What is the Best L-Dopa Supplement?

Dopamine is a brain chemical that plays a role in our mood, attention, learning, motivation, and memory. Dopamine is also important in sleep regulation and decision-making. Usually, your body’s nervous system manages dopamine production, but medical conditions and lifestyle factors may cause dopamine levels to decline. For some people, an L-dopa supplement may be helpful.

• L-dopa is a dopamine precursor
• Using an L-dopa supplement can increase dopamine levels in your body
• L-dopa is also known as levodopa, and it’s a key ingredient in many Parkinson’s treatments
• L-dopa is able to cross the blood-brain barrier and convert to dopamine

What is Dopamine Deficiency?

Dopamine is both a hormone and a neurotransmitter.

As a neurotransmitter, dopamine transmits nerve signals and helps send messages throughout our body. As such, dopamine plays an important role in how your brain can send nerve signals.

Some of the functions that dopamine plays a role in include:

• Motivation
• Reward
• Learning
• Memory
• Movement

Dopamine deficiency is linked to Parkinson’s disease, addiction, and schizophrenia.

Signs of low dopamine can be widely varied and may include:

• Problems with concentration or motivation
• Depression
• Memory lapses
• Restless leg syndrome
• Shaking hands or tremors
• Low sex drive
• Symptoms of ADHD
• Inability to feel pleasure

There are different factors linked to dopamine deficiency, including lifestyle and genetics. Health, chronic medical conditions, and age can lead to low dopamine.

How to Increase Dopamine

There isn’t an official diagnosis of low dopamine; rather, it’s considered part of other illnesses. A blood test can determine how much dopamine is in the blood, but there isn’t a test to see how the brain responds to dopamine.

If you believe you have low dopamine levels, you can speak to your doctor about lifestyle changes you could make to help improve your levels and how well the brain uses them.

Lifestyle changes that may be beneficial if you have low dopamine include taking vitamin D and omega-3 supplements, using a magnesium supplement, and getting enough physical activity.

What about L-Dopa?

Along with lifestyle changes, you should speak to your doctor about an L-dopa supplement if you think you have low dopamine symptoms.

L-dopa is an amino acid produced by the amino acid L-tyrosine in humans.

L-dopa is a direct dopamine precursor.

There are drugs used in treating Parkinson’s disease with L-dopa, but also L-dopa supplements are available. The most well-known and best L-dopa supplement is mucuna pruriens.

L-dopa is unique from dopamine because it crosses the blood-brain barrier, and Dopamine is broken down before it can reach the brain. What that means is that L-dopa has the potential to make it to your brain and then, once there, increase dopamine levels.

Mucuna Pruriens and Dopamine Production

As was touched on, the best L-dopa supplement is mucuna pruriens. Mucuna pruriens is also known as the dopa bean. Long used in Ayurveda, this adaptogen may help reduce stress, boost libido, improve mood, and increase focus.

Mucuna pruriens contains high natural levels of L-dopa.

Mucuna pruriens, as a result, are sometimes called the magic bean and the velvet bean.

An L-dopa supplement like mucuna pruriens can help support your body’s natural dopamine production.

L-dopa Benefits

L-dopa is used to treat Parkinson’s disease in prescription medications. Regarding supplement form, L-dopa is used to help with depression, anxiety, and ADHD.

L-dopa benefits from using a mucuna pruriens supplement can include:

• Research in 2014 found that mucuna pruriens effectively reduced anxiety in rats. Researchers found significant anti-anxiety effects.
• Mucuna pruriens can help treat depression and stress.
• Since L-dopa can boost learning and reaction time, taking mucuna pruriens may help with cognition and productivity. There was a study of adults who were given a 200 mg dose of synthetic L-dopa, which improved their visual reaction time. A separate study found L-dopa improved new-word learning in adults.
• L-dopa benefits may include decreased cortisol levels.
• In research, men given L-dopa supplements like mucuna pruriens were found to have improved semen quality and sperm count.

Dosage

If you take an L-dopa supplement such as mucuna pruriens, what dosage should you take?

Read the instructions of the supplement itself. However, you can usually take an L-dopa dosage of up to 1,000 mg daily without any side effects. Any higher than that, and you may experience side effects.

When you take an L-dopa supplement, you should also cycle on and off so that you don’t become tolerant of the effects. For example, take an L-dopa supplement four or five days a week and then take the other two days off.

You can take certain supplements with L-dopa to improve its effects, and L-tyrosine is one that you should stack with L-dopa. You should also take Rhodiola and N-Acetyl Cysteine.

Are There Side Effects to Be Aware Of?

When you take a supplement, L-dopa side effects are usually pretty minimal.

The most common L-dopa side effects are nausea and abdominal bloating. Other potential side effects of L-dopa are insomnia,  headache, and confusion, but side effects are rare.

If you have cardiovascular disease, you may need to avoid L-dopa supplements because they can cause low blood pressure upon standing, fainting, and dizziness. L-dopa can also reduce blood sugar levels.

If you have a diagnosed mental illness, L-dopa could worsen it.

There are some interactions an L-dopa supplement can have with other medications.

For example, if you take an MAOI for depression, it could interfere with an L-dopa supplement.

Before taking anything, including an L-dopa supplement, speak to your doctor.

The Best L-Dopa Supplements

The following are some of our top picks for the best L-dopa supplements available.