Excerpted from Smart Life News . All rights reserved . One of the changes that I have noted is that my son is no longer constipated. He thinks that Down's children may not be suffering from Hirschsprungs's disease, but from a serotonin deficiency.
Peristalsis is under the influence of the cholinergic and serotoninergic nervous systems.
Cholinergic neurons use acetylcholine as a neurotransmitter, which is why choline, DMAE and vitamin B-5 increase peristalsis and stimulate bowel movements. Although I have suggested cholinergic stimulation to mothers with constipated children, it has not seemed to work as well in children with Down's syndrome as it does in the general population. It is possible that the constipation problem in Down's syndrome is due to serotoninergic deficit, rather than a cholinergic deficit as I had first assumed. In retrospect, it makes perfect sense. It seems likely that 5-HTP supplementation would achieve the same serotoninergic effect in the gut as Prozac.