Serotonin is a naturally produced hormone that helps regulate many body functions, including your sleep, mood, and bowel movements. Sometimes, dropped levels of serotonin cause certain health conditions but there are many medications that can help boost serotonin levels which indirectly improves your mood and sleep.
Your nerve cells naturally produce serotonin which is not only a hormone but also a neurotransmitter. As a neurotransmitter, serotonin a;so helps send signals from and towards nerve cells. It is found in certain areas of the body, like the central nervous system, digestive system, and blood cells known as platelets. It’s considered effective for improving your mood.
In addition, serotonin can also be prepared chemically from an essential amino aud. Tryptophan amino acid helps prepare serotonin artificially. It is actually found in common food items, such as nuts, dairy products, eggs and meat.
What is Serotonin?
Serotonin is a naturally occurring monoamine neurotransmitter that also functions as a hormone in your body. Its main function is to transfer messages between your brain and other body parts. It does this through nerve cells found in your central nervous system and peripheral nervous system. The hormone sends messages about working mechanisms of different organs and organ systems of the body. Serotonin hormone is specialized in influencing several functions in your body, including your hunger, happiness, mood swings, learning, sleep, sexual behavior, temperature regulation, and memory. Dropped levels of serotonin in the body causes certain mental health conditions, including mania, anxiety and depression.
A large quantity of serotonin is found in your alimentary canal, especially the intestine. A large percentage of the hormone is accumulated in the lining of the gastrointestinal tract. From here, it gets absorbed in your blood and then to platelets blood cells. Your brain can also produce a little quantity of serotonin. But as a whole it can be produced in the human body. You can get it from food as it is an essential amino acid.
Role of Serotonin in Your Body
Serotonin is a very important hormone and neurotransmitter in your body. Many important functions are played by this hormone. Such as:
Mood: Serotonin is also known as “feel good” hormone. It not only helps regulate your mood but also makes you more focused, calmer, happier and emotionally stable. Shortage of serotonin in the body causes anxiety and depression. Increasing the serotonin levels naturally or artificially in your brain can help treat anxiety, depression and other mood disorders. Many medications are available to increase serotonin levels in the body.
Digestion: A large percentage of your body’s serotonin is found in your gastrointestinal tract where it not only plays its role in controlling your bowel movements but also protects your gut from the invasion of foreign germs. Your gut also releases serotonin at the time of digestion that speeds up the digestive procedure and expels toxic or irritating food particles from the body. This hormone also helps reduce your appetite.
Nausea: Release of excess serotonin in your gut triggers the nausea. The chemical excreted in the form of serotonin conveys a message to your brain that is perceived as nausea. Certain medications are used to target specific receptors related to serotonin in your brain that help reduce nausea.
Sleep: Another important neurotransmitter called dopamine along with serotonin helps improve your sleep quality. They also control the timing and duration of your sleep. Another hormone melatonin also helps regulate your sleep cycle which is naturally prepared in your brain.
Wound Healing: Your blood platelets release serotonin, when you get a wound or injury. Serotonin helps healing wounds. Serotonin actually works to make your blood vessels or arteries narrower to stop the bleeding by forming a blood clot at the place of the wound. The process is known as wound healing.
Bone Health: Bone density plays a role in making your bones strong enough to be protected against fractures or breakage. Serotonin in excess amounts can cause weakness of your bones leading to frequent bone fractures and osteoporosis.
Sexual Health: Dopamine neurotransmitter plays a role in improving your sex desire and serotonin helps promote production of dopamine in your brain.
How Mental Health Depends on Serotonin?
Several mental health conditions are treated just by changing the use of serotonin. Your brain recognizes serotonin as a happiness booster or mood booster. But it’s true that its different concentrations have different effects on your body functions.
According to some old studies, lower levels of serotonin cruises depression while modern research has suggested that the procedure is not so simple. This means a number of factors take part in causing depression or other mental health disorders. For example, other than serotonin levels, some other health conditions, brain changes, and life experiences also become the cause of depression or anxiety disorders. Therefore, you should use antidepressant medications as first-line treatment for treating mood disorders. Implementing psychotherapy along with medications can increase the chances of getting received.
Relation between Serotonin and Dopamine
Dopamine is a hormone, similar to serotonin. It also helps forming a communication bridge between the brain and other body parts. Both hormones play a crucial part in improving your mental well-being. Therefore, people often become confused about them. But there are still some key points that can help you differentiate between the two.
Through this table, you can easily understand how dopamine and serotonin act diferently in your body:
| Dopamine | Serotonin | |
|---|---|---|
| Production Site | Mainly in your brain | Mainly in your gut |
| Effects on sleep | Helps you can awake more | Helps regulate your sleep-awake cycle |
| Effects on mood | Promotes motivation and happiness | Stabilize your mood and diminish anxiety |
| Effects on depression | Depression treatments target it | Targeted during depression treatments. |
Problems Associated with Lower Serotonin Levels
Many health conditions are caused due to lower levels of serotonin, including:
- Phobias.
- Sleep disorders.
- Post-traumatic stress disorder.
- Depression.
- Mood problems.
- Panic disorders.
- Digestive problems.
- Schizophrenia.
- Anxiety.
- Obsessive-compulsive disorder.
- Suicidal behaviors.
However, more research is needed to learn completely about the role of serotonin in your body.
Causes of Dropping Serotonin Levels in Your Body
There is not one single factor that leads to a lack of serotonin in your body. Technically, many factors play role in a combination to make the serotonin production slow, such as:
- Your body has lost the ability to produce enough serotonin.
- Your body has lost the ability to use serotonin effectively. This can be the result of misuse of serotonin receptors that makes them unable to work more.
Ways to Increase Serotonin Levels in Your Body
Serotonin levels can be increased by:
- Taking certain supplements to promote serotonin production.
- Getting more sunlight.
- Lowering your stress level especially by doing more exercise.
- Eating food rich in tryptophan.
Important Tryptophan Rich Foods
A number of food items are available that have excess amounts of tryptophan naturally. Tryptophan is the essential amino acid needed to prepare serotonin natuarlly. Tryptophan-containing foods can help you increase your serotonin levels. The foods include:
- Seeds, nuts,and oats.
- Salmon.
- Tofu.
- Pineapple.
- Eggs.
- Turkey.
- Cheese.
Sometimes, just eating tryptophan-containing food may not work for increasing the serotonin levels. Your body also needs certain carbohydrates to produce enough insulin that can absorb amino acids. This is a complex procedure, in which tryptophan has to compete with other amino aids to get absorbed in your brain more than any other amino acid. However, due to limited proof, scientists still are unable to describe the complete mechanism of increasing serotonin levels through tryptophan- containing food.
Sunlight
Lack of natural sunlight can cause certain mood disorders. The mood disorders are known as seasonal; affective disorders. People who don’t get enough sunlight exposure can be affected by mood disorders. Therefore,experts suggest that exposing yourself to natural light maximum for 20 to 30 minutes in a day can boost your serotonin levels. Exposure to sunlight also promotes vitamin D production in your bones.sunlight therapy can help reduce stress.
Supplements
Some herbal and dietary options are also considered helpful in improving your serotonin levels,such as:
- Herbal supplements: Nutmeg, ginseng and syrian rue are some herbal options.
- Dietary Supplements: SAMe, tryptophan, and probiotics are examples of some dietary supplements.
Exercise
Regular moderate physical activities can help increase serotonin levels. You can add two strength training sessions with twenty minutes of regular aerobic exercise to your daily routine to increase serotonin production. This will also promote your mood and impact your overall health.
What Medications are Used to Increase Serotonin Levels?
Several research results have shown that many health conditions are caused by the lower levels of serotonin and such health conditions can be treated by increasing the serotonin levels in the body. Therefore, many pharmaceutical industries have targeted to increase the serotonin levels in the blood. They have prepared some formula medications for this purpose and the most common medications used to promote serotonin production in body, include:
Different classes of antidepressants, that help block the re-absorption and recycling of serotonin, making it possible to sustain the higher concentration of serotonin in your brain. They also help block an enzyme that breaks down serotonin. These medications include:
- Serotonin-nor-epinephrine reuptake inhibitors like venlafaxine.
- Tricyclic antidepressants like amitriptyline.
- MonoamideOxide Inhibitors like phenelzine.
Along with all these, some medications taken for other medical conditions can also increase serotonin. One of them is the family of tryptophan that belong to groups of opioid pain killers, anti-nausea drugs, headache drugs, and cough suppressants.
What is Serotonin Syndrome?
Using medications or supplements in excess, to increase serotonin levels can cause serotonin syndrome. This condition can happen when you:
- Take certain medications in excess of the prescribed amount.
- Use additional medications, supplements, or drugs that also help increase serotonin.
- Increase the dosage of an existing or continued medication.
The medications that can lead to serotonin syndrome include:
- SAMe.
- Tryptophan.
- SSRIs.
- MDMA.
- Monoamine oxidase inhibitors.
- Cocaine.
- Medications prescribed for mental health conditions.
- Dextromethorphan.
Common symptoms of serotonin syndrome include:
- Anxiety.
- Vomiting.
- Sweating.
- Nausea.
- Tremors.
- Restlessness.
Severe symptoms include:
- Disorientation.
- Irregular heartbeat.
- Headache.
- Flushed skin.
- High blood pressure.
- Dilated pupils.
- Rapid heart rate.
- Muscle stiffness.
- High fever.
- Increased reflexes.
- Muscle twitches or spasm.
A detailed history and thorough physical exam helps the doctors to diagnose serotonin syndrome. Its diagnosis doesn’t require specific tests. However, some tests are performed just to assess the severity of symptoms and determine the effective treatment option.
Common tests to diagnose the severity of serotonin syndrome are:
- Lumber puncture (spinal tap).
- Brain imaging.
- Blood tests.
- Urine tests.
If the symptoms are not severe, your doctor may ask you to avoid taking more serotonin medications. This will help reduce the severity and frequency of the symptoms. But in severe cases they recommend increasing dosage of certain additional medications so that the risk of complications can be reduced to some extent. Sometimes, clinical treatments are also recommended to treat serotonin syndrome. Its mild symptoms usually go away within 48 hours, if you have a proper treatment. Serotonin syndrome needs quick medical assistance because careless behavior can lead to end of life. This is a life-threatening condition. Therefore, expats suggest taking it seriously and acquiring immediate treatment.
Conclusion
Serotonin is a hormone that carries messages between your brain nerve cells and other body parts. It also has a major role in controlling crucial body functions. It affects your sleep mood, digestion, sexual desire, blood clotting, appetite, anxiety and depression. Having a condition related to serotonin levels or caused after fluctuations in serotonin concentration,is the indication of some serious mental health condition like schizophrenia, high blood pressure or increased heart beat. These symptoms are enough to visit a nearby clinic for medical assistance. After experiencing symptoms of serotonin syndrome, never think about stopping use of serotonin medications, just changing the dosage can help prevent the symptoms. Taking some dietary supplements will help you stop drug interactions caused by disturbed levels of serotonin in the body. The lower or high concentration of serotonin is the leading cause of certain serious mental and physical health conditions. Therefore, talking to your healthcare provider after experiencing any change in the levels of serotonin is the best way to prevent the condition in time.
