I have noticed that on Thanksgiving, people tend to get sleepy after dinner. Some attribute it to the large amount of food in their stomach, some blame it on the turkey. I know that turkey is a natural producer of melatonin, a hormone that naturally induces sleep in your own body. However, I am a vegetarian. I don't eat the Thanksgiving turkey. Surprisingly (well, to me, anyway), I still find myself becoming very sleepy for a while after eating on that one special day of the year when you can eat like a pig and no one will judge :).
So I did some research as to how food amounts can affect your body's feeling awake and alert.
There are many myths concerning why our bodies seem out of energy when we have just finished a meal. A leading false explanantion is that it takes a lot of energy to break down our food. HOwever, we know this is not he case, because as we learned in biology class, the majority of ATP is released by metabolic processes, not consumed.
Interestingly enough, the reason you may get tired after eating a meal is because you are experiencing a food allergy. Many people have food allergies, but either the allergy, your exposure to it, or the amount you eat of it is mild and therefore you may not recognize it as a food allergy. When some one says you have an allergy, it means your body has a hard time processing, or is unable to process it. Your body builds up antibodies against it, and the antibodies getting rid of the "invader" is what expends much of your energy and causes your fatigue.
Another explanation for all those out there who stubbornly believe they do not have an allergy: your body is digesting. Have you ever heard the old wives tale saying that you should not swim right after you eat? It does not affect you as much as first thought, but it still could be a safety precaution. When you eat, much of the blood in your system flows to your stomach to provide your cells with a constant influx stream of oxygen and outflux of carbon dioxide for metabolic purposes. Your body is not neccessarily spending a large amount of energy on eating, it is simply ffocusing on the task at hand. Breaking down that turkey dinner is not wasting energy, it is just harder to direct your energy away from your stomach for a given amount of time.
So how did you guys feel after eating your turkey dinners? What did you think was the cause of your sleepiness?
Now that explains it! i always wanted to know this because i always get sleepy after i eat and i never knew why. Interesting :)
ReplyDeleteMaybe certain foods cause different reactions. For example, too much candy makes you hyper, while chocolate is a natural aphrodisiac. I guess what i'm saying is specific foods may have direct effects on our hormones, therefore causing certain reactions.
ReplyDeleteMaybe you get sleepy if you eat more food than the usual. In my case, I ate turkey the midnight before and then the morning after, but I did not get sleepy. But when the night came I was so tired, so I guess there are certain things that might happen to you.
ReplyDeletemaybe its just a state of mind! people over the years have said theres natural chemicals in turkey that make you feel sleepy. so what if hearing that, it made you believe you were sleepy. For example, if you give a person sugar pills and tell them its anti-depressants and that person thought they were depressed, after taking them they would think theyre better and less depressed. When in reality it didnt do anything, it was a state of mind from the beginning. Im not contradicting your facts, im just listing another possiblity.
ReplyDeleteTurkey, as well as other kinds of poultry, has trytophan, an amino acid that accounts for drowsiness.
ReplyDelete*tryptophan
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