Pasta as a sleep aid?????

[Stinky The Clown]

Okay, we eat a lot of maccaroni around here. I mean a lot. Often three or four times a week; sometimes less.

More often than not, following a nice dinner, a glass of wine, and an espresso I feel sorta like anyone does when the tryptophane hits after Thanksgiving dinner.

Is there a scientific reason for this?

[NMDemDist2]

1. i dunno, but as a complex carb maybe all the blood is busy in the

belly, leaving the brain high and dry, or sleepy as the case may be??

[Duer 157099]

2. Depends. Do you add turkey to your pasta?

:)

At first I was thinking: well of course, it's that glass of wine! until I saw that a cup of espresso followed, which should negate that effect (unless you're caffeine insensitive)

Here's some helpful info, from http://www.askdrsears.com/html/4/T042400.asp

FOODS THAT HELP YOU SLEEP

What you eat affects how you sleep. One of the keys to a restful night's sleep is to get your brain calmed rather than revved up. Some foods contribute to restful sleep; other foods keep you awake. We call them sleepers and wakers. Sleepers are tryptophan-containing foods, because tryptophan is the amino acid that the body uses to make serotonin, the neurotransmitter that slows down nerve traffic so your brain isn't so busy. Wakers are foods that stimulate neurochemicals that perk up the brain.

Tryptophan is a precursor of the sleep-inducing substances serotonin and melatonin. This means tryptophan is the raw material that the brain uses to build these relaxing neurotransmitters. Making more tryptophan available, either by eating foods that contain this substance or by seeing to it that more tryptophan gets to the brain, will help to make you sleepy. On the other hand, nutrients that make tryptophan less available can disturb sleep.

Eating carbohydrates with tryptophan-containing foods makes this calming amino acid more available to the brain. A high carbohydrate meal stimulates the release of insulin, which helps clear from the bloodstream those amino acids that compete with tryptophan, allowing more of this natural sleep-inducing amino acid to enter the brain and manufacture sleep- inducing substances, such as serotonin and melatonin. Eating a high-protein meal without accompanying carbohydrates may keep you awake, since protein-rich foods also contain the amino acid, tyrosine, which perks up the brain.

To understand how tryptophan and carbohydrates work together to relax you, picture the various amino acids from protein foods as passengers on a bus. A busload containing tryptophan and tyrosine arrives at the brain cells. If more tyrosine "passengers" get off the bus and enter the brain cells, neuroactivity will rev up. If more tryptophan amino acids get off the bus, the brain will calm down. Along comes some insulin which has been stalking carbohydrates in the bloodstream. Insulin keeps the tyrosine amino acids on the bus, allowing the brain-calming tryptophan effect to be higher than the effect of the brain-revving tyrosine.

You can take advantage of this biochemical quirk by choosing protein or carbohydrate-rich meals, depending on whether you want to perk up or slow down your brain. For students and working adults, high protein, medium-carbohydrate meals are best eaten for breakfast and lunch. For dinner and bedtime snacks, eat a meal or snack that is high in complex carbohydrates, with a small amount of protein that contains just enough tryptophan to relax the brain. An all- carbohydrate snack, especially one high in junk sugars, is less likely to help you sleep. You'll miss out on the sleep-inducing effects of tryptophan, and you may set off the roller-coaster effect of plummeting blood sugar followed by the release of stress hormones that will keep you awake. The best bedtime snack is one that has both complex carbohydrates and protein, and perhaps some calcium. Calcium helps the brain use the tryptophan to manufacture melatonin. This explains why dairy products, which contain both tryptophan and calcium, are one of the top sleep-inducing foods.
SNOOZE FOODS

These are foods high in the sleep-inducing amino acid tryptophan:
# Dairy products: cottage cheese, cheese, milk
# Soy products: soy milk, tofu, soybean nuts
# Seafood
# Meats
# Poultry
# Whole grains
# Beans
# Rice
# Hummus
# Lentils
# Hazelnuts, Peanuts
# Eggs
# Sesame seeds, sunflower seeds
BEST BEDTIME SNACKS

Foods that are high in carbohydrates and calcium, and medium-to-low in protein also make ideal sleep-inducing bedtime snacks. Some examples:
# apple pie and ice cream (my favorite)
# whole-grain cereal with milk
# hazelnuts and tofu
# oatmeal and raisin cookies, and a glass of milk
# peanut butter sandwich, ground sesame seeds (It takes around one hour for the tryptophan in the foods to reach the brain, so don't wait until right before bedtime to have your snack.)
BEST DINNERS FOR SLEEP

Meals that are high in carbohydrates and low-to-medium in protein will help you relax in the evening and set you up for a good night's sleep. Try the following "dinners for sleep":
# pasta with parmesan cheese
# scrambled eggs and cheese
# tofu stirfry
# hummus with whole wheat pita bread
# seafood, pasta, and cottage cheese
# meats and poultry with veggies
# tuna salad sandwich
# chili with beans, not spicy
# sesame seeds (rich in tryptophan) sprinkled on salad with tuna chunks, and whole wheat crackers

[Stinky The Clown]

3. Wow! Ain't science wonderful?

:)

Thanks for that treatise. It explains a lot, actually. Looking at the list at the bottom of it (dinners for sleep) I see why it makes me sleepy. Our macaroni almost never is high in protien, apart from seafood. Sparkly's a vegger so I almost never make meat macaroni of any sort. Often it is purely vegetarian. Tonight is a good example. The condimenti was olive oil, garlic, anchovies, and herbs. VERY simple and pretty much in line with what's on that last list.

As for caffeine, I'm almost completely immune to it. I need it in the morning, but at night, no matter what I eat, that espresso never stops me from sleeping. In fact, Sparkly's often amazed that I sometimes fall asleep with the cup still warm! And I drink doubles of a high octane bean. And I often have a second double.

As for the wine, I always have one glass with a meal. Maybe once a week, or if it was a particularly good wine, I'll have two glasses. Our usual wine glasses, by the way, are very small. Little, bitty 4 oz juice tumblers (don't ask .... its an old family tradition).

Anyway, thanks for the info. That's really helpful.

[Duer 157099]

5. Oh, I'm getting all jittery just reading your post!

I'm ultra sensitive to caffeine! If I drank coffee at night.. well, it wouldn't happen. If I even drink it in the afternoon, I'll be up all night. I like retaining the sensitivity, it comes in handy when I need it! And yet, even with limiting my coffee intake to just one cup per day, I'm still physically addicted to it so if I don't have it, I get a headache that's almost like a migraine and won't go away even with pain killers (aspirin, tylenol, advil, nothing).

Hey, you don't have to explain anything about the wine, or the glasses to me. Studies have repeatedly shown that it's healthy to have a drink a day, haven't they? I'm pretty sure of that.

You're most welcome for the info! I was surprised when I found it, too, that it was exactly corresponding to your experience.

I remember learning about how to stimulate the brain to release growth hormone, and the issues discussed in that article came into play -- glycemic index, insulin, competing amino acids, etc. I fine tuned the protocol (using the info in the Shaw/Pearson books) and found that it was amazingly effective, but there were certain specific factors that had to be taken into account for it to work property. I need to dig that info out and start doing that again. Anyway, tryptophan was a major player, as was arginine and ornithine -- these are all precursors/players in the GH pathway. I had to get the tryp from a vet supply, since it's been off the market now for years (that whole phony FDA thing). But that's a whole nother story...

[hvn_nbr_2]

9. Shaw/Pearson, growth hormone, tryptophan, FDA, etc.

If you locate that info about growth hormone, I'd like to hear about it.

Recently, tryptophan became allowed again, but almost no one is making and selling it. One health food store that I go to has one brand, and it's very expensive. An alternative is 5-HTP (5-hydroxytryptophan) which is a material further along the metabolical pathway from tryptophan to serotonin.

I don't know if 5-HTP is along the pathway to melatonin though. In fact, I didn't even know that melatonin was derived from tryptophan, although it doesn't surprise me. I also don't know if it would fit a growth hormone program or not.

One advantage of 5-HTP over tryptophan (besides availability and cost) is that it doesn't seem to have the same difficulty crossing the blood-brain barrier when the amino acid content of the blood is high, at least according to Julia Ross, author of "The Mood Cure," which is about using specific amino acids to help with various mood disturbances. For years, I had been asking various people if 5-HTP had the same blood-brain barrier issues as tryptophan, and they universally looked at me like I was speaking some other language; they had no idea what I was talking about. Then one day, I went to a talk by Ross, and afterward I asked her. She answered that in her clinic, their experience seemed to be that it didn't. So that's anecdotal experience, not a real scientific study, but it seems like a good indication.

[hvn_nbr_2]

10. Interesting Google ads effect.

Now, among the eight Google ads on this thread that I see, four are for tryptophan and one is for 5-HTP.

[Duer 157099]

11. I didn't realize Trp was *legal* again

I will somehow look up the vet supply I had used, because I recall it being fairly inexpensive -- especially compared to 5-HTP. And it was high quality too. I don't know the BBB issues for Trp vs. 5HTP (isn't 5htp just 5-hydroxy-tryptophan? I'd suspect it is even less likely to cross the BBB, since it's got an extra -OH and thus is a larger molecule -- unless there's some sort of transporter... (???)

If you can get this book, it will tell you all you need to know, and then some. It's worth reading if you're interested in this topic. I remember that I was very glad that I understood the nuances of why certain elements were used, and the timing, and which you could or couldn't mix and the reasons. You sound like you'd appreciate that level of knowledge -- really worth reading the book:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385233655/sr=1-4/qid=1155362216/ref=sr_1_4/102-4110177-6484116?ie=UTF8&s=books

I know that it's still controversial, the whole GH field, but I found that when I did it properly, it was highly effective.

I had actually gotten interested because I had purchased one of those "GH-releasing formulas" which was ultra expensive, and it didn't seem to do anything and I wanted to know why. Once I learned how it should work, I understood why it's so easy to do it wrong, even with a supposedly no-brainer "formula."

Edit to add this new info I just looked up (from PubMed):

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=16053244&query_hl=1&itool=pubmed_docsum

Protein source tryptophan versus pharmaceutical grade tryptophan as an efficacious treatment for chronic insomnia.

BACKGROUND: Intact protein rich in tryptophan was not seen as an alternative to pharmaceutical grade tryptophan since protein also contains large neutral amino acids (LNAAs) that compete for transport sites across the blood-brain barrier (BBB). Deoiled gourd seed (an extremely rich source of tryptophan-22 mg tryptophan/1 g protein) was combined with glucose, a carbohydrate that reduces serum levels of competing LNAAs which was then compared to pharmaceutical grade tryptophan with carbohydrate as well as carbohydrate alone. METHOD: Objective and subjective measures of sleep were employed to measure changes in sleep as part of a double blind placebo controlled study where subjects were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: (1) Protein source tryptophan (deoiled gourd seed) in combination with carbohydrate; (2) pharmaceutical grade tryptophan in combination with carbohydrate; (3) carbohydrate alone. SUBJECTS: Out of 57 subjects 49 of those who began the study completed the three week protocol. RESULTS: Protein source tryptophan with carbohydrate and pharmaceutical grade tryptophan, but not carbohydrate alone, resulted in significant improvement on subjective and objective measures of insomnia. Protein source tryptophan with carbohydrate alone proved effective in significantly reducing time awake during the night. CONCLUSION: Protein source tryptophan is comparable to pharmaceutical grade tryptophan for the treatment of insomnia.

[hvn_nbr_2]

12. Thanks for that info.

The Shaw/Pearson book may be interesting, and I would never have given it a second glance based on the title. Life Extension Foundation puts out some good books.

I don't know the BBB issues for Trp vs. 5HTP (isn't 5htp just 5-hydroxy-tryptophan? I'd suspect it is even less likely to cross the BBB, since it's got an extra -OH and thus is a larger molecule -- unless there's some sort of transporter... (???)
Yes, 5-HTP is 5-hydroxytryptophan. With as little chemistry knowledge as I have, your reasoning makes sense to me--I think the name means it has a hydroxy (OH) ion(or whatever?) attached at the number 5 position; gotta learn some chemistry sometime. My last chemistry class was in high school 40+ years ago, and it never even touched on biochemistry as far as I can recall. Julia Ross's conclusion about 5HTP crossing the BBB was purely anecdotal and based only on the indirect evidence of getting the clinical (psychological, not chemical) results they were looking for. So not very definitive. I don't really have any understanding of why things cross the BBB or not.

I'd be skeptical about taking growth hormone directly, but merely providing the nutrients for my body to make it doesn't seem that scary to me. If I start growing taller as I approach age 60, I might worry. :-)

Vet supply for tryp may be a good idea. My impression of the whole FDA thing was that it was a plot to benefit big pharma SSRI makers; it happened right about the time several SSRIs were coming on the market. The idea that an essential amino acid is poisonous, except for pets or by prescription, is obviously ludicrous.

[grasswire]

6. my barista nephew tells me...

...that the darker the bean, the less caffeine. He's been making espresso for thirteen years, so I believe him.

[Stinky The Clown]

7. That's true

Most people find it counterintuitive, but the dark roast should be thought of as a partial decaffeienization

[hvn_nbr_2]

8. Great explanation...

and much more complete than what I was about to say.

One quibble I have is that I don't think you really have to consume the tryptophan at the same time. You could have consumed it earlier in the day. Your liver stores and releases various nutrients, such as amino acids, all the time. In fact, since protein digests more slowly than carbs (in general), the tryptophan is still sitting in your stomach digesting while the carbs are already doing their thing in your bloodstream, changing the amino acid/carb balance in the bloodstream and making it easier for the tryptophan that's already there to cross the blood-brain barrier.

That sleepiness after Thanksgiving dinner is less from tryptophan (which is still sitting in your bloated stomach along with everything else) than it is simple "food coma." More blood goes to the digestive tract, less goes to the brain, ergo food coma.

[midnight armadillo]

4. insulin rush

pasta is high on the glycemic index, it causes a quick release of insulin followed by a blood sugar crash and drowsiness.