On Sun, 30 Sep 2007, [EMAIL PROTECTED] went:
More questions then: Would the effects of carbs be anything like the supposed effects of tryptophan? And does eating a normal sized portion of turkey or drinking a glass of warm milk really do anything measurable within a human being?
Heh! Your question is answered by the elided portions of my prior link--now restored in capital letters: <http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/71/6/1669S>
The functional effects of administering TRYPTOPHAN OR carbohydrates are relatively small, however, compared with the actions produced by administering potent drugs that enhance serotonin function in the brain, and it is not currently known whether the smaller effects of TRYPTOPHAN carbohydrates are functionally useful."
There's nothing so special about turkey, either: <http://www.snopes.com/food/ingredient/turkey.asp> "...the average serving of chicken or ground beef contains as much tryptophan as a serving of turkey does." Wikipedia has a table showing how much of each meat's protein is in the form of tryptophan <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tryptophan>. But anecdotally, I'll report that when tryptophan was available over the counter, I tried taking it as a sleep aid, in doses ranging from 333 mg to 1500 mg. Under those circumstances, I found it psychoactive! It produced strange waves of something combining exhaustion and euphoria. Several friends had the same response. But there's no food that will give you 1500 mg of trypophan in the absence of other branched-chain amino acids--and they all compete for entry into the brain. --David Epstein [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
