It May Not Be Turkey Making You Tired

I’m just home from a rainy week in Spain where I created authentic Andalusian meals using out of seasonal, fresh foods from the region for a women’s retreat. The experience was nourishing and memorable though exhausting from the effort of procuring local food in a foreign country using my less-than-optimal language skills. I chopped onions, garlic, peppers and tomatoes for days while standing on a marble kitchen floor; over-ate and under-slept; and traveled home on three airplanes across two countries and an ocean over the course of 32 hours.

I returned to another packed schedule: elections, clients, planning an annual women’s yoga retreat, writing this column, and most of all some time and meals with my kids. Whew!  

As I consider a Thanksgiving menu, whether I want to order and prepare a turkey, which new recipes to try, which classic recipes to keep, I wonder if it’s worth my energy. This one meal takes weeks of planning, days of cooking – and 20-minutes to consume. Then everyone wants to nap, citing tryptophan as the culprit in hopes of avoiding the sink full of dishes.

Maybe someone will invite us to their house, instead (psst, I’ll bake a pie.) Or perhaps, we can think about Thanksgiving in a refreshed way.

If holiday-onset-lethargy permeates the season like a thick aroma, inviting indulgences like sugar, and grasping for guidance from our higher selves, perhaps Thanksgiving can provide the opportunity to exercise knowledge, be intentional about consumption, and make better choices.

Let’s start with understanding more about tryptophan. Turkey does contain high amounts of the essential amino acid tryptophan – right up there with milk, lamb, chicken, steak, salmon, tuna – and pumpkin seeds! Tryptophan is mainly responsible for producing serotonin in the brain. Serotonin, often considered our “happy” hormone, is a neurotransmitter affecting mood, cognition, memory, behaviors ranging from stress to addiction, and a wide range of gut functions. Serotonin is the precursor to melatonin, the “hormone of darkness,” that regulates sleep cycles. In this pathway, tryptophan competes with other amino acids to cross the blood brain barrier, must convert into its L-tryptophan form to cross over, then requires help (from folate, vitamin B5, vitamin B6 – and more) to convert into serotonin. Then, in the pineal gland, serotonin can convert to melatonin (requiring more enzymes). That’s a lot of work! No wonder we’re tired after eating turkey!

More likely, we’re probably tired from (quite simply) digesting – an effort requiring approximately one third of the caloric energy we consume. Plus, we’ve devoted copious amounts of resources to Thanksgiving’s feast; slept little and consumed too much; and kids are home from school. And we’re entering a season of stress and, the key ingredient for melatonin to prepare us for sleep: darkness

Turns out, levels of melatonin during the daytime are much higher in the gut, where tryptophan also converts via its complex pathway to melatonin. The gut contains 400 times more melatonin than the pineal gland and, in the gut, melatonin helps reduce inflammation, promote motility (pooping), regulate hunger and digestion, and communicate with and liver. Thankfully, we’re not falling asleep all day long.

Perhaps we have more than tryptophan to consider for our post T-Day feast. Gobbling a bit less may ward off the fatigue. A nice walk may help. Holiday naps – still a treat.