The holidays can be a stressful time of year for many people. Cold, gloomy weather can ruin your disposition. Lack of sleep or insomnia leads to low energy and motivation. Planning transportation and accommodations for out of town guests, holiday shopping, and cooking can all cause blood pressure to rise.
These outside stressors cause unhealthy imbalances in physical chemistry, which can have a downward spiral effect and can result in depression. While there are many ways to combat the less-than-joyful aspects of the holiday season, a beneficial addition to your daily nutrition is a supplement called 5-htp.
The supplement, which is also known as Hydroxytryptophan, is an amino acid necessary for the production of serotonin, a naturally occurring chemical that helps regulate feelings of happiness and peacefulness. Serotonin is also linked to biological factors such as mood, memory, sleep regulation, appetite, and metabolism.
As negative outside influences can have physical and emotional effects on the body, 5-htp can be helpful to give internal chemistry a boost. No prescription is required for the natural supplement, so people experiencing negative changes in their sleep or eating patterns can easily add it to their daily routine to lower anxiety.
There are many benefits to adding the supplement to a regular diet. One of the most influential is directly related to diet and appetite. A large part of unhealthy mental and physical tendencies during holiday times involves emotional eating to combat feelings of dissatisfaction in other aspects of life. Often times this emotional over-eating involves food which is unhealthy and during the holidays the effect is only increased due to abundant access to foods rich in fats, sweets, and carbohydrates. A Thanksgiving or Christmas table can be loaded with red flags.
A change in your diet not only may result in changes in mood or overall physical well-being, but can cause weight gain which continues beyond the holiday season. Because the 5-htp supplement helps to correct an imbalance or deficit in serotonin in the body, people who take it will feel more relaxed and happy, increasing their ability to regularly get a full night’s sleep, and decreasing their need to distract from exasperating situations with unhealthy food.
During a time of year when adding any angst to your plate is less than ideal, 5-htp is an easy solution to increase happiness, decrease worries, and lessen emotional over-eating. In fact, you might just find that there’s a lot less on your plate.
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