Bernstein goes against American Diabetes Association orthodoxy on a lot of things, but in my opinion ADA orthodoxy is one of the biggest contributors to diabetics getting worse, not better. I wish my mom had known about Dr. Bernstein — she might be alive today.

My best wishes to you & your wife.

– Mel

I'm not actually a Type 2 diabetic, but rather prediabetic, doing whatever I can to change my diet/lifestyle to prevent myself from becoming fully diabetic.

But, too your question — I guess how I wrote it didn't make it clear. As I understand it, no, you don't actually need a high carb intake to make 5-HTP work efficiently to synthesize serotonin. Rather, you supplement with 5-HTP in order to make the serotonin without having to eat so many carbs.

Let me see if I can explain it another way. Okay, you know already that eating carbs causes the body to secrete insulin. The insulin has two effects relevant here: (1) it tries to take care of the blood sugar from all the carbs — which is problematic in prediabetics & Type 2 diabetics); (2) it forces the amino acids OTHER than tryptophan into the muscle tissues, so that tryptophan has no competition in riding that carrier cell across the blood/brain barrier. The reason a depressed person eats carbs — "comfort foods" as they say — is because of that second effect: once in the brain, the tryptophan can be used to synthesize 5-HTP, which in turn is used to synthesize serotonin, which in turn makes the depressed person feel better.

But if you just take 5-HTP as a supplement instead — you can skip the high carbs AND the high blood sugar. The 5-HTP doesn't need that carrier molecule to pass through the blood/brain barrier, & thus doesn't need insulin's help to move competing amino acids out of the way. No need to eat those carbs. Which is fortunate for people like your wife & me, because high carbs is the last thing we need.

In fact, I think its arguable that a lot of the problem with depression to begin with is how blood sugars fluctuate all over the place when an insulin resistant person (diabetic or prediabetic) eats a diet high in carbs, especially highly refined carbs. We eat a lot of carbs, our blood sugar skyrockets, the insulin kicks in, our blood sugar crashes… & our mood crashes too. The authors of that book Hunger Free Forever refer to this as blood sugar volatility. But what we need is stable blood sugars. So — I eat a moderate to low-carb diet to keep my blood sugars stable, & I supplement with 5-HTP to assist me in keeping my mood stable. (I'm also an Alaskan, which means I don't get natural sunlight during a lot of the year to get enough Vitamin D, so I supplement with that too.)

The article that I linked is actually fairly readable for a layperson, & it might help explain better than I just did. 5-HTP is apparently used very widely in Europe instead of the antidepressants that are pushed so heavily in the U.S. 5-HTP is available in the supplements section of most natural food stores. No prescription needed.

Hope this helps.

– Mel