What is it about turkey that makes you sleepy after eating it?!
What is it about turkey that makes you sleepy after eating it?
Answers:
triptophan- its a natural enzyme that triggers seratonin in your brain.
its in milk too which is why warm milk can help you sleep too
Source(s):
butterball
Turkey never made me sleepy.
There is an amino acid in it that reacts with your brain called tryptophan, that makes you sleepy.
Tryptophan
According to popular belief, eating tryptophan in turkey meat causes drowsiness. Turkey does contain tryptophan, which does have a documented sleep-inducing effect as it is readily converted into serotonin by the body. However, ingestion of turkey alone has not been proven to have this effect.
An additional hypothetical mechanism is as follows: A large quantity of any food, such as a Thanksgiving feast, introduces large quantities of both carbohydrates and branched-chain amino acids releasing insulin. Insulin stimulates the uptake of large neutral branched-chain amino acids (and not tryptophan) by muscle cells through the myocyte membranes. The result is an increase in the ratio of tryptophan to large neutral amino acids in the blood. This reduces competition with other amino acids for the Large Neutral Amino Acid Transporter protein for uptake of tryptophan across the blood-brain barrier into the central nervous system. Once inside the central nervous system, tryptophan is converted into serotonin by the raphe nuclei, and serotonin is further metabolised into melatonin by the pineal gland.
Alcoholic beverage consumption at holiday feasts is likely to compound the effect.
Heh - what Willa said
If we are talking about baked on the bone turkey, we are talking about Tryptophan. This is the ammino acid that produces the sleepy feeling. It's also present in warm milk and red wine.
It contains Tryptophan. Its a chemical that makes you feel sleepy.
triptophan makes you sleepy. That is why you get tired after eating turkey at Thanksgiving, Christmas or whenever.