A study carried out at Universite Laval in Quebec has found that heavy thinking requires calories. Though the difference in caloric need was negligible between rest periods and study periods, the study periods resulted in much higher fluctuations in glucose and insulin levels. Glucose is brain food.
Jean-Philippe Chaput, the study’s main author, said: “These fluctuations may be caused by the stress of intellectual work, or also reflect a biological adaptation during glucose combustion.”
The body could be reacting to these fluctuations by spurring food intake in order to restore its glucose balance, the only fuel used by the brain.
Mr Chaput added: “Caloric overcompensation following intellectual work, combined with the fact we are less physically active when doing intellectual tasks, could contribute to the obesity epidemic currently observed in industrialised countries.
“This is a factor that should not be ignored, considering that more and more people hold jobs of an intellectual nature.”
Now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to go feed my brain!
And what did you feed your brain? 😉
I’m going to have potato salad, cheese and crackers. Ya know real dietetic stuff. 😆
Feed your head, baby! 😀
OH Man that’s a WAY better title!! D’oh why didn’t I think of that. 🙂
My good buddy Grace Sick came up with first …… and I never did connect it with a calorific content .
Maybe if we all ate more white rabbit food? 😉
Now here is a wander …….
I believe in Watership Down the occasional pausing of activities on the rabbits to think and chew on their food is called Silfly …..
I was at the Woman’s Protest Camp on Greenham Common in Berkshire and they told me there that the Common, where the USAF base had been situated during WWII and the women were protesting, was actually the site of the action in Watership Down.
There be more to feeding one’s head, rabbit style, than cud chewing.
I get very very hungry when I’m writing. And I really believed, honestly, that I was using a lot of energy. It sure felt like it. Then I read it is an illusion created by localized energy use. Yes, the brain, is using up energy. The problem is that the brain weighs what? About 1.5 kg or 3 pounds compared to my entire weight of, well we won’t go there. Suffice it to say considerably more. So writing a novel is not an exercise program. Drats.