Reaction Time and the Foods You Eat

Egg whites and spinach are two foods rich in nutrients that are often recommended to maintain health, and studies are backing this up again. Both of these foods are rich in tyrosine, a nonessential amino acid and a building block for the mood-enhancing neurotransmitters epinephrine, norephinephrine, and dopamine. These chemicals affect our mood, alertness, and even our reaction time. While deficiency is rare, chronic stress can deplete your body of tyrosine. So if you think your reactions are a bit too slow, according to new research, you may want to take a look at your diet.

Tyrosine and Reaction Time

A team of researchers from Leiden University and the University of Amsterdam conducted a novel study to find out if tyrosine intake can improve our ability to stop in an instant. To test their theory, the scientists created a “stopping task” and tested the reaction times of participants on a computer screen. The task involved watching for different colored arrows to appear: Whenever a green arrow appeared, they were told to press the corresponding button as fast as possible, and the buttons had to match the direction of the arrow, either left or right. If the arrow was red they were told to do nothing.

The participants completed two sessions in the lab: With and without tyrosine supplementation. During one session, the participants were given a tyrosine-enriched orange juice before the task, and during the other session they were given a glass of orange juice containing a placebo. What the researchers found was that participants who drank the tyrosine-enriched juice reacted faster and had improved reflexes.

How Does Reaction Time Work?

You might be wondering why it is important to react faster, save catching a soccer ball thrown at you! Well, the speed of your reactions plays a large part in your everyday life and according to the researchers of this study, reacting faster could have implications for road safety. Reacting even a split second faster when driving could save you from an accident.

So just what is reaction time and how does it work? Reaction time is a measure of how quickly an organism responds to some sort of stimulus. The master center for your reactions is your brain. In less than a second it processes information and then sends impulse signals to your brain telling it how to respond. That’s where tyrosine comes into the picture. Because tyrosine is a building block for neurotransmitters it helps nerve cells communicate and influences cognitive performance and mood. If you are sleep deprived or under chronic stress such as being in the military, your body may not be able to make enough tyrosine. How much tyrosine we have is also affected by our age, personality type, gender, and of course our diet.

Benefits of Tyrosine

Under normal circumstances your body should be able to make all the tyrosine it needs because it is a nonessential amino acid, meaning you don’t need to obtain it through your diet. Tyrosine is made in your body from l-phenylalanine so as long as you consume protein containing foods like like meat, dairy, fish, soy, nuts, and seeds your body will be able to make what it needs. In clinical studies supplemental tyrosine has been shown to improve mental function and memory after sleep deprivation and to improve cognitive performance in military personal undergoing combat training. So far studies examining it’s effect on depression, attention deficit disorder, and exercise performance have produced mixed results.

Before you consider taking a dietary supplement of acetyl l-tyrosine or l-tyrosine talk to your doctor. Tyrosine will interact with thyroid hormones and the drug Levodopa, used to treat Parkinson’s Disease. While tyrosine is safe when consumed in food amounts, the use of supplemental tyrosine has only been studied short-term in adults.

Foods Highest in Tyrosine

I am a big proponent of foods first, supplement only if necessary. If you think you could use some mental sharpening I would encourage you to shore up your diet with tyrosine containing foods. The following is a list of some of the foods highest in tyrosine based on levels per 200-calorie serving:

·      Soy protein isolate: 1907mg

·      Egg white, raw: 1904mg

·      Cottage cheese, low-fat: 1833mg

·      Dried spirulina: 1782mg

·      Salmon: 1774mg

·      Turkey, white meat: 1771mg

·      Mustard greens: 1587mg

·      Spinach: 1483mg

Our response time can slow down with age, so eating foods with tyrosine might be helpful for maintaining both basic reaction time and competitive edge. Experts also say that you can help your aging reflexes by staying physically active.