From http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/0 ... epression/
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kynurenine
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kynurenine_pathway:
As far as I understand tryptophan either goes to serotonin (bad in Peatland) or to niacin (good). But the pathway to niacin is the one that creates kynurenine. Can someone more knowledgeable please explain how this relates to Ray's suggestions, or is this research somehow bogus?
A wealth of earlier research by these scientists and others had shown that aerobic exercise, in both mice and people, increases the production within muscles of an enzyme called PGC-1alpha. In particular, exercise raises levels of a specific subtype of the enzyme known unimaginatively as PGC-1alpha1. [...] But the scientists knew that the PGC-1alpha1 was almost certainly not directly protecting the animals’ brains. It doesn’t work that way [...] So the scientists looked for which processes were being most notably intensified in their PGC-1alpha1-rich mice. They found one in particular, involving a substance called kynurenine that accumulates in human and animal bloodstreams after stress. Kynurenine can pass the blood-brain barrier and, in animal studies, has been shown to cause damaging inflammation in the brain, leading, it is thought, to depression. [...] But in the mice with high levels of PGC-1alpha1, the kynurenine produced by stress was set upon almost immediately by another protein expressed in response to signals from the PGC-1alpha1.[highlight=#ffff80]This protein changed the kynurenine, breaking it into its component parts, which, interestingly, could not pass the blood-brain barrier[/highlight]
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kynurenine
L-Kynurenine is a metabolite of the amino acid L-tryptophan used in the production of niacin.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kynurenine_pathway:
The kynurenine pathway is a metabolic pathway leading to the production of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) from the degradation of the essential amino acid tryptophan.
As far as I understand tryptophan either goes to serotonin (bad in Peatland) or to niacin (good). But the pathway to niacin is the one that creates kynurenine. Can someone more knowledgeable please explain how this relates to Ray's suggestions, or is this research somehow bogus?