Food Theory: They LIED To You About Food Comas!

give it to me straight doc is he gonna make it i'm afraid that double stuffed burrito hit him pretty hard we did everything we could but he's in a coma is is it treatable oh totally he's gonna power nap but wake up hungry again garbs you know why you're looking at me like that hello internet welcome to food theory the show that eats and thinks more than it probably should loyal theorists i know it might seem like my job is just to sit in front of a screen for a few hours every day play some video games make some dad jokes on twitter and call it a day but actually yeah that's it's kind of true some days but then there are other days when i'm running around and working on so many projects that i don't even have time to eat so by the time the work day's over i am ravenous lead me to suck down food like a hungry kirby from planet pop star and for any of you who like me enjoy a good old-fashioned one of everything from the wendy's super value menu you know that it's about t minus 10 minutes to a hard crash after that one that's right today we are talking about how to beat the food coma the post-lunch nap syndrome and perhaps no food coma is quite as iconic as the post-thanksgiving dinner nap now growing up i was always told that the reason we get so incurably sleepy after our four plates a roast turkey on thanksgiving is that it's high in a chemical called tryptophan and tryptophan makes you sleepy pretty straightforward right well there's one teensy tiny problem there it's not true for one thing turkey isn't as high in tryptophan as other foods like pumpkin seeds soybeans and mozzarella cheese none of which get blamed for food comas during the holidays or at any other time really and second while tryptophan does promote the production of serotonin a neurotransmitter that is one of the keys to sleep it does that most effectively when your stomach's empty and the tryptophan doesn't have to compete with a lot of other stuff in your system so thanks a lot there elementary school i'll add turkey makes you sleepy to the countless other lies that you told me pluto is a planet you won't always have a calculator in your pocket after third grade everyone will expect you to use cursive seriously if tryptophan isn't the big bad wolf behind food comas what can we trust from elementary school was it all a lie is mitochondria even the powerhouse of the cell anymore folks today food theory is digging into the body chemistry behind the good old post pizza pass out because if we can understand why food comas actually occur then we can optimize our eating habits in order to avoid them so loosen up those belts and not your two theorists cause today we're binging on the science of food comas if we want to defeat the mighty food coma which is known to the nerdiest of nerds as postprandial somnolence we first have to understand why it occurs and that means going into the chemistry of our digestive system and how it affects the brain when food hits our stomachs the body responds by producing a cocktail of chemicals and hormones that tell the rest of our body how to react one of those types of hormones known as enterogastrone tells the body how to regulate blood flow and so in a big brick of fatty sugary or protein heavy food hits us in the gut more blood is diverted from other tissues and sent to the stomach to deal with sorting nutrients and aiding digestion the ultimate result of enterogastrone production is sleepiness see when our stomachs break down food one of the main substances that our bodies use is glucose the simple sugar as glucose hits the bloodstream we see two major effects one the body releases insulin which tells the body where to store the sugar that we just produced from the food we ate and two while insulin helps our bodies process a number of the amino acids that it got from the food that we've eaten one amino acid that it doesn't regulate is that old pal tryptophan with a higher concentration than normal of tryptophan in the bloodstream more of it can get through the blood-brain barrier and cause our brains to produce serotonin which is then converted to the hormone melatonin so while tryptophan is indeed a link in this chain of events it really shouldn't be the one receiving top billing for making us sleepy after meals i mean let's give credit where credit's due it's enterogastron that gets the whole snoozefest started and it's melatonin that ultimately does the dirty work see melatonin is the number one chemical in our brains that regulates sleep and you can even take it as a supplement if you say can't fall asleep because you fell down a wikipedia rabbit hole and before you know it it's 3am and you're wide awake and you suddenly know a lot more about the emu wars when australia unsuccessfully dispatched its military to reduce the population growth of wild emus this is uh all highly hypothetical of course the situation that is not the emu wars that is a thing that totally happened where australia's army got dunked on by a bunch of giant birds anyway this all tells us why eating in general can make us sleepy but of course there's a bit more to it than that my personal experience it's not like food coma strike after every single meal or snack and that's because the amount of food consumed isn't the only factor here the glycemic index of that food is also key the glycemic index of a food refers to how quickly and easily it can be broken down and digested which then affects how quickly blood glucose spikes and how much insulin is produced in response the higher the glycemic index the faster all of this happens the more food eaten with a high glycemic index the more insulin produced which as we just discussed results in more melatonin production so what kinds of foods have a high glycemic index not your thanksgiving turkey foods that are low in fiber fat and protein but high in carbohydrates tend to have the highest glycemic index so things like white bread potatoes and pasta are some of the biggest contributors to the food coma so while it may be true that a turkey dinner is gonna make us sleepy and lethargic it's probably the starchy and sugary side dishes not the turkey that are actually causing our blood sugar to spike which then kick starts the whole food coma process so does that mean the answer to the food coma is to go all paleo diet and just ignore all the carbs well yeah that would certainly reduce the effect of the food coma since things that are slower to digest don't cause such dramatic spikes in glucose slash insulin slash all the things that come with it however a food coma free carb experience is still possible if those carbohydrates are balanced out with plenty of protein fat and fiber to make your body digest things a bit more slowly but let's just say for the sake of argument that i'm not interested in doing a well-balanced meal i'm in one of those hungry kirby moods and all i want is to eat a pile of mashed potatoes the size of a baby and not get groggy is there any other way that i can hack my body into avoiding the food coma like say caffeine because we all know that i have a borderline inappropriate relationship with diet coke well the short answer is yes caffeine could potentially counteract the effects of a food coma it just needs to be timed right see caffeine messes with some of the chemistry in our brains particularly a molecule that's instrumental in causing sleepiness called adenosine if you remember your ap biology adenosine is a chemical that provides us with energy and if my memory serves a lot of adenosine triphosphate is produced by the electron transport chain i gotta admit i have no idea what any of that means now without me looking it up and refreshing myself on the information cause go figure it turns out that not just elementary school makes us focus on things that we will absolutely never need to know later on in life but i digress now this gets a little technical but adenosine fits into both a1 and a2a receptors in our brains a1 receptors are associated with sleepiness and a2a receptors are associated with preventing the release of dopamine the neurotransmitter we associate with feelings of pleasure that generally make us feel pretty awesome possum the reason caffeine helps us stay alert and feel good is that it has a similar molecular shape to adenosine and can fit into those receptors therefore preventing the adenosine from getting into the receptors and making us drowsy so if you drink some starbucks with your loaf of wonder bread will that keep you from getting sleepy maybe a bit but when your body is working to digest all the food that you just binged there's a lot of competition going on down in your small intestine for what to absorb and what chemicals for the brain to produce this is the kind of thing that's hard to study scientifically since feelings of alertness and drowsiness are all subjective and rely on the feedback of a test subject but to get the most bang for your caffeinated buck you'd likely need to consume your caffeine before you go on your food binge to make sure that the caffeine is settled solidly into your a1 receptors before your brain cells call in the adenosine of course that would also require you to know well ahead of time that you're going to eat half your body weight and pasta and in my experience that tends to be an action taken out of impulse so it's not like we're always gonna be able to stop and say to ourselves you know what i'm gonna go on an embarrassingly massive food rampage in a few hours gotta get that caffeine fix first so long story short if you wanna avoid food comas it's not tryptophan that you have to worry about instead focus on eating balanced meals and limiting foods with high glycemic index and you might have some luck preventing a food coma with a caffeine boost as long as you do it first before you feast oh and don't forget to drop the term postprandial somnolence to your friends sure you're gonna sound super pretentious but more importantly you're gonna be super right after all it's not like you could ever eat in such a way to put yourself into an actual coma right well this is the last point of clarification that i want to make before we leave today a literal food coma is technically possible particularly for people who are diabetic see diabetes interferes with the body's ability to process insulin properly and as we discussed from earlier this video insulin has a pretty major part to play in how our bodies react to the food that we eat when insulin is unable to direct the glucose we produce into the body's tissues that glucose remains in the blood and if the levels of glucose in a person's blood get very high and i and i do mean very very high because this is by no means a common occurrence they can suffer from hyperglycemic hyperosmolar syndrome or hhs this is an extreme condition that requires astronomically high blood sugar coupled with dehydration and it almost always comes along with another medical reason for the person being dehydrated already but enough food with a high enough glycemic index could contribute to hhs which results in diabetic coma between 25 and 50 of the time i'm not trying to make light of how serious diabetes is for anyone who suffers with it because it is a serious medical condition that affects millions but the fact remains that this is the extremely rare case when food could literally put you into an actual coma for most people though the non-life-threatening version of the food coma can be avoided if you just make sure you don't load up on the simple carbohydrates of course that's easier said than done am i right oprah i love bread but hey that's just a theory a food theory bon appetit thanks for chowing down on this episode theorists now is up for seconds if you made it all the way to the end card you're obviously a discerning theorist who appreciates our biology focused episodes so you should check out our video on aphrodisiacs are there foods that are scientifically proven to make you fall in love or are love potions just a myth never fear because food theory is on the case that button is on screen right now just waiting for you to click also on screen right now that subscribe button smack it before you go to make sure that you ingest some quality food theorist content each and every week and i'll see you all in the next video

Channel: The Food Theorists

Views: 1,952,041

Rating: 4.9702497 out of 5

Keywords: food coma, mukbang, food science, taste test, fast food mukbang, eat with me, tryptophan, science of food comas, food comas, science of mukbang, tryptophan foods, food theorists, food theory, matpat, film theory, game theory, binging with babish, eat the menu, why food makes you sleepy., nutrition, food coma science, recipe, food, food coma tv, what is food coma

Id: blEuUkZXp6c

Length: 10min 46sec (646 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 04 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Zkrez3]

Can you do a video about it the rind and if you can eat it or if it is good for you