Canadian Researchers Say Hard Thinking Leads To Big Meals

Anti-Globalism writes with an excerpt from a story at Ars Technica, according to which "a preliminary study from a group of researchers in Quebec suggest that working on a computer may have an additional impact on our waistlines: taxing mental effort appears to cause people to eat significantly more food, even though it doesn't burn many more calories than sitting around and relaxing. The publication, published in a journal called Psychosomatic Medicine, arose from a pilot study that the researchers were performing in order to determine whether a potential connection between mental effort and eating was worth following up on."

Comments

Vindication

[AKAImBatman]

First to clear up a small matter. Merely reading the summary is somewhat misleading. While the brain's actual energy usage stays consistent, the study shows that blood sugar and insulin levels varied radically during the tests. Furthermore, the subjects in the tests showed marked signs of stress, including heightened levels of cortisol in their bloodstream. Here's the relevant section:

The authors provide two potential explanations for their findings, both of which may be accurate to varying degrees. The first involves sugar metabolism. The brain is especially reliant on glucose, and the blood tests revealed that both glucose and insulin levels changed during the KBW tasks, while they gently sloped off during the relaxation. The differences weren't consistent--the two KBW tasks sent the levels in opposite directions--but the instability of the levels was large for both of them. The authors suggest that the eating may simply be an attempt to give the body the chance to stabilize blood glucose.

Their other suggestion is that people find KBW stressful. Both the survey results and blood levels of cortisol (a hormone associated with stress) indicated that the KBW tasks took a mental toll. High stress has been associated with increased eating in a variety of contexts, so the upped food intake in this study may simply reflect that.

What's particularly interesting about these results is that two things have been known for a while now. The first is that the brain's energy usage is relatively constant regardless of the task. However, it has also been clear that severe mental activity can result in signs of fatigue, exhaustion, and greater energy consumption. I personally can attest to these symptoms after several extremely challenging programming tasks. (Ever tried cobbling together an emergency replacement JSP engine inside 3 hours? That was... interesting.) Yet this is simply at odds with the scientific evidence on hand.

This study finally offers evidence to break the impasse. It is the first evidence to clearly show that there is a physiological and not merely a psychological effect from extreme mental work. I look forward to hearing the results of future studies. Perhaps a more effective diet or lifestyle can be devised to make knowledge workers more effective.

Re:Vindication

[blahplusplus]

Sedentary work + stress = overeating, who would have thunk it?

The real problem is the desire for money outweighs (pardon the pun) the desire for a sane society, i.e. exercise, etc. Having a certain amount of hours off a week for exercise/relaxation and whatnot, I was just reading something about how americans have near the least vacaton time a year compared to other industrialized nations.

I'm not surprised given the nature of our stupidity when it comes to taking care of ourselves, money first, health later.

Re:Vindication

[Thiez]

> I happen to believe that thinking hard- programming- writing- puzzle-solving for hours on end burns way more energy as opposed to sitting on your ass watching a sitcom. It just has to, right?

Depends. Maybe the difference in energy-consumption between a programming brain and a sitcom-watching brain is very small, or even insignificant. Note that while you may not feel like you're thinking much while watching that sitcom, your brain is doing all kinds of (difficult) stuff like facial recognition and speech recognition. While you are programming/writing/puzzle-solving you usually don't have to pay attention to faces and sounds.

Maybe concious activities merely feel more tiring than unconcious ones, but actually aren't.

Re:consistent

[StarfishOne]

"I have got a hunch that eating small meals keeps one's insulin and glucose levels more constant than eating big meals."

Not to state that you have it, but it sounds like the eating pattern (many small vs. fewer big meals) is fairly similar to what is recommended for people who have hypoglycemia.

Re:SHENANIGANS!

[ColdWetDog]

answering "NO" to all questions.

You do realize that IT encompasses more than just Dell 'technical' support, do you not?

And that explains why Frys...

[Abies Bracteata]

...sells more junk food than your average supermarket!