We’ve all been there before. You eat so much food that you feel like you can’t move and end up staying in one spot until you fall asleep. Food comas are typically associated with Thanksgiving although they can come anytime of the year. They’re so common that people even blog about them! The popular myth is that turkey causes food comas but that is in fact not true. DNews talks about how turkey has an amino acid called tryptophan, that causes a release of serotonin and melatonin in the brain causing lethargy and tiredness, but many other non-vegan food such as chicken, yogurt, eggs, etc. also have tryptophan. Food comas, or postprandial somnolence, is primarily caused by carbohydrates causing tryptophan to go to the brain and releasing melatonin and serotonin. Melatonin and serotonin are chemicals that makes the body tired and eventually causes you to fall asleep. Amy goes more in depth in DNews about this weird phoneme but hopefully I summed it up enough. Basically, when you eat certian food with this special chemical (tryptophan) and food with carbs together, you get tired. Still confused? Watch this DNews video.

So how do we avoid the dreaded food coma?

Well, the short version is don’t eat that much but we all know that’s unlikely. This BuzzFeed article gives some pretty good tips as to how to avoid a food coma before it happens. It suggests to drink lots of water, avoid alcohol, eat greens, eat healthy snacks and breakfast, eat in small amounts along with a few others. Basically, thats what most sites tell you to do. But if you’re like me, you don’t plan ahead very well (note the time of this blog post in relation to the due date). I need a way to get over a food coma fast when its too late and I’ve already stuffed my face with turkey and creamed corn and everything else that comes with the holidays. The only thing I could really find on a cure for after you’ve eaten a lot, is to try to walk around and help clean up the dishes and whatnot. As I don’t like doing dishes much, I’d really like to see a study done to try to discover a way to stop the release of melatonin or how to get past the ridiculously full feeling faster. This is such a common problem for people it shocks me that no one has found any way to get rid of the food coma after it’s already set in.

I decided maybe I could change my diet and avoid the food coma this way. After I looked a little deeper to see what foods have the most tryptophan in them and found this list. Basically its all the good meat and other protein foods that are essential to human growth and are just really yummy. So I decided I didn’t want to cut those foods out of my holiday diet. Obviously, I love bread and pasta and decided I didn’t want to cut those out either. So that left me with no solution other than to eat in proportion, try to apply these tips before the food coma comes, and hope that someone will find a way to stop the melatonin and not make me sleepy and so full! Happy holidays everyone. Eat safe.

http://americannutritionassociation.org/newsletter/focus-tryptophan

http://www.womenshealthmag.com/food/food-coma

http://www.healthywomen.org/content/blog-entry/so-you-think-you-cant-avoid-food-coma

http://www.livescience.com/52899-full-gut-microbes-signal-brain.html