I was under the impression that the tryptophan from the turkey
still made you sleepy, in conjunction with the carbohydrates?
Tryptophan (an amino acid) doesn't cross the blood-brain barrier
(to your brain where it can be converted eventually to
melatonin that as we already learned in another thread can
make you sleepy) very well when there are other amino acids
around trying to get into your brain, too. (I guess they sell
tryptophan supplements to help you sleep, but you need to take
those on an empty stomach/with no proteins, and then they
found they don't get to your brain too well anyhow so they now
use other stuff like 5-HTP or melatonin directly?)
So theoretically with all the protein (which has amino acids)
from the turkey, not much tryptophan should be getting to your
brain. But what I'm pretty sure my friend Lane told me two
thanksgivings ago (she was relating what her father, who
studies this sort of stuff, told her, but she's in the psychology
department so maybe something got lost in the translation to
me) was that with all the carbohydrates that are in your meal,
your pancreas releases a lot of insulin, and insulin causes all
amino acids except tryptophan to be taken up into your cells,
leaving just the tryptophan to get to your brain and yes, make
you sleepy. Of course your stomach is trying to digest all that
food on top of that, and that makes you very sleepy, too!
In any case all this is irrelevant to the initial question that was
asked :)
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