"There's a fairy tale about Thanksgiving that gets refuted every fall. Does eating turkey really make you fall asleep? When science writers check in with the experts, they always get the same response: No, no, no, and no. Also no and no. These holiday debunkers tell you what the science says: Turkey meat is not a sedative. They tell you what the studies show: Drumsticks don't produce fatigue."
"The trouble began nearly half a century ago. It started with warm milk-a sleep aid that was the subject of its own lightly flavored brand of science journalism. Was it true that a mug of milk could help you go to sleep? Yes, the experts said, because milk has tryptophan! This one amino acid worked something like a natural "sleeping pill," a psychiatry professor told The New York Times in 1983."
"Indeed, a tryptophanic fever was about to spread across America. By the end of the decade, tryptophan was being widely sold in supplements as a treatment for insomnia; an aid for beating jet leg; and also a fix for depression, PMS, and drug dependence. (Tryptophan was even talked about as a suicide preventive.) To explain its wondrous potency, scientists noted that when tryptophan made its way into the brain, it could be converted into the neurotransmitter serotonin."
Turkey meat does not act as a sedative and its consumption does not inherently produce postmeal fatigue. Media fact-checks and experts repeatedly reject the notion that Thanksgiving turkey causes sleepiness. The sleepy-turkey belief traces to earlier claims about tryptophan in warm milk and to widespread marketing of tryptophan supplements in the 1980s. Tryptophan can be converted in the brain to serotonin, which was once associated with relaxation and sleep in early studies. Turkey contains some tryptophan, but the amounts and physiological complexities make it insufficient to explain post-Thanksgiving drowsiness.
Read at The Atlantic
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