Word: tryptophan
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...investigators found that serotonin levels were 26 percent lower in the tissue samples collected from infants that died from SIDS. The levels of tryptophan hydroxylase, an enzyme needed to make serotonin, were also 22 percent lower...
While droves of Harvard students were home awkwardly mingling with relatives drowsy from tryptophan-induced comas last Thanksgiving weekend, Daniel J. Wilner ’07 of Quebec was named a Rhodes Scholar—upping the number of Harvard’s 2007 Rhodes Scholars to seven...
Hooray for Tryptophan! That glorious amino acid which makes our spirits light and eyelids heavy is also a major ingredient in turkey-hence, after each successive dose of turkey cold cuts, roast turkey, turkey sandwiches, or turkey tetrazini, we find our lazy selves giggling and mirthful over the most inane of things. In this haze of holiday cheer, I spent the four days catching up on my pop culture, but when it was all over, I felt a lingering discomfort in my stomach (maybe it was the butternut squash?). I felt like the wool had been pulled over my eyes...
...Grams of tryptophan, a natural sedative, in 3.5 oz. of turkey. Thanksgiving naps, however, are caused by overeating...
Another line of investigation revealed that serotonin may play a role in sleep. Destroy the raphe nuclei in cats, and they develop permanent and total insomnia. Give the wakeful cats a shot of serotonin, and they immediately go to sleep. In humans the amino acid L-tryptophan, which is converted to serotonin in the brain, is sometimes used as a sleeping pill. (A bad batch of L-tryptophan killed several people in the late 1980s and effectively killed the craze.) In another experiment, researchers discovered that when they stimulated raphe cells to release extra serotonin not in the brain...