L-Tryptophan is an essential amino acid, which means it cannot be synthesized by the human body and therefore must be part of the diet or supplementation. The best food sources for tryptophan are high protein foods such as oats, bananas, dried dates, dairy products, fish, many nuts, and poultry.

Tryptophan is critical in helping your body produce proteins for muscle, hair, and skin. Unfortunately tryptophan is the least abundant amino acid in your diet. Even a person on a high protein diet gets less than 1.5 grams of tryptophan a day. What's more, when you ingest tryptophan it undergoes a process that dramatically reduces the amount actually absorbed. Some experts estimate that only 1% of the dietary tryptophan you take in reaches the brain.

Tryptophan is a precursor for serotonin. Unlike other products that indirectly influence serotonin production or increase metabolism, L-tryptophan is a direct precursor that results in almost immediate increases in circulating serotonin, which is one of the primary neurohormones involved with sleep and mood. 

In people with low serotonin levels, L-tryptophan has been shown to help establish and maintain healthy levels, which may help to improve mood1 and reduce tension. In those people with serotonin levels already within the normal range, L-tryptophan acts as a natural sleep aid, not only helping people fall asleep,2-5 but also helping them stay asleep throughout the night and wake without grogginess. For this reason, some experts believe tryptophan can be a safe and effective sleep aid when added to your diet as a supplement. Supplementing your diet with tryptophan may mean a more restful night's sleep, a brighter, mood and a host of other benefits.

When tryptophan is ingested as a food or supplement, it is naturally degraded by specialized enzymes in the body. The problem is activity of one of these enzymes increases with age thereby denying the brain the tryptophan it needs to produce adequate serotonin. The result of the excess degradation of tryptophan can be seen in serotonin-associated troubles, such as:

• Poor sleep quality

• Emotional mood and stress

• Weight gain and appetite

• Loss of feeling of well-being

The degradation of tryptophan in the body can be inhibited with the intelligent use of other nutrients. For instance, the amino acid lysine competes with tryptophan in the same oxidative degradation pathway. This means that in the presence of sufficient lysine, less tryptophan is broken down through oxidation.

The primary tryptophan-degrading enzyme is overactivated by inflammatory cytokines. The most comprehensive way to suppress the inflammatory factors that cause the enzymatic degradation of tryptophan is to take the proper dose of niacinamide along with extracts from ginger, hops, and rosemary.

A patent-pending formula called Optimized TryptoPure™ Plus has been developed that provides lysine, niacinamide, hops, ginger, and rosemary extracts to protect tryptophan against excessive degradation in our aging bodies, thus sparing it for conversion into serotonin in the brain.

Life Extension’s new Optimized TryptoPure™ Plus formula contains tryptophan that is certified pure enough to be used as an active ingredient in pharmaceutical products.