11/24/2025
What's the story with tryptophan and Thanksgiving turkey? 🤨
🦃 Tryptophan is an essential amino acid that our body uses to make serotonin, a neurotransmitter involved in mood regulation, sleep, appetite, learning, memory and pain perception.
🦃 Granted, we gorge on that Thanksgiving dinner and then get sleepy, but there really is something about tryptophan that enhances mood.
🦃 We work with folks all the time on mood and hormones and also sometimes check brain neurotransmitters through specialty kits to really help drive things home for optimization. When we are feeling anxious, or burned out, sad, or exhausted it's because we can lack serotonin.
🦃 Even though tryptophan is found in foods (turkey, chicken, eggs, dairy, nuts, seeds), eating tryptophan-rich foods doesn’t automatically increase brain serotonin because tryptophan must compete with other amino acids to cross the blood–brain barrier.
🦃 We use supplements all the time to help boost things up, feel better and try to get better sleep that can contain tryptophan or 5-hydroxytryptophan that can help leak into serotonin and subsequently melatonin.