Catecholamines play an important role in your mental health. They are substances composed of small molecules that act as both a hormone and neurotransmitter. Neurotransmitters are brain chemicals that mediate communication between neurons across your brain and the rest of your nervous system. Your body's major catecholamines are dopamine, norepinephrine and epinephrine. Your body uses tyrosine, an amino acid, to manufacture catecholamines.
Tyrosine Importance
Protein is an important nutrient made of amino acid chains. Your body primarily relies on 22 amino acids for proper body function. Tyrosine is one of those amino acids. It is considered nonessential because your body can make it from another amino acid called phenylalanine. When your body receives phenylalanine from your diet, it converts it to tyrosine, then your body uses tyrosine to make catecholamines. So both phenylalanine and tyrosine are crucial to catecholamine production.
Dopamine Function
Dopamine is one of three primary catecholamines. It is considered a neurotransmitter but it also functions as a hormone. Dopamine controls movement, emotional response and your perception of pleasure or reward, and pain. It also plays a major role in addiction, according to the University of Texas Addiction Science Research and Education Center. As a hormone, dopamine regulates prolactin release, a hormone that stimulates breast milk production.
Norepinephrine Function
Your body uses dopamine to make norepinephrine. Norepinephrine, also known as noradrenaline, is a catecholamine that functions as a stress hormone and a neurotransmitter. Your adrenal glands release norepinephrine into your bloodstream, where it controls your fight-or-fight response. It increases blood flow, triggers glucose release and increases your heart rate so that you can handle present stressors. Epinephrine, the third primary catecholamine and norepinephrine's counterpart, helps balance norepinehrine's effects so that you can think clearly and make quick decisions during stressful situations.
Significance
Tyrosine is critical to your mental and physical health because it is needed to produce catecholamines. Protein-rich foods are sources of phenylalanine and tyrosine. A deficiency of either nutrient can cause catecholamine deficiency, which negatively effects your mental health. A study published in the October 2003 issue of the "American Journal of Psychiatry," found that dietary tyrosine and phenylalanine deficiency lead to dopamine depletion. Researchers at the University of Cambridge, School of Clinical Medicine conducted a similar study, published in the September 2003 issue of the journal "Psychopharmacology." The study found that healthy adults deprived of phenylalanine and tyrosine on an otherwise balanced diet developed low mood, low enthusiasm and depression.
References
- University of Maryland Medical Center: Tyrosine; David Zieve; July 2010
- University of Texas Addiction Science Research and Education Center: Dopamine - A Sample Neurotransmitter;
- Rice University: Norepinephrine
- University of Maryland Medical Center: Phenylalanine; Steven D. Ehrlich; June 2009
- "American Journal of Psychiatry"; Reduction of Brain Dopamine Concentration with Dietary Tyrosine Plus Phenylalanine Depletion: an 11-c Raclopride Pet Study; Andrew J. Montgomery et al.; October 2003
- "Psychopharmacology"; the Effects of Tyrosine Depletion in Normal Healthy Volunteers: Implications for Unipolar Depression; Mclean A, Rubinsztein et al.; September 2003
