Every Thanksgiving, myths of the quasi-magical powers of tryptophan rise again. There’s the turkey/drowsiness myth: Eating lots of juicy turkey meat supposedly makes people feel tired because it ...

"No more so than tuna fish. It's a myth," Dr. Marc Eisenberg, a clinical cardiologist and associate professor of medicine at the Columbia University Medical Center in New York, tells TODAY.com.

Today, we celebrate Thanksgiving, a holiday that honors a shared meal between the English colonists who settled in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and the Wampanoag people, the Native Americans who lived in ...

Many people do. A mainstay on the dinner table at this time of year, turkey contains tryptophan, which is widely believed to be responsible for the uncontrollable yawns and sudden snoozes common after ...

With Thanksgiving coming up, you may have heard about the effects of turkey on the brain. The theory goes that turkey contains high levels of tryptophan, which is a key ingredient of serotonin and ...

Hint: It's probably more than the bird making you sleepy. Tryptophan is an essential amino acid that’s a vital building block for protein in the body. There are 20 known amino acids, nine of which ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Those smiles probably aren’t thanks to tryptophan. Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock.com Every Thanksgiving, myths of the ...