Tryptophan is one of eight essential amino acids in the human body.  Essential amino acids are so called not because they are more important to life than the others, but because the body does not synthesize them, making it essential to include them in one’s diet in order to obtain them.

Like other amino acids, tryptophan works as a building block for proteins.  Tryptophan is found in every protein including fish, steak, cheese and eggs.  Tryptophan is required for the synthesis of some specific organic compounds including:

• Serotonin and melatonin (neurotransmitters)
• Niacin (vitamin B3), and
• kynurenines

Serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine) affects mood, melatonin helps regulate sleep, and kynurenines may be useful in regulating the immune system.

A drug called tranilast, available in Japan as an allergy medication, is chemically similar to kynurenines and shows promise for the treatment of certain autoimmune diseases, including multiple sclerosis.

Turkey isn’t even unusually high in tryptophan. Many foods, such as beef or soybeans, boast higher concentrations (read more and see the table comparing Turkey Tryptophan to other foods after the break).

Turkey sleeping pill

In its purified form and on an empty stomach, tryptophan is a mild sleep-inducing agent and that probably led to the idea that foods containing heavy doses of the chemical cause drowsiness.   While consuming tryptophan-rich foods may cause blood levels of the amino acid to rise, so many other chemicals are also present in a Thanksgiving meal that not enough tryptophan reaches the brain to have a sedative affect. 

In the 1980s, the connection between tryptophan serotonin was put to the test in a form of supplements marketed as a sleep aid.  Ater a massive outbreak of an autoimmune disease called eosinophilia-myalgia syndrome, the FDA banned their sale in 1991.

Tens of thousands of people became sick with flu-like symptoms and 37 died.  Most of the cases were attributed to contamination at the manufacturer’s plant, but some researchers still find a connection between high-doses of tryptophan and eosinophilia-myalgia syndrome.

So why the traditional Thanksgiving nap?
The lethargy may be caused by the stressful hustle and bustle of the holidays, alcohol consumption, and the massive caloric intake of the year’s biggest feast.  It takes the body a tremendous amount of energy to break down these foods.  When your stomach is full, blood is directed away from other organ systems, including your nervous system. The result? You will feel the need to snooze after any big meal.. 

Read the entire article here.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

All parts of the bird have their benefits and the constituents of their structure is related to their function flavor.

White Meat

White meat is made up of muscles with fibers that are called fast-twitch fibers.  Fast-twitch muscles are used for quick bursts of activity, such as fleeing from danger. These muscles get energy from glycogen, which is also stored in the muscles. Glycogen is a polysaccharide of glucose, an animal starch.   Animal starch is stored primarily in the liver and broken down into glucose when needed by the white muscle.

Dark Meat

Dark meat is made up of muscles with fibers that are called slow-twitch. These muscles are used for extended periods of activity, such as standing or walking, and need a consistent energy source. Dark meat has more myoglobin, an amazing protein.  (This is the red liquid that you may see coming from meat at the butcher’s section of your local supermarket.)  Like it’s cousin hemoglobin, myoglobin delivers oxygen to the mitochondria.  Muscles that are used more frequently have higher amounts of myoglobin. More myoglobin gives the darker color of the meat.

This explains why the farmed turkeys (above left) have whiter meat than wild turkeys (above right). Farmed poultry do not fly, and is whiter than the chest muscles of the flying birds; also, why the game meat is darker (wild animals move much more than the domestic ones). Different levels of myoglobin between species also explains the difference in meat colors.
When dark meat is cooked it turns the myoglobins to metmyoglobins, which is brown/gray. Metmyoglobins are very high in iron (albeit there is not that much in dark meat in the first place).  Dark meats tend to contain more zinc, riboflavin, niacin, thiamin, vitamins B6 and B12, amino acids, iron than white meat. Poultry dark meat contain vitamins A, K, B6, B12, niacin, folate, pantothenic acid, minerals as selenium, phosphorus and zinc.

Even the fats in most of the dark meats have healthy parts. They contain Omega-3, and Omega-6 fatty acids, and other ‘healthy’ fats.

It is the saturated fat content which lowers the true quality of dark meat. To reduce the saturated fat content of chicken dark meat, simply remove the skin.

Sources:
http://www.diet-blog.com/archives/2007/10/08/dark_meat_vs_white_meat_whats_the_difference.php

http://www.drdonmd.com/health_articles.cfm

http://news.softpedia.com/news/9-Things-You-Did-Not-Know-About-Muscles-74768.shtml

This webcast at exploratorium investigates why temperature is critical, and investigates different cooking methods: roasting,deep frying, barbecuing, and smoking.

Source: http://www.exploratorium.edu/cooking/webcasts/turkey_cast.html

French Isabelle Dinoire, 41, a few months after her surgery (l) and a year later (r)

The concept of organ transplantation is one that, at this point in medical science, is very well known.  Look at the back of any driver’s license.  Most of the time, when we think of organ transplantation, we think of internal organs:  heart, lung, liver, and kidney being taken from one person and given to another.   Yet, the transplantation of faces, as strange as this may sound, has moved from science fiction to science fact.  In 2005, the first facial transplant (a partial one) was performed on Isabel Dinoire of France.  She was mauled by her dog as she slept; her lips and entire the bottom of her face below her nose was torn away.  Part of a suicide victim’s face was used to restore Isabal’s ability to eat and speak normally.

At the end of March 2008, the first full facial transplant was performed in France…ironically, by a team led by a doctor who said he would not perform full face transplants.

Should this surgery be continued? Tell us what you think? Is this an area medicine should be exploring?a

Researchers were looking to see if the women sniffed out immunity genes, called the major histocompatibility complex (MHC), which are very closely linked to pheromone-generating genes.  The different genes in the MHC are what give us immunity to disease.  They are also what could cause us to reject an orgna transplant if there is no MHC compatibiloty between the donor and the recipient.

Each woman whiffed three T-shirts from men who had dissimlar MHCs from her own and three that were similar.  The more preference women had for a T-shirt, the more dissimilar the men’s MHCs were from their own.  In other words, the women were able to detect the MHC and preferred men with different immunity genes from themselves.

It’s speculated that one reason women may naturally select men with dissimilar immunity genes is that it acts as an insurance in offspring MHC diversity,  thus providing increased immunity to parasites.