Tyramine – correction

Special thanks to Dawn, a HeadWay subscriber, who caught a mistake in the last issue of our free e-zine.

I called tyramine an amino acid, which it is not (as far as I understand it!).  But it is related.  If I’ve got it right this time, it’s actually called an amine or monoamine, an organic compound which helps to make up the various kinds of amino acids.  In this case, as Dawn said, tyramine "is actually a breakdown product of Tyrosine, which IS an amino acid".

Dawn is a former biochemistry student, which is a good thing because this is not a simple topic.  In fact, I found a number of sources that called tyramine an amino acid, both online and off.  It can get pretty complicated, because when we’re dealing with cluster headaches or migraine, we’re often talking about chain reactions – one thing is a breakdown of another, which leads to the creation of this, which triggers that.  It can be easy to get mixed up about what comes next in the chain, and which molecule is which!

It doesn’t really make an immediate difference what you call it – if you avoid it in your diet, and if it helps you, great!  But it’s important to be accurate because the better we understand the details, the closer we’ll be to finding solutions, instead of chasing shadows.  Thanks, Dawn!