Common cheese is the latest food to be linked with tryptophan, an amino acid which contributes to sleepiness. The most commonly known food with tryptophan is turkey, attributed to post-Thanksgiving meal snoozes across America. The Food & Drug Administration has banned supplemental distribution of tryptophan without a prescription after an outbreak of Eosinophilia-myalgia occured from a corrupted batch of supplements. Today's recourse for consuming the natural sleep agent is through food. The amino acid begins working after eating foods with tryptophan by helping the body produce niacin, in turn producing serotonin which ultimately calms the brain into relaxing. Consuming large amounts of food with tryptophan, however, actually negates the effect because the body's resources are taxed out processing the nutrients from the additional foods. Rather, a sandwich sized snack is recommended as the right amount of food to optimize tryptophan absorbtion.
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Tryptophan, Serotonin, Phenylalanine and Tyramine by AdamWysokinski :: NR0 :: Show
Common cheese is the latest food to be linked with tryptophan, an amino acid which contributes to sleepiness.
Tryptophan is also a precursor for serotonin, a neurotransmitter that plays an important role in mood disorders (lack of serotoninergic transmission is linked with depression). There is a group of medicines (known as SSRI - Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, well known Prozac (Fluoxetine) is one of them). One may ask why we can’t use cheese to treat depression. The reason is that cheese contains lots of other amino acids which compete for transport molecules to cross the blood-brain barrier, thus the effective transfer of tryptophane is rather low.
Cheese also contains tyramine, a vaso-active amine that may precipitate headaches. Tyramine is an intermediate product in the conversion of tyrosine to epinephrine (a neurotransmitter and hormone with intense vasoconstricting effect). Patients who suffers migraine headaches should avoid cheese and other products with high concentration of tyramine (nuts, herrings, and chicken livers).
There is also a lot of phenylalanine in cheese and because of that cheese has to be eliminated from diet of people with phenylketonuria.