5-HTP 100mg, Griffonia Seed

Description

5-HTP 100mg is one capsule of 5-hydroxytryptophan taken from the seed of Griffonia simplicifolia, a West African climbing shrub that is still the only commercial source of the compound. The bottle holds 60 capsules and the serving is one of them, so 60 servings, about 45 cents each. The shell is enteric coated, which means it is built to stay shut through stomach acid and open further down the tract. The label on this 5-HTP 100mg bottle says one at a time rather than two, and that instruction is printed for a reason set out further down the page.

What is in the capsule

The 5-htp 100mg figure against the doses in the literature

Published human work on 5-hydroxytryptophan has clustered between 100 and 300 mg a day, usually split across two or three intakes rather than taken in one go, and the endpoints the investigators recorded were rating scale scores and sleep diary entries. One 5-HTP 100mg capsule is the bottom step of that range and the one that divides cleanly, which is why the amount is printed on the front rather than buried in the panel. That paragraph describes what the trials administered and recorded. It is not a statement about what this bottle does for anyone, and nothing else on this page is either.

The practical consequence of that range is that you can read a paper and read a label and get the same units out of both. Plenty of bottles in this corner of the shelf hold 50 mg, which halves the comparison, or 200 mg, which removes the option of starting at the bottom. We stock the 100 mg step because it is the one that maps onto the literature without arithmetic. Our note on what starting low actually means goes through the general version of that argument.

Why the coating is on the panel

Enteric coating is a delivery choice, not a potency claim. In the published trials the complaint reported most often was nausea, and the material used in those studies was mostly uncoated powder at 200 mg and above. A coated 5-HTP 100mg capsule is measured by its disintegration time in acid, which is a specification a laboratory can check, so it belongs on a certificate rather than in an adjective. The coating also means the capsule should be swallowed whole. Opening one and stirring the contents into a drink defeats the only feature you paid extra for. The same reasoning sits behind our note on choosing a format when the absorption data is thin.

Testing on this lot

Every lot of 5-HTP 100mg goes to a laboratory with no ownership tie to this company. Identity is confirmed by chromatography, the assay checks that a 5-HTP 100mg capsule holds 100 mg, and heavy metals and microbials are screened alongside. The chromatogram is published with the certificate rather than summarised, because an unexpected peak in a botanical extract is exactly the sort of thing a summary line hides. Any lot assaying under its printed amount is withdrawn from sale, and the failing certificate stays up where anyone can read it. The reasoning is in why we publish the batch that failed.

Two practical notes

5-hydroxytryptophan sits on the same metabolic path as several prescription medicines, so this is one to take to a pharmacist before stacking it with anything, antidepressants in particular. Second, it is a food under United States law and is described here by composition only. The NIH Office of Dietary Supplements fact sheet library is the plainest free reference if you want that regulatory framing from a source that sells nothing at all.

The rest of the night time shelf, including the melatonin options down at 300 micrograms, sits on the sleep and calm page, and the wider range is indexed on supplements index. The 5-HTP 100mg certificate for the lot you are sent is linked on this page and archived with every other one on lab results.