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Solving the ‘Tryptophan Paradox’

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Does a warm glass of milk help you sleep?  It is an obvious question for someone suffering from insomnia but for a research psychiatrist trying to discover alternatives to sleep medications, it can be as clear as, well, a glass of skim milk. 

Nowhere in my medical training was I taught that foods help with anything other than basic nutrition.  It is hard to ignore, however, the accumulating medical research which reminds us that we are what we eat.  So, how complimentary is Mother Nature with the grinding wheel of scientific research when it comes to getting a good night’s sleep?

Let’s take our milk example.  It is a well established fact that our body’s production of melatonin - the hormone in our brains responsible for putting us to sleep - depends on our dietary intake of the amino acid, tryptophan.  One of the richest, most widely available sources of tryptophan is found in milk products.  It sounds so simple: foods rich in tryptophan, like milk, should therefore produce melatonin and if we consume enough we will never have any trouble sleeping.  Our experience tells us otherwise.  As a society we consume a lot of milk products but our incidence of insomnia has never been as high as it is currently.

It would seem logical that the tryptophan in milk - or turkey, for that matter - should help with sleep but the mystery deepens with the discovery of the ‘tryptophan paradox.’  In order to track tryptophan metabolism, researchers have provided willing subjects with high protein diets and measured subsequent tryptophan levels in the body and the brain.  Strangely, when we eat foods rich in tryptophan the levels of tryptophan go up in our body but down in our brains.  Melatonin production is dependent upon tryptophan getting to the brain and does not happen without significant brain levels of tryptophan. 

This counter-intuitive result has proven a challenge for many research groups throughout the world.  Many have simply given up and use very high dosages of synthetic tryptophan, reasoning that a greater load might at leasy allow some tryptophan to reach the brain.  Doctors in the Netherlands isolated a very specific milk protein exceptionally rich in tryptophan and demonstrated an improvement in mood, stress and sleep in vulnerable individuals.  This does not answer the question, though, and certainly doesn’t explain how some tryptophan must be getting to the brain from a normal diet.  Something must have been affecting tryptophan absorption at varying intervals under certain conditions. 

The answer came serendipitously from diabetes research.  Researchers at MIT were not interested in tryptophan or sleep but noted as part of their investigations into liver function that tryptophan became drawn into the brain most successfully in the presence of high glycemic carbohydrates.  Without the carbohydrate, the other amino acids in proteins like milk and turkey ‘over achieved’ at accessing the brain, leaving tryptophan to remain in the body, unavailable to be metabolized into serotonin and melatonin. 

That was the essence of getting around the paradox: the tryptophan in foods was mysteriously protected by being part of a protein bundle but a certain carbohydrate was the key to unlocking this treasure to the brain.

My research identified these associations in the literature and I hypothesized that I could identify a tryptophan-rich food and combine it with the right supplemental ingredients to circumvent the paradox.  Five years later the results were published in Nutritional Neuroscience.   The answer was a resounding yes.  De-oiled pumpkin seed meal, the richest source of tryptophan ever identified, did have unfettered access to the brain when we added the right carbohydrate source.  The result was a significant reduction of wake in the middle of the night for those suffering from frequent insomnia.

Without sufficient carbohydrates in your body, the available tryptophan does not have access to the brain to metabolize into serotonin and melatonin. We need both for this process to function properly.  Not only does this solve the mystery around tryptophan rich foods and sleep, this also explains why a diet deplete in carbohydrates can cause anxiety, depression, crankiness and sleep problems. 

Science meets intuition and both are right.  

 

Dr. Craig J Hudson, MD FRCP(C) 
~ is a practicing psychiatrist and CEO of Biosential Inc.  Biosential is the maker of Zenbev® Drink Mix and Zenbev RestBites™ 

 


Comments (2)

Bubbi
Said this on 7-9-2011 At 09:15 pm
This info is the cat’s paaajms!
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KirklandBridget
Said this on 12-9-2011 At 09:18 pm
People deserve wealthy life time and home loans or credit loan can make it better. Because people's freedom is grounded on money state.
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