![\"What](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/c429891278f8319b98ee053f389fc0ec.jpeg\"\/)
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So the sleepiness myth of turkey may be fading, but other legends around tryptophan\u2019s effects in the brain are taking hold. Some people are eyeing tryptophan supplements as an unconventional treatment for depression<\/a>. Others are curious whether eating foods that are high or low in tryptophan<\/a> could be useful for influencing mood. Recently, some scientists have even proposed that gut bacteria are driving changes in emotion<\/a> by producing or breaking down tryptophan.<\/p>\n This tryptophan\/mood connection is an area of ongoing research. And while some are captivated by tryptophan\u2019s potential, it\u2019s not clear whether the excitement is warranted.<\/p>\n Looking for a tryptophan link to mood<\/p>\n There is some scientific evidence that eating tryptophan can alter your mood.<\/p>\n For example, back in 2000, researchers found that when people ate an isolated protein that was very high in tryptophan, they felt less stress while doing math problems<\/a>.<\/p>\n However, placebo-controlled clinical trials haven\u2019t, in general, shown much of a connection. A few studies have found that supplementing with pure tryptophan<\/a> provided little to no benefit for people with depression. Some studies have even looked at what happens when you remove tryptophan from people\u2019s diets<\/a>, but also found little to no effect.<\/p>\n So what explains the mixed results?<\/p>\n Serotonin itself still holds mysteries<\/p>\n Alongside human studies, the biology of tryptophan has been well studied in rodents. Research in the early 1970s showed that taking tryptophan supplements can boost serotonin<\/a>, a neurotransmitter that was historically associated with feelings of well-being and happiness.<\/p>\n Since then, scientists have learned lots of interesting facts about serotonin<\/a>. For example, there are 14 separate receptors for serotonin<\/a>, and they\u2019re found all over the brain.<\/p>\n Researchers have learned how to affect this system with drugs, but not with much precision. For example, drugs like the antidepressant selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors \u2013 more widely known as SSRIs \u2013 don\u2019t target individual receptors and they don\u2019t restrict themselves to particular brain regions. Instead, SSRIs, the best-known of which is Prozac<\/a>, bluntly boost serotonin everywhere.<\/p>\n This non-specificity is why, in my mind, it\u2019s hard to believe that SSRIs work at all. Here\u2019s an analogy: Say you\u2019re Jeff Bezos and you want to increase Amazon\u2019s revenue by speeding up your deliveries. So you decide to crank up the speed on all delivery vehicles. From now on, every truck will boost its speed by 5%. It may be a stroke of logistical genius, or it may, perhaps more likely, end up in chaos. Like ramping up serotonin all over the brain, this blunt approach might not be ideal.<\/p>\n Analogies aside, whether SSRIs affect people\u2019s moods is an experimental question, and some research has supported the idea that these drugs work. However, especially lately, their effectiveness has come under intense scrutiny<\/a>. Some recent analyses cite 30 years\u2019 worth of studies and question the clinical value of SSRIs<\/a>, while others maintain that these drugs improve the symptoms of depression<\/a>.<\/p>\n It\u2019s complicated, and there\u2019s still some disagreement, but most psychiatrists agree that SSRIs are not effective for everyone<\/a>. These drugs are not psychiatric-cure-alls.<\/p>\n In light of all this, I\u2019ve often found myself asking whether psychiatric researchers needed 73 studies<\/a> looking at whether tryptophan depletion has an impact on mood.<\/p>\n When it comes to understanding connections between gut bacteria and the brain, or the bigger challenge of understanding and treating mental illness, should researchers really still be thinking about tryptophan?<\/p>\n It\u2019s seems true that, similar to SSRIs, boosting tryptophan has a broad impact on serotonin<\/a>. It\u2019s definitely possible that cranking up serotonin can influence mood, and that therefore boosting tryptophan could do the same. But it\u2019s also possible that to manipulate something as complicated as human emotion requires a little more nuance.<\/p>\n Psychiatric research has long been moving away from the idea that your brain is a bag of chemicals<\/a>; modern neuroscientists are asking for a little more specificity. From this perspective, I\u2019m skeptical of the notion that tryptophan is the depression remedy psychiatry needs. Not only has experimental research found fairly weak results, but the theory itself isn\u2019t very compelling.<\/p>\n Serotonin, seemingly full of psychiatric possibility, has long fascinated psychiatric researchers. But what the past half century seems to have demonstrated is that the neuroscience of human emotion is not simple. To promote lasting changes in mental health, scientists may need a little more reverence for the complex emotional beings that we all are.<\/p>\n So no, a big turkey dinner, as filled with delicious tryptophans as it might be, will likely not be the neurochemical driver for your mood on Thanksgiving.<\/p>\n [ You\u2019re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation\u2019s authors and editors. You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter<\/a>. ]<\/p>\n This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a>, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Andrew Neff<\/a>, Rochester University<\/a> <\/p>\n Read more:<\/strong><\/p>\n Andrew Neff does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Every Thanksgiving, myths of the quasi-magical powers of tryptophan rise again. There\u2019s the turkey\/drowsiness myth: Eating lots of…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":409680,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[37],"tags":[210,1182,192812,192811,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-409679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nutrition","tag-health","tag-nutrition","tag-tryptophan","tag-tryptophan-supplements","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115624996779979987","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409679\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/409680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"SSRIs](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/735436740d445436139df3e139f64ba5.jpeg\"\/)
SSRIs block neurons\u2019 abilities to reabsorb serotonin, leaving more of the neurotransmitter in the brain to affect other receptors. Blamb\/Shutterstock.com<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Tryptophan\u2019s](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/9bb4e49f7c9c92bedfeadbff565dbf2a.jpeg\"\/)
Tryptophan\u2019s role in any gut-brain connection still isn\u2019t clear. Andrew Neff, CC BY-ND<\/a>More chemical fine-tuning for mood<\/p>\n