Dietary tyrosine as an aid to stress resistance among troops.

ABSTRACT

In past conflicts battle stress casualties have caused a serious exit of troops from the frontlines. Recent research has linked stress-caused impairments of performance with depletion of brain stores of the neurotransmitter norepinephrine (NE), which functions in neural tracts responding to stress. The amino acid tyrosine (TYR) is the dietary precursor for NE, and supplementation with TYR has been demonstrated in the laboratory to alleviate declines in both neural NE and performance during stress. Thus, TYR supplementation might help to prevent and treat stress casualties in combat. Further research is called for to verify this hypothesis.