Why can't serotonin, dopamine, etc. be made "synthetically" so that those of us with imbalances

Question

can just take them like a vitamin or supplement? Are there any natural ways to increase those levels??

Answer 1

Expanding on what people have already said about chemical in balances being a gross simplification, serotonin and dopamine are involved in many other processes such as controlling sickness, sleeping, sexuality, body temperature etc.

For this reason an increase of serotonin in your brain can be extremely unpleasant and can lead to serotonin syndrome which is not nice.

Also Erowid covered this question at ...

http://www.erowid.org/ask/ask.php?ID=309...

which you might be interested in.

Answer 2

These drugs don't cross the "blood-brain barrier", so giving them as pills or IV wouldn't give the intended effect.  Interestingly, when dopamine is given by vein, it acts on the heart to increase pulse rate.

Exercise can help increase neurotransmitter levels.

DK

Answer 3

One important limitation to pharmaceutical development is drug delivery.  Just because you have a compound that works doesn't mean you can turn it into a pill and have it go to the right places.  If you gave people pure dopamine by the vein, none of it gets to the parts of the brain that are involved in mood.  

Answer 4

Making them is no trick. Delivering them in the exact amount to the exact needed site is. Every hospital has a huge supply of intravenous dopamine that's used fairly routinely for support of the cardiovascular system in critically ill patients. It doesn't get across the blood-brain barrier to alter moods or thinking, though.

There's no real point in asking how you can increase those levels. What you really want to ask is how you can feel better, and there are plenty of ways to improve mood without drugs. Regular aerobic exercise is one. Talk therapy or other psychotherapy work, too. There's no reason to invest a lot of time re-inventing the wheel here, and asking on a forum like this one opens you to quackery.

Answer 5

Of course it's possible but the synthesis wouldn't be easy, and for that reason the cost would be far to high to be practical.  

Answer 6

The idea of a chemical imbalance is what the FDA calls explaining an insanely complicated medical condition at "A sixth grade reading level." What's going on is a fair bit more complicated and doesn't involve just an 'imbalance'. The lack of activity in certain neurotransmitters is involved in depression, though probably not the only cause. In some cases, there's too much of an activity going on (schizophrenia, epilepsy).

As for just making more, first as mentioned, these neurotransmitters will not cross the blood brain barrier, or are frequently broken down in the digestive system. This essentially keeps you from completely destroying your brain chemistry by eating foods that contain these substances.

Another strategy has been to 'load' the body with the chemical precursors to these neurotransmitters, such as 5-HTP, and L-Dopa. This has very limited success, because while you can increase the availability of the substance the body has regulatory mechanisms for controlling how much of it is made into the final product. This is why 5-HTP has such poor results in studies about depression, and why Parkinson's patients only get a limited use out of L-Dopa before it poops out on them. From an evolutionary standpoint, loading like this is borderline poisoning the body from a food source, and it reacts strongly to protect the integrity of brain chemistry.