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Is tryptophan really the cause of sleepiness? Poor tryptophan. It gets a bad rap each Thanksgiving. It’s true that tryptophan is a natural sedative, an amino acid that helps the body produce the ...

Tryptophan is an essential amino acid—meaning it must be obtained from diet—that is found in many proteins. Tryptophan is necessary to help build many peptides and proteins in the body ...