Why do we feel tired after meals?

2016-02-29 3:27 pm

My friend asked me this and we "debated" over it.
I explained that "When you eat a meal that’s high in fat, sugar and carbohydrates, your parasympathetic nervous system tells your body to slow down and focus on digesting the food, causing you to feel lethargic. As the food is digested, cells in your pancreas produce the hormone insulin, which in turn leads to an increase in melatonin and serotonin, hormones that makes you feel drowsy as well as happy. You may also struggle to keep your eyes open thanks to a spike in glucose levels from the food you’ve eaten. This can interfere with the neurons in your brain that normally produce the orexin proteins responsible for keeping you awake and alert."
Yet she insisted that it was the high carbon dioxide concentration caused by more frequent respiration by cells after intaking food that made us want to doze off.
I stood firm n backed my point by mentioning that my conclusion was based on the "How It Works" magazine and it didn't mention a single word abt CO2.
I later did research on this but the other medical websites didn't mention about CO2.

Who is right?

回答 (2)

[匿名]

2016-10-20 10:42 pm

Tired After Meals

參考: https://shorte.im/a77f5

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[匿名]

2016-02-29 4:46 pm

Not all of us feel tired after eating. Some of us in fact may have trouble falling asleep after eating. Some foods can make insomnia worse. Some foods may be high in the amino acid Tryptophan, which is a precursor for the manufacture of serotonin by the body. But I doubt that increased Tryptophan levels will automatically increase drowsiness. Perhaps people who have a deficiency of Trytophan may experience an increase in serotonin production after finally getting enough Tryptophan. When I was a teenager a lot of students will go out to lunch and they would crowd school playground playing ball after lunch but before classes start. They don't seem tired at all. I also played ball routinely after lunch and didn't feel tired at all. Perhaps people feel relaxed and satisfied after a meal and people mistake that feeling as fatigue.

I also find a web site that claims increased CO2 level causes fatigue after a meal. Not sure if what they are saying makes sense either. Here is the link:

http://www.normalbreathing.com/tired-after-eating.php

Finally, in the Web MD site, the only thing that was said about being tired after a meal came from one of the visitors. There is no official information from the published literature on the subject. May be being tired after a meal only happens to some of the people all of the time, and to all of the people some of the time, but it does not happen to all of the people all of the time. LOL

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