The following Mark's Daily Apple article was written by Mark Sisson

and is narrated by Tina Lehman.

Ten tips to boost your serotonin levels.

Serotonin is a major regulator of mood and depression risk.

These are important vital roles to be sure.

Your mood describes how you experience and interpret the world.

If it's consistently bad, you're going to have a rough time.

Yet serotonin is much more than the feel-good hormone.

It also influences sexual desire and helps us remember.

It's the precursor to melatonin, the neurotransmitter that helps us to sleep.

Although we may think of serotonin as a neurotransmitter acting on the brain, our guts are the biggest

producers of serotonin. About 90% of the serotonin in our bodies is produced in the gut, where it

helps trigger the contractions that push food through the GI tract and initiates nausea and

vomiting when necessary. That's not the focus of today's post on brain serotonin boosters, but I thought you'd find it interesting.

Okay, so how can someone with inadequate serotonin levels boost the available serotonin in their

brains?

Number one, eat animal protein.

We often forget that thoughts and feelings aren't just

ephemera floating around inside our heads without a material representative. Every thought,

feeling, emotion, or mood we experience is a physical thing made of matter. We don't just feel

better. To feel better, we manufacture serotonin using an amino acid called

triptophan as the precursor. Whether it's turkey, eggs, dairy, beef, lamb, chicken, or fish,

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