N-Acetyl-Tyrosine: More Dopamine for Parkinson's

If you’ve been following our blog, you may remember my 65 year old brother who has Parkinson’s. In 5 years, he has improved to the point where he has only small shakes in the left arm and mild tremors in the right, and though he suffers from Parkinson’s dementia, it has not worsened since he began his supplement protocol.

One of the supplements he has taken over the past 5 years is N-Acetyl-Tyrosine at 2 grams a day. You may have heard of a Parkinson’s medication called Carba-Dopa. Well, Carba-Dopa is really an amino acid that is processed and eventually converted by the body into dopamine. Tyrosine is part of the chain that leads to dopamine production and tyrosine is actually processed and eventually converted into Carba-Dopa. (I prefer N-Acetyl-Tyrosine because it is more stable and water soluble than typical L-Tyrosine, which can result in greater bio-availability.)

There are a few advantages of Tyrosine over Carba-Dopa:

1. It’s less expensive!

2. There is a lot of controversy over the safety and benefits of Carba-Dopa, in that it seems to have benefits for Parkinson’s, but in the long term may actually lead to the Parkinson’s getting worse.

This seems like a no-brainer. Tyrosine can lead to more dopamine production, is less expensive than drug counterparts, and does not seem to have any side effects for a Parkinson’s patient when taken at dosages that are known to be non-toxic

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My brother also takes an un-denatured whey protein shake daily. There are many excellent reasons to get whey protein into your diet every day. We’ve all been sold on the idea that we need a multivitamin and mineral daily, yet our body needs the building blocks of proteins everyday as well. These building blocks are known as amino acids, and whey protein contains all the essential amino acids in natural amounts. It’s important that it possesses the natural amounts, as many times these amino acids can cancel out each other when they are of equal amounts. Regular whey protein is fine for a protein shake, but un-denatured protein leads to greater absorption so I chose it over other whey protein.

There are many other reasons to drink an un-denatured whey protein shake daily and I will discuss these reasons in other posts, but for now the fact that you get all your essential amino acids in the right amounts is what matters. It also helps balance the 2 grams of Tyrosine. Amino acids interact with each other and if you supplement a single amino acid in high quantity, you are bound to deplete or affect other amino acids. The protein shake helps add back any amino acids that become depleted or otherwise made inefficient from frequent overuse. I always find it wise to consider balancing single supplements whenever possible. For example, I take 1 gram of niacin (vitamin b-3) a day. I try and balance this by taking a multivitamin and mineral high in B vitamins or a B-100, which has most of the B complex in dosages of 100 milligrams, to help balance my single dosage of niacin.

So, to review, the first supplement I recommended to my brother was Inositol to help with nerve conduction, followed by N-Acetyl-Tyrosine to increase the ability of his brain cells to help produce more dopamine. The next supplement we will discuss is included to calm the brain. This is vital in a condition like Parkinson’s where the body is hyper excitable and the symptoms themselves keep the cycle of excitation repeating endlessly.