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 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 degradation processes that dramatically reduces the amount actually available for conversion to serotonin in the brain. Some experts estimate that only 1% of the dietary tryptophan you take in reaches the brain. For some this is sufficient, but for others, low levels can adversely affect sleep, weight, and mood.

Tryptophan is a precursor for serotonin. Unlike other products that influence serotonin reuptake, L-tryptophan is a direct precursor that results in almost immediate increases in serotonin, which is one of the primary neurotransmitters involved with sleep and mood.

In those people with low serotonin levels, L-tryptophan has been shown to help establish and maintain healthy levels, which may help to improve mood 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, 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, specifically TryptoPure, may mean a more restful night's sleep, a brighter mood, and a host of other benefits.

Life Extension has selected TryptoPure as its tryptophan of choice. TryptoPure is the most trusted tryptophan available today. TryptoPure is suitable for vegetarians, additive-free, solvent-free, 100% fermented, and GMP certified.

Life Extension has developed a patent-pending formula called Optimized TryptoPure Plus 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.