Tryptophan, anxiety and archery: Darvishi 2026

A cross-sectional study of 45 recurve archers from Fars Province in Iran (28 men and 17 women, mean age 24.1) relates three things: how much tryptophan they took in through their diet, how much cognitive anxiety they reported an hour before a regional qualifying competition, and how many points they scored in it, over 36 arrows at 70 metres. Mean tryptophan intake was 347 mg a day, ranging from 128 to 614.

Archers who took in more tryptophan reported less cognitive anxiety (r = -0.47) and more self-confidence (r = 0.41), and scored more points (r = 0.53). Cognitive anxiety was the variable most closely linked to score (r = -0.61). In a two-block regression, tryptophan alone explained 28.1% of the variance in score, rising to 43.7% once cognitive anxiety was added, while the weight of tryptophan fell from 0.53 to 0.31. Split into three intake groups, archers below 250 mg a day averaged 278.3 points out of 360, those between 250 and 400 averaged 296.7 and those above 400 averaged 318.4, a gap of 40.1 points between the lowest and highest groups. Somatic anxiety did not differ between the groups.

The author reads these data as a sign of a pathway running through serotonin, for which tryptophan is the precursor, and suggests that sports nutritionists should pay attention to foods rich in tryptophan; she acknowledges that the design cannot establish cause.

Participants were registered with the provincial federation, held at least a provincial ranking, shot at least four qualifying events a year and had a mean of 6.8 years' experience. Those excluded were anyone on psychiatric medication, anyone with a diagnosed anxiety disorder, vegetarians and vegans, and anyone with an arm injury affecting the draw. Tryptophan was estimated from a seven-day weighed food diary kept during a normal training week and analysed with the Nutritionist IV software, extended with Iranian food composition tables.

Anxiety was measured with the Persian version of the CSAI-2R, completed 60 minutes before each archer's start time; the score was the official competition score, recorded by the judges, on a 122 cm face. The analyses were Pearson correlations, a hierarchical regression (tryptophan first, then cognitive anxiety) and an analysis of variance across the three intake groups. Draw weight, from 34 to 48 pounds, was not related to score (r = 0.11), and training volume averaged 14.3 hours a week.

This is a cross-sectional study with one competition per archer: the association between diet, anxiety and score says nothing about which way the effect runs, and the author herself notes that less anxious people may simply eat a more varied diet. Better archers may also just arrive at the competition calmer. Tryptophan tracks total protein closely, and the study neither separates the two nor considers the ratio to other amino acids, which by the author's own account governs how much tryptophan reaches the brain. Adjustment for training volume, body mass and sex is mentioned in the discussion and conclusion but not described in the methods.

Several details do not add up. The text gives each CSAI-2R subscale a range of 7 to 28, which does not match the revised instrument, whose subscales have five or seven items. The introduction puts the gap separating a ten from a nine at 70 metres at about 3 mm, whereas on a 122 cm face each scoring zone is 6.1 cm wide. A relationship this strong between a single nutrient and score would be unusual and would need at least one independent replication. The paper has a single author, appeared in a journal the registry flags for questionable editorial standards, and went from submission to acceptance in just over a month.

For an archer, this study is no reason to change diet before a competition. It shows an association, in one group on one day, between habitual tryptophan intake, the amount of worry reported before shooting, and score; it does not show that raising tryptophan lowers anxiety or raises scores, and the problems listed under limits call for caution about the size of the association too.

The firmest finding concerns anxiety: archers who reported more cognitive anxiety before the competition scored fewer points, which is a matter of mental preparation before it is one of nutrition. The threshold of 400 mg a day that the author puts forward in the discussion remains a hypothesis, to be tested in studies where tryptophan intake is changed in a controlled way and the score measured before and after.