NOW Supplements, DOPA Mucuna, Standardized Mucuna Extract with Naturally Occurring 15% L-Dopa, 90 Veg Capsules

TLDR: To treat symptoms of low dopamine levels, here's what's working for me:500-700mg Glutamine (amino acid, a major brain neurotransmitter) 1-3 times per day before food.1/32 teaspoon of this mucuna pruriens (~7 mg L-dopa) every 1-2 days, watching effects.600 mg of acetyl l-carnitine before breakfastOther vitamins and minerals, especially BsUpdate 3/23/23--I am feeling mentally and physically alert, a huge improvement. (see caution below)Last summer I was prescribed the smallest possible dose of a dopamine-boosting CNS med, 5mg. After decades of untreated symptoms, I felt calm relief for the first time in my long life. Then in December, the HMO denied me further prescriptions and treated me like an addict for having asked for more. They also tried to force an antidepressant on me that would affect the absolutely wrong mechanism and worsen anxiety and sleeplessness without compensating for the low dopamine. Their timing was especially cruel. My heart goes out to all Americans who experience this medical bullying.I did not want to bother with this department further. Instead, I revisited my nutritional supplements (which I keep on an excel spreadsheet, and periodically adjust).I also suspected the CNS drug was causing symptoms of peripheral neuropathy, specifically numbness in toes, feet and lower legs. A neurologist found some long nerves to be unresponsive. (Update: Probably due to potassium deficiency, from drinking reverse osmosis water for 1.5 years, which strips out *all* useful minerals. I started taking 99mg/day potassium chloride--NuSalt--and drank filtered tap water again. Feeling slowly restored in feet and toes. Neuropathy runs in family but I feel much better.)My first choice for treating my scrambled low-dopamine brain was to take the amino acid glutamine. Gives me an immediate mental boost and durable energy, and is curbing cravings, especially for sugar. Glutamine is likely not toxic until you take massive quantities (at my weight, that would be 38 grams per day instead of 2 grams max). (google side effects of amino acid supplements)I also took one 400 mg cap of this this mucuna pruriens in the morning. Like other reviewers here, after an initial boost, in just a few days I had fatigue, blurry vision and brain fog.Stopped it for a week. Brain fog cleared. Took one pill per week, same thing. Read the label more closely. The dosage of this capsule is just too dang high.So I emptied some capsules and measured. Each capsule = ~1/4 teaspoon product = 60mg L-dopa. L-dopa does cross the blood-brain barrier and it's the precursor for dopamine. I don't know how that compares with the 5mg of my CNS drug but it was waaaay too much for me.Stopped taking altogether and was dragging and unfocused within a week. I reduced dosage further.Now I am taking about 1/32 tsp of this powdered product in my coffee before breakfast, every day. Am feeling energetic and calm throughout the day. Not speeded or anxious. The idea is to microdose--hopefully kickstart your own dopamine production, rather than replace it chemically.Plus, about 600 mg of acetyl l-carnitine in my prebreakfast cocktail, which I have noticed gives me energy and focus.We will see. I'll be watching this mucuna very closely as I don't want to develop a habituation as some have reported.3/23/23--Because I'm now feeling good, I will next stop for a couple of days to see the impact.4/25--Have not taken any more mucuna. I think it did help me for that time. But other medical issues took precedence including thyroid. Things get more complicated at 60+. And, um, reducing wine consumption to 1 bottle red per month definitely helped my alertness.Good luck to all.

If you know what POIS is and suffer to some degree from it, this may help, it helped me greatly. Suffice to say, if to take 2 of these the same day or next, it may help decrease irritability and eliminate brain fog. For me, it really helped. Used to be very irritable/brain fog/low motivation for up to a week, but with these, I no longer have those symptoms. I did a lot of research on this and tried various things, but this really helped with that. It seems like for me, I had low dopamine and naturally it would take quite sometime to recover after a POIS event, but supplementing with this, helps my body with the raw material needed to restore dopamine levels. I recommend if you try it for this, start with 1 pill after the POIS event, followed up by 2 more days of one pill a day and see how your symptoms are. If they are improved, stop taking it until you need it again after the POIS event, as I find that taking it everyday without a POIS event can negatively affect sleep, regardless of when you take it (day/night.) Instead of a typical 8 hour sleep, I was getting 6 or less hours sleep when taking it everyday when I didn't need to. You also may find it giving you strong focus and drive initially, but for me, that wore off after a week, it was pretty intense though.UPDATE: 4/2/2023 -- While this works OK for POIS in my experience, after 4 months of using this, I found it's slow to get back to a pre-POIS state....then I found Tongkat Ali, with that, there's no lag/no delay, you feel 92%ish percent back at pre-POIS the next day, so I'm thinking it's directly related to Testosterone. My Total and Free Test levels went from 554ng/dl and 66.8 pg/ml to 815/82 respectively. I'm using this now [ Nootropics Depot Tongkat Ali Extract Capsules | 200mg | 60 Count | 2% Eurycomanone by HPTLC | Eurycoma longifolia Root Extract ]: https://www.amazon.com/Tongkat-Capsules-Eurycomanone-Eurycoma-longifolia/dp/B088GQDV76TRT maybe also a solution, but I prefer at this moment to use a herb root that has been researched for it's effectiveness (works with me as expected) then full blown TRT with it's own set of issues. Please note, if you have normal/high test levels, this won't probably work for you.