Gobblers impressive and excessive One new reason to be a fan of tryptophan What with Thanksgiving and Christmas recently come and gone, the turkey is fresh on everyone's mind (if not still in their refrigerators). And that's a good thing. I'm a big fan of that most American of birds - the one Benjamin Franklin rightly envisioned as the appropriate symbol of our great nation. Not only are they delicious and a fitting symbol of plenty, but they're packed with protein, vitamins and nutrients. And as it turns out, one of those nutrients - in fact, the very one that makes us want to fall asleep after eating a big turkey dinner - may be a major key to helping folks with autoimmune disorders, like MS and lupus. The substance is called tryptophan, and it's one of 20 amino acids the human body uses to build proteins. However, tryptophan is one of only a few of these substances that the body doesn't naturally produce. We MUST get it through diet, or we don't get it at all. According to a recent New York Times article, a study led by the Chairman of Stanford University's immunology program discovered that in addition to helping us sleep and relieving stress (by stimulating production of serotonin in the brain), tryptophan also spurs the bodily production of chemicals called kynurenines. These compounds reduced immune-system-induced inflammation so much in laboratory mice with a form of Multiple Sclerosis that they actually regained neurological function that was previously lost to the disease. In other words, the tryptophan-based reaction triggered a REVERSAL OF PARALYSIS caused by MS. Currently, a drug based on these kynurenines is being sold in Japan for allergies and also being tested in Great Britain for the treatment of arthritis - both conditions linked to overactive autoimmune response in humans. According to the Times article, the drug is reputedly extremely safe. Of course, they said that about Vioxx, too. What I wish is that instead of always focusing on some patentable drug that replicates a natural substance (most all of them do, by the way), more study would be directed at whether supplemental tryptophan - or simply a diet heavy in turkey and other tryptophan-rich foods - might have a similar effect. But no, that wouldn't make enough sense from the charge-an-arm-and-a-leg bottom line standpoint today's medical mainstream lives by. Never mind that it would make eminent sense from a human life standpoint… **************************************************** Feats of eating - Thanksgiving style! Well, there's at least one person out there that's getting enough tryptophan lately… That's 37 year-old Sonya Thomas, winner of the 2005 Thanksgiving Invitational turkey-eating contest. Her time in gulping down a 10-pound turkey-bird was just 12 minutes, besting seven male co-competitors. Oh, and to make this feat even more impressive (to some, anyway - I think it's ridiculous)… Thomas tips the scales herself at just 105 pounds! This is the second meat-eating contest winner I've written about that involved a 100-pound girl. Last April 22, I told you about the 19-year-old College of New Jersey sophomore that polished off the 11-pound (with fixins) "Old 96er" hamburger - at the time, the world's largest burger - at Denny's Beer Barrel Pub in Clearfield, Pennsylvania. She beat several men, including some professional eaters, to take the prize. That's two eating contest winners in a row I've reported on - both petite women - who have gulped down 10% of their weight or more in one sitting. That's mind-boggling, for either sex. Few carnivores outside of order Chiroptera (bats, who've been known to eat their body weight in insects every night) or certain fishes can approach this kind of consumption. Of course, competitive eaters are nuts for risking a distended duodenum or ruptured stomach every time they sidle up to the plate, but their eating feats are mind-boggling all the same. The real winner of this latest contest, however, would have entered, eaten 8 ounces of the bird, then wrapped the rest to take home for the freezer and fridge - thereby ensuring a healthy daily intake of both turkey and tryptophan for 10 days or more… Talking turkey - and gobbling it too, William Campbell Douglass II, MD | 
