Musings on the complicated business of thinking

You're Not Yourself When You're Hungry, and That's a Problem

A new study links low blood sugar to relationship stress.

David Pereiras/Shutterstock
We’ve all known people who should have to wear a flashing red DANGER! sign if they miss lunch. We instinctively know to steer clear of someone who's running on empty. A grumbling stomach means a drop in blood sugar, and through excruciating experience, most of us realize that means trouble.

But could the blood sugar/anger connection lurk behind more relationship conflicts than we realize?

new study probed that question with a research methodology as painfully funny as it was effective. Researchers rounded up 107 married couples for a 21-day couples’ boot-camp to draw a direct line between blood glucose (a.k.a. circulating blood sugar) and aggression.

First they asked the couples to complete a questionnaire that evaluated their level of satisfaction with their marriages, which allowed the research team to control for variables like how rocky a marriage was to begin with. They also measured all of the participants’ blood glucose levels to set a benchmark, and continued to measure the levels throughout the 21-day study.

The researchers predicted that drops in blood sugar would consistently correlate with heightened aggression between the spouses. They defined aggression in two ways: aggressive impulse and aggressive behavior, a distinction meant to identify aggression in thought versus action. Aggression rarely happens in a vacuum—there’s usually a thought impulse that precedes it, even if that impulse doesn’t occur immediately before the action but compounds over time.

To test aggressive impulse, the researchers gave participants a voodoo doll and 51 pins, with instructions to place as many pins in the doll every night as needed to show how angry they were with their spouse. A light conflict day might earn just a couple pokes, while a “cover the kids' eyes and ears” day might warrant the full 51 to the head.


At the end of the 21 days, with riddled voodoo dolls and ringing ears aplenty, the researchers' hypothesis was proven true: The lower the level of blood glucose, the more pins the spouses poked, and the higher the intensity (and longer the duration) they blasted their partners through their headphones.

The study provides a couple of worthwhile takeaways:

First, quoting lead study author Brad Bushman, an Ohio State University professor of psychology and communication, “Before you have a difficult conversation with your spouse, make sure you're not hungry."

Simple to say, harder to do.

Second, and the reason why that’s such good advice: Our brains are energy hogs. "Even though the brain is only two percent of our body weight, it consumes about 20 percent of our calories. It is a very demanding organ when it comes to energy," Bushman says.

When the brain is short on energy, it’s also short on self-control, opening the door for aggressive impulses and behavior to take center stage. And if the study results are a true indication, we’re red-lining our self-control more often than we realize.


A little food for thought while you're sitting in the drive-through.






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