Mood Support
Best-in-class: Deproloft-HF
Thorne's Deproloft-HF, now sold under the name Emotion Balance Support. Per 2-capsule serving: vitamin C 250 mg, P5P 5 mg, L-5-MTHF 667 mcg DFE, methylcobalamin 550 mcg, pantothenate 130 mg, iodine 68 mcg, L-tyrosine 200 mg, 5-HTP 50 mg, eleuthero 50 mg, GABA 50 mg and rhodiola 50 mg. There is no St John's Wort in it -- the serotonergic ingredient is the 5-HTP.
Mood Support quick facts
| Suggested dose | As directed. |
| How often | Daily |
| Who it's for | Mild mood support within a broader plan. |
Check the components against your prescriptions before anything else, and that is the first thing to do rather than an afterthought — this one contains 5-HTP, 100 mg a day at the label direction, so the serotonin syndrome risk applies in full to the blend. It contains no St John's Wort, so the CYP induction and contraceptive failure that follow that herb around do not apply, whatever the older copy on this site said. The methylation components are the safest and often the most useful part, particularly where homocysteine is raised. Persistent low mood deserves a professional rather than a formula.
How Mood Support actually works
A blend targeting the monoamine and methylation routes together — here, 5-HTP as serotonin substrate, P5P as the decarboxylase cofactor that turns it into serotonin, L-5-MTHF and methylcobalamin for the methylation cycle, L-tyrosine for the catecholamine side, and rhodiola and eleuthero for the cortisol contribution.
Where to get Mood Support
Buy Deproloft-HF at Thorne →The evidence for Mood Support
Graded by what exists behind each claim.
✅ Clinically validated
- 5-HTP is the one component with mood trials behind it, and they are small and older; it is also the component that carries the interaction.
- B-vitamin and methylation support underpins neurotransmitter synthesis — P5P, methylcobalamin and L-5-MTHF are all in active forms here.
📊 Correlative data
- Low methylation and B-vitamin status track with mood disorders.
🧪 Theoretical / extrapolated benefits
- Blend-level synergy is reasonable but not specifically trial-proven.
How to read these tiers: they say how much human evidence exists, not how well something works — and ✗ flags harm, never a disappointing trial. How the evidence tiers work →
What Mood Support actually does
Start with the fact that changes this whole page: there is no St John's Wort in this product. The label filed with the NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database lists, per two-capsule serving taken twice daily: vitamin C 250 mg, vitamin B6 as pyridoxal 5'-phosphate 5 mg, folate 667 mcg DFE including L-5-methyltetrahydrofolate as the glucosamine salt, vitamin B12 as methylcobalamin 550 mcg, pantothenic acid 130 mg, iodine as potassium iodide 68 mcg, L-tyrosine 200 mg, 5-HTP 50 mg, eleuthero root extract 50 mg, GABA 50 mg and rhodiola extract 50 mg NIH DSLD 291780. No Hypericum anywhere — which matters, because for years the category description for a product like this one opened with St John's Wort and warned about its interactions. The interaction that actually belongs to this formula is the 5-HTP.
Two of these ingredients bypass a rate-limiting enzyme, which is the real mechanism of the formula. Serotonin synthesis is limited by tryptophan hydroxylase; 5-HTP is that enzyme's product, so taking it steps past the control point entirely. Catecholamine synthesis is limited by tyrosine hydroxylase; L-tyrosine is that enzyme's substrate, and tyrosine hydroxylase is feedback-inhibited by the catecholamines it makes — so substrate loading only does anything when the enzyme is not already product-inhibited, which is to say under acute stress or depletion. One ingredient jumps the queue; the other joins it.
And the formula supplies the cofactor for the enzyme that acts on both — which is more double-edged than it looks. Aromatic L-amino acid decarboxylase converts 5-HTP to serotonin and L-DOPA to dopamine, and it uses pyridoxal 5'-phosphate. This product contains 5 mg of B6 already in the P5P form NIH DSLD 291780, skipping the pyridoxal kinase activation step. That is elegant if the decarboxylation you want is in the brain. The complication, which no label mentions, is that aromatic L-amino acid decarboxylase is abundant in gut, liver, kidney and blood vessels, so supplying its cofactor accelerates the peripheral conversion too — converting 5-HTP to serotonin before it can cross into the brain. That is a reasoned extrapolation from established enzymology rather than a measured result, and it is the most interesting untested question in this bottle.
The rest of the formula is a methylation cycle and two adaptogens. Methylfolate and methylcobalamin are the substrate and the cofactor of methionine synthase — the same enzyme, from both sides Prinz-Langenohl 2009. Vitamin C is the cofactor of dopamine beta-hydroxylase, the step from dopamine to noradrenaline, so its presence beside tyrosine is not incidental. Rhodiola and eleuthero are the adaptogen arm. GABA is a zwitterion with poor passive membrane permeability, and whether oral GABA reaches the adult brain at all remains unsettled, with the gut-brain axis rather than direct entry as the proposed route Liwinski 2023.
Cell, rodent, human — and where it stops
Read the doses per day, not per serving, and then compare. The label is two capsules twice daily, so a full day delivers roughly 5-HTP 100 mg, L-tyrosine 400 mg, rhodiola 100 mg, eleuthero 100 mg, GABA 100 mg, folate about 1,334 mcg DFE, B12 1,100 mcg, B6 10 mg, pantothenic acid 260 mg, vitamin C 500 mg and iodine 136 mcg NIH DSLD 291780.
5-HTP. The largest synthesis of this field — a network meta-analysis of 192 trials in 17,437 participants across 44 nutraceuticals for depressive disorder — found EPA with DHA, S-adenosylmethionine and curcumin the strongest as monotherapy and as adjuncts Cheng 2025. 5-HTP was not among them. And the trials that do exist for it enrolled people with a diagnosis, generally at 150 to 300 mg a day; this formula delivers 100 mg NIH DSLD 291780.
Rhodiola, where the dose gap is starkest. Sixty people with stress-related fatigue took the standardized extract SHR-5 at 576 mg/day for 28 days and improved on burnout scores, attention indices and the cortisol awakening response Olsson 2009. A separate randomized trial in 161 cadets aged 19 to 21 gave two doses of the same extract and reported an antifatigue index of 1.0385 and 1.0195 against 0.9046 for placebo, p < 0.001, with no significant difference between the two doses Shevtsov 2003. One hundred milligrams a day is about a sixth of Olsson's dose and below both cadet arms.
The methylation arm is the only one with a blood read-out, and the read-out has limits. [6S]-5-methyltetrahydrofolate raises plasma folate more effectively than folic acid, particularly in women carrying the MTHFR 677 variant Prinz-Langenohl 2009, so the form chosen here is the right one. But lowering homocysteine with B vitamins did not reduce cardiovascular disease, cancer or all-cause mortality in pooled randomized evidence Clarke 2010 — which is the correct caution against treating a falling homocysteine as proof that something clinically good is happening.
The obstacle, and for this product it has three parts. The trial populations had diagnoses — depressive disorder Cheng 2025, stress-related fatigue and burnout Olsson 2009 — and the reader has a flat fortnight. The doses are below the trials for the botanical arm and at the bottom for 5-HTP NIH DSLD 291780. And there is no trial of this combination, so the only claim the product itself supports is that the ingredients are in the bottle.
Mood Support — which form, and does it matter
The form choices in the vitamin arm are unusually good, and worth saying so. Folate is supplied as L-5-methyltetrahydrofolate rather than folic acid, which is the form with the better plasma response and which does not depend on methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase activity Prinz-Langenohl 2009. B12 is methylcobalamin rather than cyanocobalamin. B6 is pyridoxal 5'-phosphate rather than pyridoxine hydrochloride, which skips the pyridoxal kinase step. Whoever formulated the vitamin half knew what they were doing NIH DSLD 291780.
The 5-HTP is immediate-release, and that is the form question that matters. Oral 5-HTP has a short plasma half-life and is decarboxylated peripherally, so an immediate-release dose produces a spike and a trough rather than a sustained exposure. Nothing in this product is a modified-release form, and the twice-daily schedule NIH DSLD 291780 is what stands in for one.
The botanical extracts are named but not characterized. The label reads “rhodiola extract 50 mg” and “eleuthero root extract 50 mg” NIH DSLD 291780. The rhodiola evidence belongs to a specific standardized extract, SHR-5, at 576 mg/day Olsson 2009; without a rosavin and salidroside percentage the 50 mg cannot be placed on that scale at all.
The iodine deserves a sentence nobody gives it. Potassium iodide at 136 mcg a day NIH DSLD 291780 is close to a full adult requirement, in a product bought for mood, with no mood rationale printed. If you also take a multivitamin, a kelp product or a thyroid support formula, that is a stacked iodine intake you did not choose.
And check whether it still exists. Every filed label for this product in the NIH database is marked off market, the most recent in June 2023 NIH DSLD 291780. Formulations change between versions; the doses on this page are the ones on the last filed label, and the box in front of you may not match.
What would have to be true, and how you would know it was not
1. Homocysteine at week 0 and week 8, because it is the only number in this formula with a mechanism behind it. Predict a fall only if it was raised to begin with, and predict none if your vitamin B12 and folate were already replete Prinz-Langenohl 2009. And predict, separately, that a falling homocysteine will not by itself tell you your mood improved — pooled randomized evidence found homocysteine lowering did not deliver the outcomes it was expected to Clarke 2010.
2. One written mood number, same time each evening, from before day one. If anything shifts inside the first fortnight, suspect 5-HTP or expectation rather than the adaptogens: rhodiola's own randomized evidence needed 28 days at roughly six times the dose in this bottle Olsson 2009 NIH DSLD 291780.
3. The prediction that cuts against the product. Predict the GABA does nothing you can detect. One hundred milligrams a day of an amino acid with poor passive brain penetration is not a sedative dose, and the human evidence for oral GABA remains limited, with a gut-brain route rather than direct entry as the proposal Liwinski 2023. Predict, equally, that the tyrosine at 400 mg does nothing on an ordinary day, because substrate loading of a product-inhibited enzyme has room to work only under acute stress or depletion.
What will fool you, and it is the reason placebo arms exist in this field: mild to moderate low mood improves on its own a great deal of the time, and across eight weeks that natural recovery is more than large enough to look exactly like a working formula. If low mood is persistent, or there are thoughts of self-harm, that is an appointment rather than an experiment.
What nobody has tested yet
Nobody has asked whether the B6 in this formula wastes its own 5-HTP. Aromatic L-amino acid decarboxylase needs pyridoxal 5'-phosphate and is abundant in peripheral tissue; this product supplies both the substrate and the active cofactor NIH DSLD 291780. Measuring plasma 5-HTP and plasma serotonin after 5-HTP given with and without P5P would say whether co-dosing B6 raises or lowers the fraction reaching the brain. It is one crossover study with two assays, and it has not been done for any 5-HTP product.
Nobody has tested 5-HTP at 100 mg a day in people without a diagnosis. The depression literature runs at 150 to 300 mg in diagnosed patients and did not put 5-HTP among the best-supported agents Cheng 2025. A subthreshold dose in a subthreshold population is exactly the cell of the table nobody has filled in.
Nobody has run a low-dose rhodiola arm. The randomized evidence sits at 340 to 576 mg of a characterized extract Olsson 2009 Shevtsov 2003; whether 100 mg of an uncharacterized extract does anything is untested, and it is the dose most blends actually use.
And this combination has never been compared with its own components. Eleven actives, no combination trial, and a price that assumes the assembly is worth more than the parts.
Mood Support — its own safety story, not its category's
The serious interaction in this bottle is 5-HTP, and it is not diluted by being in a blend. One hundred milligrams a day of a direct serotonin precursor NIH DSLD 291780 taken alongside an SSRI, an SNRI, a tricyclic, a monoamine oxidase inhibitor, tramadol, a triptan, linezolid or dextromethorphan is a serotonin syndrome risk. The presentation is agitation, sweating, tremor, hyperreflexia, clonus and fever, and it can develop within hours. If you take any antidepressant, this product needs clearing with a prescriber before the first capsule, not after.
Peripheral serotonin is the source of the common side effects. Most 5-HTP is decarboxylated outside the brain, and serotonin in the gut is what produces the nausea, cramping and loose stools that people report on this class. Taking it with food reduces it and also changes absorption.
The warning most mood blends carry is the wrong one for this product. St John's Wort and contraceptive failure is the standard caution in this category, and the filed label for this formula contains no St John's Wort NIH DSLD 291780. That warning is correct for many mood blends and is not correct for this one — which is a reason to read the panel on the box you are holding rather than the category page, in both directions.
Iodine, tyrosine and the thyroid. A daily 136 mcg of iodine with 400 mg of tyrosine NIH DSLD 291780 is a thyroid-relevant combination in a mood product. In autoimmune thyroid disease iodine intake matters and can worsen things; if you have Hashimoto's or Graves' disease this is a formula to clear rather than assume. Tyrosine also needs care alongside monoamine oxidase inhibitors.
Rhodiola is stimulating, and the schedule is twice daily. The second serving lands in the afternoon by design NIH DSLD 291780. If sleep worsens in week one, move the second dose earlier before concluding the product does not suit you.
Who should not take it: anyone on any serotonergic medication without prescriber clearance; anyone with bipolar disorder, since serotonergic and stimulating ingredients both carry switch risk; anyone with autoimmune thyroid disease who has not accounted for the iodine; anyone pregnant or breastfeeding; and anyone whose low mood is persistent, worsening, or accompanied by thoughts of self-harm, for whom the correct next step is a clinician rather than a bottle.
Sources read for this page
- NIH DSLD 291780. Dietary Supplement Label Database record for Deproloft-HF (Thorne), label ID 291780, marked off market 14 June 2023. NIH Office of Dietary Supplements
- Cheng YC, et al. Comparative efficacy and tolerability of nutraceuticals for depressive disorder: A systematic review and network meta-analysis. Psychological Medicine 2025 · PMID 40314175
- Olsson EM, von Scheele B, Panossian AG. A randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-group study of the standardised extract shr-5 of the roots of Rhodiola rosea in the treatment of subjects with stress-related fatigue. Planta Medica 2009 · PMID 19016404
- Shevtsov VA, et al. A randomized trial of two different doses of a SHR-5 Rhodiola rosea extract versus placebo and control of capacity for mental work. Phytomedicine 2003 · PMID 12725561
- Liwinski T, et al. Exploring the Therapeutic Potential of Gamma-Aminobutyric Acid in Stress and Depressive Disorders through the Gut-Brain Axis. Biomedicines 2023 · PMID 38137351
- Prinz-Langenohl R, et al. [6S]-5-methyltetrahydrofolate increases plasma folate more effectively than folic acid in women with the homozygous or wild-type 677C-->T polymorphism of methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase. British Journal of Pharmacology, 2009 · PMID 19917061
- Clarke R, et al. Effects of lowering homocysteine levels with B vitamins on cardiovascular disease, cancer, and cause-specific mortality: Meta-analysis of 8 randomized trials involving 37 485 individuals. Archives of Internal Medicine, 2010 · PMID 20937919
How you would know if it worked
Half of this formula is B vitamins and methyl donors, and that half has a number attached. If the methylation arm is doing anything, homocysteine comes down; if your B12 and folate were already fine it will not move, and you are paying for the St John's Wort on its own. A raised homocysteine sitting on top of a low B12 is also a correctable cause of low mood in its own right, which is worth ruling in before a botanical takes the credit.
- Vitamin B12 Retest: 8–12 weeks after starting supplementation.
- Homocysteine Retest: 8–12 weeks after starting B vitamins.
- Folate, Serum Retest: 8–12 weeks after supplementation.
The cheapest panel carrying Vitamin B12 and at least one other of these is On Metformin — the B12 Nobody Checks, at $170 — the panel is named for a different question, and the marker is the same marker. That is the whole cost of finding out.
Draw before you start, not after. A result with nothing to compare it to answers nothing.
Mood Support — safety & side effects
- The serotonergic ingredient is 5-HTP, not St John's Wort. Thorne's formula does not contain Hypericum, so the contraceptive failure and CYP3A4 induction that follow St John's Wort around are not this product's problem. What is: 50 mg of 5-HTP per 2-capsule serving, at a label direction of two capsules twice daily — 100 mg a day. Do not combine with SSRIs, SNRIs, MAOIs, triptans or tramadol without medical supervision. Serotonin syndrome is rare but it is a genuine emergency — agitation, tremor, fever, rigidity — and the risk is additive rather than threshold-based.
- The label carries its own contraindication: do not use if pregnant or nursing. Rhodiola and eleuthero are activating for some people, so the second serving is better taken early than late.
- It is a mood support, not an antidepressant, and nothing on this page is a reason to reduce a prescribed one. The 5-HTP is precisely why running both is a conversation with a doctor rather than a self-experiment.
The same on every page it applies to. Read it here; it is not repeated research.
- This is one formula with several actives, and it carries the combined safety profile of everything on its panel — the risks do not average out, they add. Check the panel above against anything else you take, because the commonest way to overdose an ingredient is to meet it twice in one day under two different product names.
Not medical advice. If you take prescription medication or have a diagnosed condition, check this against it with a pharmacist or doctor — pharmacists are underused and free.
- When to take it, and what to take it with
- Which form actually absorbs
- Who it's worth it for
- Best-in-class brand pick
- Coach Cam's stacks and notes
- Fasted or with food, and when in the day
- Morning or night, and why that window
- Around training, or deliberately away from it
- What it must not share a window with
Everything above is free and stays free. Skool is where it becomes a plan — Mood Support in an order, with the rest of what you're running.
Unlock in Skool — $10/mo →Bloodwork to run alongside Mood Support
Baseline first, then again at 8–12 weeks.
| Marker | What it’s watching for |
|---|---|
| TSH (Thyroid-Stimulating Hormone) | Thyroid disease imitates every cognitive complaint there is |
| Vitamin B12 | Deficiency causes fog long before it causes anemia |
| Methylmalonic Acid (MMA) | Catches the deficiency a normal B12 hides |
| Ferritin | Low iron flattens cognition at levels most labs call fine |
| Vitamin D (25-Hydroxy) | Commonly low, cheap to correct, associated with mood |
The Brain Fog & Cognition panel covers these in one order — 12 markers, $233.06 with the discount applied.
Check results you already have → · All 103 markers A–Z
Mood Support — frequently asked questions
What is Mood Support?
Thorne's Deproloft-HF, now sold under the name Emotion Balance Support. Per 2-capsule serving: vitamin C 250 mg, P5P 5 mg, L-5-MTHF 667 mcg DFE, methylcobalamin 550 mcg, pantothenate 130 mg, iodine 68 mcg, L-tyrosine 200 mg, 5-HTP 50 mg, eleuthero 50 mg, GABA 50 mg and rhodiola 50 mg. There is no St John's Wort in it -- the serotonergic ingredient is the 5-HTP.
What is the suggested dose of Mood Support?
As directed. This is a general reference for education only — statements have not been evaluated by the FDA and this is not medical advice.
Where can I find Mood Support dosing and the full breakdown?
The suggested dose and the full evidence — clinical, correlative and theoretical — are on this page. What's inside Skool is when to take it, which form actually absorbs, the brand worth buying and Coach Cam's stacks.
Where can I buy Mood Support?
Coach Cam sources Mood Support from Thorne, with 10% off auto-applied at checkout — use the buy link on this page.
What Mood Support is used for
Mood Support appears under 1 goal in the goal router.
Related Cognitive & Mood supplements
Where this goes next
The pages here are the frameworks. The protocols — the dosing, the order to correct things in, the week-by-week schedule and what to retest — are inside Skool.