Just give me one thing I can play for.
Disco boys on bicycles.
So what if too many times we have been here, both
Poetic Retrospective
The Weather votes for Kelly Clarkson."Be careful driving," warns a friend's father. "There's a whole fleet of motorists drunk on tryptophan today." "I feel sleepy," remarks a grandmother. " I think I need to sleep off this tryptophan." The amino acid in question, is one of those essential to the body, meaning that it can not be synthesized from scratch. Tryptophan is also the biochemical precursor of serotonin, the molecule involved in drowsiness and depression. Such a connection resulted in the prescription of tryptophan as a natural cure for insomnia during the the 1980s. A contaminated batch, however, caused the treatment to fall out of favor after 37 deaths.
Enter the thanksgiving bird, the gobbling turkey. Each year, countless turkey's make their way into ovens across America, enough that two get a presidential pardon (this year Misters Marshmallow and his alternate Yam only narrowly defeated Wattle and Snood.) The protein in turkey meat contains substantially high levels of tryptophan, providing an easy explanation for the post-feast drowsiness. This elegant explanation, however, happens to be wrong.
It's certainly not an issue of firepower; turkey packs 1400 mg of tryptophan per pound, (not an unreasonable amount of turkey to eat,) compared to the 1000 to 2000 mg doses of the insomnia formulations. The real issue is that tryptophan induces sleepiness, but only on an empty stomach. In order to get to the brain, where serotonin acts, tryptophan, in the manner of all amino acids, must first be transported across the blood brain barrier. Since the Thanksgiving meal is comprised of many different amino acids, tryptophan has to compete for transport into the brain, resulting in far less serotonin production than expected.
Of course, the drowsiness following the turkey-day meal is indisputable, so what is the explanation? It is far more likely that the shear volume of food consumed on this day, (especially those high in carbohydrates), mixed with a dash of grape derived ethanol, are at the source of the problem. But it can hardly be described as a problem; who has not found immense joy in waking up from an post-giving nap only to have dessert?
We here at 90ways science are all for people incorporating scientific explanations into their daily lives, hell, we want more of it. But when stories are created that don't cut the mustard, we feel it is our duty to set the record straight. And who knows, its too bad that the turkey and trypotphan story is not as simple as it seems, the whole thing gets people talking about long named amino acids in the warm and happy context of family, food and festivus. But like most things in this world, its never quite as simple as a sound-bite.
