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Old Apr 26, 2017, 07:47 PM
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shadow2000 shadow2000 is offline
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Member Since: Nov 2009
Location: United States
Posts: 186
I don't know for sure, but my guess is that if your dopamine system is underactive in some way, there's a good chance that there's something causing it that might also be affecting your brain and maybe also your body in other ways. For instance, some scientific review articles have concluded that vitamin D levels tend to be abnormally low in those with clinical depression, even though there doesn't seem to be conclusive evidence at this time (at least based on my understanding) that low vitamin D levels cause clinical depression. One finding relating to vitamin D that has some evidence to support it is that vitamin D increases the production of an enzyme called tyrosine hydroxylase (Puchacz et al., 1996; Cui et al., 2015), which converts the amino acid l-tyrosine to l-dopa, which then gets converted into dopamine. And since there's an enzyme that converts dopamine to norepinephrine and another enzyme that converts norepinephrine to adrenaline, increasing tyrosine hydroxylase production with vitamin D would also be expected to increase levels of these chemicals. In addition to these things, vitamin D also affects both the brain and the body in other ways, with some evidence showing that vitamin D increases the production of serotonin in the brain while reducing the production of serotonin elsewhere in the body (Patrick & Ames, 2014). So, dopamine could conceivably be low as a result of low vitamin D levels, but if it is, having a low dopamine level would be just one of many things going on. And there are other chemicals of different sorts (copper, for instance) that can affect the dopamine system in ways that could conceivably lead the dopamine system to be underactive, but as the case is with vitamin D, at least some of these chemicals are thought to affect different systems in our brains and bodies other than the dopamine system. I don't know how likely it would be that a doctor would prescribe a medication that boosts dopamine in some way to help to alleviate the problems that you described, but you might want to ask a doctor about what treatment options might be available to you, whether the treatment options would consist of pharmaceuticals, dietary supplements such as vitamin D3 or maybe the l-tyrosine and/or the curcumin/turmeric that one of the previous posters mentioned, or something else. Pharmaceuticals might be one option worth trying to give you a dopamine boost, but there might be other options worth trying (some of which might conceivably be more effective and/or less likely to cause side effects or other problematic effects), as well.

I wish you luck with finding something that might bring you some relief from the symptoms that you described in your post.

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REFERENCES

Cui, X., Pertile, R., Liu, P., Eyles, D.W. (2015). Vitamin D regulates tyrosine hydroxylase expression: N-cadherin a possible mediator. Neuroscience, 304, 90-100. Abstract: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26210580

Patrick, R.P., & Ames, B.N. (2014). Vitamin D hormone regulates serotonin synthesis. Part 1: Relevance for autism. FASEB Journal, 28, 2398-2413. Abstract: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24558199

Puchacz, E., Stumpf, W.E., Stachowiak, E.K., & Stachowiak, M.K. (1996). Vitamin D increases expression of the tyrosine hydroxylase gene in adrenal medullary cells. Brain Research. Molecular Brain Research, 36, 193-196. Abstract: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9011759