elevated endogenous Serotonin cause of my fatigue?

[sue1234]

A couple of years ago, my functional medicine doctor ran a lot of labs, one of which was serotonin. It came back elevated, and I thought little of it. I do not take any meds that would affect serotonin.

A year or so later, I decided to look into it again. I realized foods that increase serotonin are foods that I had naturally been avoiding because I found over the years they make me feel bad(so many varied symptoms).

Lately I have been having super fatigue/malaise and the idea of that serotonin popped in my head again. I did a Pubmed search of elevated serotonin and fatigue, and I kept seeing articles about physical exertion causing elevated serotonin. That makes me think of the PEM part of ME/CFS.

I was listening to a podcast of two guys discussing natural ways to decrease serotonin naturally, and they mentioned that hibernation involves a number of factors, but increased serotonin was one of them! There are days I could swear my body would love to go into hibernation!

So, has anyone else had their serotonin levels tested? Were yours elevated? Do you react to high serotonin foods also?

If anyone knows of what kind of physician to see that can figure out WHY my serotonin levels are elevated, I would appreciate it. Bonus points for anyone who can name a physician who could do telemed to handle this!

 

[Violeta]

@sue1234, did the doctor also measure dopamine?

 

[sue1234]

No, no one has tested my dopamine levels.

 

[Judee]

I think you should see a neuroendocrinologist so they can rule out some things.

 

[sue1234]

I think you should see a neuroendocrinologist so they can rule out some things.

I have been tested through a neuroendocrinologist for most things, and have had a few fancy scans(octreotide, gallium dotatate) to look for neuroendo. tumors, and nothing shows up. That's what makes me think my gut just over produces serotonin.

 

[JES]

Hm, my understanding is that it's not very useful to measure neurotransmitters like serotonin from the blood. You are right that serotonin is mostly active in the gut and also in the brain, but that doesn't necessarily correlate well with blood levels. Furthermore, you might even need to measure intracellular levels to get a correct picture as ME/CFS researchers trying to measure tryptophan levels found out.

Regardless of the measurement issue, your hunch about serotonin might not be wrong. The tryptophan-kynurenine pathway, which also involves serotonin, is suspected to be dysregulated in inflammatory, certain autoimmune diseases and also depression. Ever since my ME/CFS symptoms got worse, I seem to also do better on a low-carb diet and avoiding complex carbs, which happen to feed gut bacteria and serotonin synthesis. I also had a bad reaction to supplementing with 5-HTP, which converts to serotonin. Less so with regular tryptophan.

For what it's worth, I reckon you should maybe also consider doing that serotonin test again as I suspect you may get variance in the results.

 

[Violeta]

No, no one has tested my dopamine levels.

Here's a link to a list of low dopamine symptoms, if you're interested.

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/22588-dopamine-deficiency

 

[Wishful]

Do you react to high serotonin foods also?

I don't think many foods have much serotonin. A Google search will show foods that produce serotonin, but that just means they're high in tryptophan. You could have problems from TRP without having problems from serotonin.

JES reported a worse reaction from 5-HTP than from TRP, but I had the opposite response. You could try 5-HTP to see what happens. It's a metabolite between TRP and serotonin, so how you react will help figure out which chemical is the problem.

I second what JES said about the value of testing serotonin. It could mean something, or it could just be individual variance or something unrelated to your symptoms.

 

[Artemisia]

Biochemist Dr Ray Peat considers serotonin to act like a stress hormone and avoids foods like pineapple that can increase it. raypeat.com -- he has plenty of articles that mention serotonin if you do a site search.

 

[rusty box]

stumbled into the ray peat pro metabolic/bioenergetic field only a year ago , my limited understanding is that serotonin is a stress hormone , with the majority being produced in the chromaffin? cells of the gut lining in response to endotoxin / lipopolysacheride which is a byproduct of certain gram negative bacteria after they've scoffed fibre (soluble i think).Therefore more fibre in the gut (or undigested sugars) the higher the serotonin . My thoughts are, does elevated serotonin( and therefore suppressed dopamine), play a role in Prof Tim Noakes central governor theory

 

[hapl808]

It's frustrating because I'm sure that the gut and neurotransmitters are heavily involved for me. Any time I engage in mental or physical exertion, eventually acid reflux starts, then worsening brain fog, headaches that sometimes develop into migraines, and a PEM crash.

The more enjoyable the activity that causes the crash, usually the worse the symptoms. I can deal with a 30 min customer service call and probably be fine, but a 30 min social interaction will wipe me out.

I've tried a lot of gut related things, but it feels like I'm putting handfuls of dirt on a blazing fire. Sure it's better than nothing, but doesn't come close to alleviating the problem.

 

[vision blue]

Also be on the lookout foe “serotonin storm” which can make one quite sick. Those you said were blood levels? Id be curiousto know how it relates to urine levels since thise being also high or being normsl or even low may change how to think about it

I have the opposite issue. Am low in serotonin (at least in urine), yet high in dopamine and norepinephrine (latter both urine and blood) . So all my tyrosine (which is low in urine, normal in blood) maybe gets shunted to making dopamine (and tyramine) at the expense of serotonin.

 

[Krokus]

Just a short while ago I was tested if there is a genetic change in MAO in my case and it was found. But I still not know much about it. Because your serotonine levels seems to stay higher than usual, you may try to get it tested if there is a genetic change.

MAO
Monoamine oxidase A, also known as MAO-A, is an enzyme that in humans is encoded by the MAOA gene.[5][6] This gene is one of two neighboring gene family members that encode mitochondrial enzymes which catalyze the oxidative deamination of amines, such as dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin

 

[vision blue]

@Krokus i had looked at my genome for MAO A mutations because of my inability to tolerate tyramines as well as tge high norepibeprine and dopamine
I did not find a smoking gun. Cant remember mow if i was heterozygous on one of the common snps but even so found in at least a third of people and therefore not likely to cause anything unusual. I looked for rare snps on my exome- but nothing for mao-A COMT can play a role too in breaking down these neurotransmitters- i know i have some genetic issue there too but likely not main cause anyway for ne.