Health Check: ‘food comas’, or why eating some... - CLL Support

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Health Check: ‘food comas’, or why eating sometimes makes you sleepy

AussieNeil profile image
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For those of us struggling with CLL related fatigue, afternoons can be really tough to get through. This article by Angus Stewart, Senior Lecturer in Nutrition and Dietetics, Edith Cowan University, Western Australia, explains why we can sometimes feel very sleepy after a midday meal and provides some hopefully useful information on how to minimise that effect:

theconversation.com/health-...

Neil

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SeymourB profile image
SeymourB

I don't believe that cow's milk has significant amounts of melatonin, even if its from cow's milked late at night:

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/242...

40pg/mL = 4ng/L of milk - probably enough for rats to sleep, but not us.

The recommended dosages of melatonin for humans are in the mg range - that's almost a million times more than the rat study:

mayoclinic.org/drugs-supple...

So you'd need to drink a truck load of the high melatonin milk to get enough melatonin.

Years ago, L-tryptophan was the legendary substance. But it, too, fell before the light of actual science:

scientificamerican.com/arti...

I'm inclined think it's the serotonin or some other hormone. I wish the pundits would just say "Hey, we still don't know" instead of spreading "sciency sounding" stuff like this. I know they're trying to help, but I think it just increases the background noise, and leads to less trust for science in general when its finally tested.

=seymour=

Cllcanada profile image
CllcanadaTop Poster CURE Hero

Ya melatonin is a stretch... more likely midnights on an iPhone

Ah..but cows milk, fed with cotton seed cakes, might have a significant amount of gossypol.... there was a wonderful report 10 years ago about a CLL patient and gossypol cows milk...

I think gossypol is still in trials as AT-101

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl...

SeymourB profile image
SeymourB in reply toCllcanada

Hmm, also seems to contribute to hemolytica anemia, though:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gossy...

So, maybe download Brian Eno's Music for Airports,

amazon.com/Ambient-1-Music-...

and listen to it on the speaker while counting backwards from 100. It's cheaper, and has fewer side effects.

I've also found this album effective, though I'm not sure if it's internationally available at the US price of $5:

amazon.com/Virtuoso-Guitar-...

=seymour=

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