Serotonin is the hormone what makes us happy, so why aren’t we just injecting it into our body/taking it as tablets to get out of misery on command?
In: Biology
Serotonin exists mainly in billions of individual neural synapses, that have no connection to the blood stream, so it’s pretty hard to get it where it’s effective.
We are, kind of.
This is how anti-depression medication works. Current anti-depressants are SSRI type drugs which means ‘selective serotonin re-uptake Inhibitors’.
Basically our brains release serotonin naturally and these drugs stop it being reabsorbed, thereby increasing our expose to it and having a similar effect to what you are asking about.
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Serotonin is a neurotransmitter; it is one of several messengers in our brains. It does not just carry happy messages. All of the neurotransmitters pull double, triple, quadruple, etc. duty.
When we say it’s the ‘Happy Messenger’ we’re being very simple to the point of being wrong. It also carries the messages for: rewards, learning, eating, temperature, pooping, and many others. We’re still learning more and more about Serotonin.
Because it does over a dozen different things we do not take Serotonin pills. It would not go to the right place and deliver the right message. It might make you accidentally very hungry or make your temperature very hot.
We take medicine that targets the sad house in our brain, the house that keeps its doors closed to the happy messenger. With the right medicine the sad house keeps their doors open long enough for the right amount (hopefully) of happy messages to get through.
Among other reasons that others have discussed, Serotonin wouldn’t make it past the “Blood/Brain Barrier” so it wouldn’t travel from the bloodstream to the brain. So just on a practical level injecting it or giving yourself a shot isn’t an option.
Lot’s of people, including myself, use MDMA from time to time. While it’s not exactly an injection of straight serotonin, in effect it accomplishes the same thing. It makes you incredibly happy, however the come-down from it can be pretty miserable as it can mean that you are serotonin deficient. There are several ways to counter this, like by taking 5HTP, but that isn’t a perfect solution and taking MDMA really is stealing happiness from tomorrow.
Because our neurotransmitters metabolize into neurotoxic agents, an excess results in long-term brain damage. Ie, methamphetamine, and MDMA, these drugs aren’t inherently neurotoxic but the toxicity from their use come from more neurotransmitter metabolites which are charged and destroy cell walls killing brain cells.
The simple reason is that we actually have no fucking idea of what cause us to be happy on a regular basis.
The neurotrasmitters-imbalance theory of depression is getting smashed a bit more every day.
Take for example serotonin. We cannot simply drink it, because as other said it cannot pass the blood-brain barrier.
So we use drugs that *can* pass that barrier, and cause your brain to re-absorb less serotonin. By reabsorbing less of it, you have more serotonin available in your brain.
The problem is that you won’t feel better quickly. You will feel better after months of taking the drug.
But the drug is acting every single day! You have more serotonine in your brain every single day!
So why the effect doesn’t start on day 1?
We don’t know. We have some hypotesis, but we don’t know.
This is why having a lot of serotonine in your brain will not make you Happy on a bad day.
Neither injecting nor swallowing serotonin allows your brain to use it because it won’t cross from the blood to the brain.
Some drugs effectively increase the level of serotonin you experience by reducing how much of it your brain clears (eg Prozac) or forcing your brain to dump the serotonin it already has stored (eg MDMA).
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